Challenge

Etix has overseen brewery tour ticketing for TGB with great success; we recommended that their team reach out to Rockhouse Partners, our in-house marketing agency, to find a solution to help cut down on fan disappointment and backlash, and keep them motivated to try again for the next bottle release.  The Rockhouse team suggested a ticket lottery that would not only improve customer satisfaction but also streamline the purchase process. The Mornin’ Delight release was the initial test run. 

The Solution

The Rockhouse team created an online lottery form to capture information. A link to this form was sent out to TGB’s current email database; the lottery was also promoted on social media organically (no paid ads). 

Over 7,000 people entered the lottery within the first 48 hours. The Rockhouse team worked to scrub the list to eliminate duplicate names or fake entries, then gave 4,000 randomly chosen people the option to purchase tickets for one of the nine sessions. The remaining fans who were not selected in the initial lottery were offered a discount coupon for merchandise.  Five of the nine sessions sold out immediately, so a second-chance email was sent out to those fans who weren’t initially selected, offering them an opportunity to purchase for the remaining sessions. 

The Results

The Toppling Goliath team was thrilled with the results! They sold out every session and had 80% fewer complaints from disgruntled fans than for previous release events. The Rockhouse team also achieved an astounding 74% open rate for the lottery emails (industry average for email opens is around 25%).  In addition, by promoting the lottery via social media, TGB expanded its database for future marketing and outreach.

It’s only fair for us to share our top 20 innovations and features for 2020 and our 20th year as a company. 

Mobile Forward

Mobile-Optimized Checkout

Since 2000, we have optimized our mobile checkout process to make transactions simpler and safer, especially when two-thirds of all Etix purchases occur on a mobile device now. This includes creating a three-step optimized purchase process, a mobile-friendly ticket perfect for scanning, and an Apple Wallet integration for quick loading and scanning at the door. 

Etix Apps for Box Office Managers

Our mobile-forward innovation also extends to box office managers who need to check ticket sales on the go or have an easy way to scan tickets at the door. Our roster of mobile apps include the Etix Manager App and the Etix Scanner App. The Etix Venue App is also available as a customized, venue-specific app that integrates with Etix through our API. A performance only needs to be created once in Etix and will automatically be pushed to the app so customers can quickly check for new events and buy tickets. 

ConnectFun

ConnectFun allows fairs to create effortless transactions for rides, games, and food for their guests. Branded companion iOS and Android apps gives fans complete control to purchase and distribute credits to everyone in their group or family, allowing them to skip the line at the box office window or kiosk.  Fans will have the option to purchase RFID wristbands/cards onsite at the fair, or well in advance when they purchase their regular gate admission.

Simplifying the Purchase Process

Checkout Surveys

Checkout Surveys makes it easier to collect patron demographics, interests, and miscellaneous information for events that require registration or other specific details. Customers are prompted to answer designated questions before completing their purchase, allowing for accurate data collection for each ticket they buy.

Group Purchasing Enhancements

Online Group Buy was designed to assist group leaders purchase bulk number tickets online and hassle-free, making it simpler to purchase large quantities for general admission events such as fairs, music exhibitions, and festivals.

Secure Payments with PayPal

PayPal is a safe and secure way to pay for online and mobile purchases. In order to optimize the checkout process as much as possible, we partnered with Paypal as a method of purchasing tickets. In a recent case study, we found that mobile purchases increased by over 30% after adding PayPal as a method of payment.

Upsells, Memberships, & Donations

A part of our mission to simplify the purchase process is including options to purchase upsells (such as parking), member subscriptions, and donations, in one transaction. The ability to not only purchase a ticket, but also add-ons eliminates the need for multiple purchase processes, reduces customer time spent finding all that they need, and increases incremental revenue.

Timed Entry Ticketing for Tours

Etix launched a state-of-the-art checkout experience and access control that meets the unique needs of tours, museum exhibits, and even ferry boats. Our timed ticket options allow you to control the number of visitors within a certain time period. Provide your customers with a better user experience and quicker purchase process, while ensuring a steady flow through your venue.

Box Office Enhancements

Cash Drawer Management

Managing multiple ticket seller cash balances can be overwhelming. The Cash Drawer feature allows you to initiate cash adds and drops directly within our Box Office platform. You have more visibility into important stats like number of active sellers and total outstanding cash balance, and even quickly close out your sellers at the end of a shift.

Venue POS & Quick Sale

One of the biggest features we rolled out is our selling method – Venue POS.  Venue POS offers an alternative to the Java applet selling screens, and makes the selling process more efficient and user-friendly. As a bonus product update, Venue POS also includes the capability to purchase and validate tickets all at once! It’s partner feature, Venue POS Quick Sale is optimized for General Admission and Best Available ticket sales. Sell tickets fast and efficiently to get patrons into your event. As an added benefit, you can even print and validate tickets in one step getting your patrons in the door faster.

Buy X Get Y

Etix’s Buy X Get Y feature allows you to customize “buy one get one” offer types to fit your event’s unique experience. See the creative ways you can use this feature to increase your ticket sales.

Mobile Box Office

Sell tickets where your fans are! Etix Mobile Office was created to help shorten lines at the door, provide instant parking purchases, and sell outside the walls of your box office window.

