This summer, we had a number of events new to TICKETsrv who grew their advance, online ticket sales by an average of 18%. Here we look at Living Crafts, a long-established event which was founded over 40 years ago but has continually innovated to keep visitors happy and maximise income. Having been offering online ordering with postal delivery for the last few years, for 2016 they moved over to TICKETsrv‘s instant delivery e-ticketing system and more than doubled their advance sales. Read on to find out how they achieved it…
They continued to sell online tickets throughout the event
Living Crafts continued to offer the online booking facility with discount right up to and during the event, to encourage visitors to commit in advance to visiting the event. This had the dual advantage of collecting a valuable marketing database of customer email addresses, as well as reducing queues for the more-time consuming cash/credit card transactions on the gate.
Good use of online marketing to promote online ticket sales
Taking advantage of TICKETsrv‘s social media takeover offer, the event also ran a number of advance online promotions such as competitions, special offers and newsletter initiatives which helped to generate bursts of sales activity. They made good use of Facebook’s boosted (paid) post facility, seeing a corresponding increase in both engagement (clicks, shares and actions across social media) and ticket sales.
How the social media takeover helped to drive sales:
– Every post ended with a call-to-action – a reminder to book entry or workshop tickets accompanied by the direct ticket link
– Content covered activities available on-site, with a focus on pre-bookable workshop events.
– Posts emphasised the benefits of pre-booking tickets – customers save money and spend less time queuing.
Overall the amount of resulting activity across their social media channels (including the number of clicks on their Facebook and Twitter pages) increased ten-fold.
Fast-track entry with TICKETsrv scanners
Held in the grounds of historic heritage site Hatfield House, it is critical that traffic queuing is kept to a minimum for visitors entering the site due to the close proximity to main roads – any event tailbacks can have a detrimental effect on outside traffic in and around the local town. During the event, the larger volume of customers with pre-booked e-tickets resulted in fast-track entry and minimal queues. Advance ticket sales had more than doubled, but despite initial concerns about the new technology the estate staff team commented on the ease-of-use of the scanning hardware and the the contribution that scanning made to the free-flow of traffic onto site.
Further advantages
A further, indirect advantage of offering online ticketing right up to and during the event is that visitors are left with more cash to spend inside the event. We tend to see that if visitors purchase tickets in cash on the gates, they tend to spend less on food, drink and shopping. The additional cash that pre-booking leaves them with results in a higher spend on-site!
Testimonial
“Whilst initially having to be convinced of the benefits of changing from a traditional postal system to an electronic ticket delivery system, I am now happy to say it was a really good decision for us. We grew sales exponentially this year, mostly due to the extended selling time that electronic ticket delivery afforded us. Although all online ticket buyers enjoyed a discount on the gate price, we now have the incredibly valuable marketing asset of a huge email database to keep them informed about next year’s event. I would recommend TICKETsrv to other events thinking about making the move to e-ticketing.”
~ Robin Younger, Organiser of Living Crafts at Hatfield House and Blenheim Palace
