You know your event is awesome, and now it’s time to spread the word and sell more tickets. If you are familiar with the marketing tools on RunSignup, you’ll find a lot of overlap here. Successful strategies for marketing your ticket event rely on branding, easy communications, and social connections.
1. Free Websites
What is it? TicketSignup events all come with a free, customizable event website. Unlike many ticket selling sites, your TicketSignup event website can be branded for your organization (not ours), never include ads from other events (or anything else), and can include multiple pages with a full website menu.
Why you need it: Your online presence is often the first interaction a potential attendee has with your event. A clean, branded website gives them a preview of what to expect on event day, makes it easy for them to find key event details, and makes your event look like a first-rate affair.
Best Practices for Your Free Website
- Brand your site with an event logo and consistent brand colors.
- Add a Cover Page for a professional homepage. Include images and videos to highlight experience of your event and add a countdown clock for a sense of urgency.
- BYO Domain or Subdomain to make your website feel more official and less like a ticket-buying site.
- Use the Website Builder to add additional content and logistical information to your site – and organize it with pages and menus.
2. Free Email Marketing
What is it? TicketSignup’s free email marketing platform is purpose-built for your events, providing a robust (free) option to market to current and past participants. Email marketing is included on every ticket dashboard and includes default lists, unlimited contact uploads, and unlimited sends.
Why you need it: Email has a wide reach, with 82% of Americans reporting that they check their email at least once a day. It’s a timely and efficient way to communicate with all your contacts, and when it’s free to send, it’s guaranteed to have a great ROI.
Best Practices for Your Free Emails:
- Separate marketing and transactional emails. TicketSignup allows you to designate whether your email is marketing or transactional (on the review step of email sending). Keep these separate to ensure that attendees can opt-out of marketing emails without missing out on important event details.
- Personalize your emails. Take your communications to the next level and make your attendees feel valued with custom information for each recipient. This can be as simple as including the attendee’s name, or as powerful as including the number of events the attendee has joined in the last five years!
- Build beautiful emails. Whether you chose a basic template out of the box or start from scratch, our email builder ensures your email is mobile responsive. Make sure your email is branded for your event (we bring over your theme colors and logo automatically!), includes enticing images, and has clear call-to-action buttons.
- Segment your recipient lists to send different versions of emails to current attendees vs. potential attendees, or further segment to specific ticket purchases (I.E., VIP ticket holders).
3. Referral Rewards
What is it? A referral is when an event attendee recruits a friend or family member to join your event with them. When you enable referrals on TicketSignup, each ticket purchaser will get a unique referrer link that they can share with their network, and when someone purchases a ticket from that link, the original referrer will get credit for the referral. You can take it a step further with referral rewards and enable the system to automatically give the referrer a refund when they refer a certain number of ticket purchasers. For example, a referrer who refers 5 ticket purchasers gets a $20 refund!
Why you need it: Referrals can be a huge boost to your event. In 2021, 8% of all transactions were from referrals when they were enabled, and we have seen that number be as high as 30% for events that really promote their referral program. It’s easy to set up, automated to run, and there’s no better sales person for your event than another attendee. People trust their friends and family more than any ad you can run!
Best Practices for Your Referral Rewards Program:
- High threshold, high reward programs are the sweet spot. You want a goal that is attainable, but challenging, to incentivize a large number of attendees to share their referral link while only a handful will reach the threshold for a refund. To keep your attendees motivated and your ROI high, we recommend a reward of $15 or more for 3-5 referrals.
- Stack your rewards with additional refunds for referrers who meet the original goal. By providing a secondary, higher goal, you give enthusiastic attendees a reason to keep sharing your event even after the initial threshold is reached.
- Promote your referral program everywhere! The free website and email we talked about before? They’re key to promoting your referral program. Add a section on your cover page with information about the referral program, and use replacement tags to include each attendee’s unique referral link in emails. Your referral program only works if people know it exists!
4. Pricing: Encouraging Groups
What is it? Events can boost participation through simple pricing tactics, including a discount for attendees who purchase a specified number of tickets.
Why you need it: Social connections drive event participation. In endurance events, we see this in the form of groups/teams, where 30% of participants opt to join a group or team if the option is available. With tickets, the primary avenue for increasing social participation is via your pricing setup, but the impact is similar – why not invite additional people if it will save you money on your tickets? The best part? Attendees also have more fun at events when they become social occasions, making them more likely to return in future years.
Best Practices for Group Pricing
- Option 1: Per Ticket Pricing: In this scenario, decrease the cost per-ticket when a purchaser exceeds a pre-determined number of tickets. In this version, tickets cost $15 each if you buy three or less, but only $12 each if you buy four or more.
- Option 2: Tickets for a Group: that is good for a set number of people, with or without collecting additional information on each attendee via custom questions. While this is often a good option for something like a golf tournament where a team of four is standard, you may want default to the first option for festivals or other events where attendees may not all show up at the same time, with the original ticket purchaser.
- Clear Communication: Not to sound like a broken record…but for your discount to increase registrations, you have to promote the deal by adding details to your website and emails.
5. QR Codes and Text Messaging Links
What is it? Every ticket event on TicketSignup has a set of QR codes created to link potential attendees to your event website. Even more fun? Supporters can request a link for your event website to be sent via a designated text messaging short code – no URL’s to remember or type in. For example, text H1246 to 49514 to get a link to an example Halloween Ticket Event!
Why you need it: No one likes typing a long URL into their phone to get to your event website. Make it easier for people to purchase tickets by adding the QR codes and text messaging short codes on all printed materials, including posters, flyers, and on-site collateral. Learn more.
Best Practices for QR Codes and Text Messaging Links
- Make ticket purchasing mobile friendly. If you’re using links that are intended to be reached from a phone, make sure you keep your purchasing path simple, with limited information collection.
- Provide both link options when possible. While QR codes have exploded in popularity over the last two years, some people will still be more comfortable with texting. Offer both options on printed collateral to maximize the impact.
