The top 5 benefits of e-ticketing

Remember what it was like “back in the day” to camp out in front of a box office just to be the first in line for those prized tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime concert or festival? As tough as that was, things weren’t any easier for event organisers back then either. You’d have to print out your paper tickets, pack them up and ship them to the box offices, venues, CD shops or other places where fans of your event would (hopefully) come looking for tickets. The whole process was expensive and complicated, not to mention impossible to keep track of. Could you ever really know who was buying your tickets? Or what they thought about your event? No way! Well, fortunately, e-ticketing has made things a lot easier for us all, because it’s:

1. User-friendly
2. Data-driven
3. Interactive
4. Personalised
5. Available anytime, anywhere

In this blog, we’ll show you what all these benefits mean for you.

1. E-Ticketing Ensures a Smooth Buying Process

As an event organiser, you know how important it is to keep your event-goers satisfied. It’s the only way you can keep them coming back for more and make sure they’ll tell all their friends what a great time they had. After all, word-of-mouth advertising is still the best advertising you can get. But customer satisfaction starts long before the event itself. It starts as soon as the customer goes shopping for tickets. That’s because today’s event-goers are accustomed to a smooth online experience and they expect clear, transparent communication. 

That makes e-ticketing an ideal solution. As soon as the customer places their order, they immediately receive a confirmation email containing their e-ticket. Now, anyone who has a smartphone (so, practically everyone) always has their tickets with them wherever they go. But to make things as easy as possible, you should also remember to keep your online ticket shop’s design as straightforward as possible. This is not the place to experiment with complicated layouts or force the customer to click through dozens of screens. Stick to clear CTAs to make sure your fan journey is crystal clear for every user. 

2. E-Ticketing Is a Data Goldmine

Are you curious to know more about the people who are attending the events you organise? In the old days, you’d have to put on a disguise and mingle with the crowd. Or maybe send out a survey (in the mail!). But why should you wait until during or after the event to get to know your guests? It’s actually much more important to know who your event-goers are before the event even takes place. After all, if you want to give your fans the show of a lifetime, you need to know exactly what they want to see and hear. 

Again, e-tickets are a major benefit. When you use them, you have access to a goldmine of data about the people attending your event. In any case, you’ll have contact information for all your ticket buyers, so you can easily reach out to ask them questions before the event. You might ask them what they want to see and hear, or what they thought about a previous event they attended. 

In your ticketing dashboard, you have a full overview of all your visitor information and sales records. But wouldn’t it be great if you could store additional useful information about your visitors, such as their favourite artist or drink? That’s exactly what your Customer Data Platform (CDP) is for! CM.com seamlessly integrates your CDP into your ticketing system, so you can retrieve additional information on your event-goers and analyse their preferences. 

Understanding this crucial data helps you to fine-tune your events. Little details, like adding more vegetarian options to your catering based on who’s attending, can have a huge impact on visitor satisfaction. And that’s why analysing visitor data is so important. 

3. The Opportunity to Communicate One-on-One

Communicating directly with your visitors gives you a chance to conduct targeted personal marketing. For example:

• If a visitor has attended similar events in the past, you can send them a save-the-date message with a preregistration link for an upcoming event. And, since you’ve got a full overview of your visitors’ preferences stored in your CDP, you even know their preferred communication channel.
• Is the line-up at your event the main factor that’s driving ticket sales? If so, then why not try some smart content planning? Ask your visitors’ favorite artist to record a spoken message that you can send out to invite more visitors to the event. 
• You can also use one-on-one communication during the event to improve the event experience. For example, send out messages to festival attendees to remind them of when and where their favourite artists are going to be performing. Or use personal communication for crowd control by announcing happy hour at a bar that is currently less crowded.
• And once the event is over, there are still plenty of opportunities for keeping in touch with attendees. Try sending out a cool aftermovie of the event, or send a survey to ask for feedback on how to improve future events.

In short, by making smart use of technologies throughout the fan journey, you can communicate more directly, effectively and conveniently with your ticket buyers. Need some more help getting started? Try using Mobile Marketing Cloud, which includes effective workflows for communicating with your attendees. 

4. Your Custom Ticket Shop Makes Buying Tickets Part of the Fun

Customers are attracted to your sales channels because you organise amazing events that they cannot wait to attend. But that doesn’t mean that you should just take their sale for granted and totally neglect the look and feel of your ticket shop. If you make the purchase process so complicated that it takes your customers all day to click through your site, then you’re likely to lose some customers. 

The best way to make people feel like they’re a part of the awesomeness and the branding of your event is to provide a custom-made, practically designed online ticket shop. And why not give your ticket shop the same look and feel as the event itself? There are plenty of ways to customise your ticket shop, including: 

• Choosing custom colours
• Changing the header image
• Adding different images for each ticket or product
• Adding banners
• Adding additional steps to enhance the fan journey

These tweaks can all help boost your conversion and bring in additional sales through upselling and cross-selling. You can also help cut down on wait times for your guests at the event. Try, for example, selling drink tokens through your site, so your guests can buy them right away when they order their tickets. 

5. Good Old Last-Minute Ticket Sales

So, as you can see, e-ticketing is easier, faster, smarter and more profitable for event organisers. And what’s more: you can even use e-tickets to replace traditional at-the-door ticket sales for fans who decide at the last minute to attend an event. E-ticketing is actually even more effective for last-minute selling, because your e-ticket system easily tracks exactly how many tickets are still available, so no one gets left out.