Powered by Marketing

Automated Emails & Notifications

Email automation is your answer to sending pre-event, reminder, or even post-event emails as often as possible, without even lifting a finger.  Not only is this an easy way to remind fans to buy those tickets, but also to grow your email database. In 2017 alone, our automated email reminders generated over million in additional ticket revenues, annually.  We believe that your customers should never reach a dead end in the ticket purchase flow. Automated emails are provided for Pre-Sale Notification, Cart Abandonment reminders, Sold Out Performance, and post-event Thank You’s.  This feature can be turned on and off at your convenience, and even provides the option to recommend similar upcoming shows to ticket buyers.

Facebook Events Integration 

Facebook has grown to a community of 2+ billion monthly active users who regularly use the platform to discover new events and even purchase tickets. Etix offers the ability to publish an official event to Facebook after creating it in the Etix system, reducing the time in building Facebook events manually and getting the word out faster.

Customizable Email Editor

Whether you plan to update attendees about the weather forecast or send a last-minute time change, you can email your customers effortlessly with Email Guest feature.  This allows you to customize your message in a WYSIWYG editor and send a test message before sending to patrons.  You can also customize the automated thank-you email that is 24 hours after the event time has passed.  A thank-you goes a long way and you can even recommend other events or ask for feedback by including a post-event survey.

Etix Community

The way to your customer’s heart (and wallet) is identifying what makes them unique. Etix Community makes it easy for our clients to segment this data into high-performing campaigns with focused marketing messages. Etix Community is also integrated with Mailchimp, so you can easily export your segments and start marketing campaigns.

Robust Reporting & Etix Analytics

We believe your data is yours to market and analyze with.  In order to get a better understanding of your data, we introduced Etix Analytics, a dashboard that aggregates with Google Analytics to show clients’ traffic, conversion rates and revenue for referral and marketing channels. Let’s not forgot about the 200+ reports dashboard. 

Customer Protection

Ticket Insurance

 63% of event goers say they are more likely to purchase tickets if they can cancel for unforeseen reasons like illness or weather emergencies. We partnered with Allianz Worldwide Partners to empower your customers to purchase tickets early and protect their tickets.

Fraud Detection Using Sift Science

In order to combat ticket fraud and make sure more legitimate tickets are sold, we use Sift Science to detect fraud and false purchases in real-time.  Fraudulent orders are detected in milliseconds without disrupting the transaction saving you time and ticket revenue without sacrificing trusted customer service.

Securer Ticket Delivery Options

We want your customers to have a fair shot when purchasing tickets to high volume performances. Delayed Print-at-Home delivery allows you to check for orders placed by bots or brokers.  Not to mention, send legitimate ticket buyers an automated second confirmation email with a link to print their tickets closer to the performance.

Twice a year, we take our Etix University curriculum on the road with Etix Live! These workshops are carefully curated with sessions that will appeal to beginners, advanced users, and everyone in between. Class topics include box office essentials, marketing how-tos, and even tips on fraud prevention. We asked some of our clients who have attended past Etix Live! events to share how these sessions have benefitted them and their work.

Client 1: Connecting the Dots

“You can expect a lot out of your days at Etix Live! the most prominent being the various sessions and workshops offered. There was a wide selection of sessions catering from beginner to advanced training. You have the flexibility to choose the areas that interest you most or anything you would like to know more about. After a day of sessions, you can unwind with like-minded attendees to share stories, laughs, and a photo booth picture or two.

Etix Live! was the perfect environment to strengthen the perspective of not only my position but others in my organization who are Etix users. During my sessions, I had constant ‘aha moments’ where I connected the dots and thought about things in a new way. This was strengthened even further by hearing other attendee’s successes and challenges within their own organizations. I feel Etix Live! is truly one of the fundamental elements leading to my confidence in the system today.

I had one experience that epitomizes Etix Live! for me. I was in a session with my laptop in front of me. I had discovered an issue with one of our performances and was a little unsure of the best way to handle it. I waited for the session to end and quickly approached one of the presenters. Without missing a beat, they found, solved, and explained the issue to me within minutes. That sense of service and readiness to pass along knowledge is at the core of what I experience from Etix. The conference is a wealth of expertise and advice just waiting to be absorbed by those who engage in it.”

Client 2: Boosting Confidence

“Etix Live! Without it, I would never be where I am today. When I first took over as a box office manager in 2013, I knew virtually NOTHING about building or managing an event through Etix. I had worked as the part-time box office ticket seller for a year but had never built a show or done any of the behind the scenes managing of it. At the time, we were averaging maybe 2-4 events a month and it was manageable with my limited knowledge. To be honest, the first time I went to Etix Live! I felt a little overwhelmed. Suddenly, I was learning how to do things I had been struggling to figure out since I started. Since I build all of our events in house, I enjoyed the step-by-step instructions on how to do performance management and the little tips I gathered along the way from other attendees.

Every venue is different and they typically handle stuff in a unique fashion based on their needs … but something I figured out really quickly was that not only did I learn the practical things that I needed to be able to do my job through the Etix system, but I was able to get advice and suggestions from other box office personnel who were hands-on in their venues as well.

I have continued to attend Live! workshops over the years; even though I know the system pretty well I always learn something new at every session. One of the best parts of going is to be able to get hands-on, one-on-one time with some of the trainers to voice concerns, ideas, problems, and solutions and to be able to show them in real-time what I am talking about, which is sometimes difficult to convey over email. Bottom line, I would not be as confident in what I do without the knowledge and experience I gain by attending Etix Live!”

Don’t miss out!

Find out about our next workshop at the link below. Now’s a great time to sign up and boost your ticketing expertise.

Music streaming has been the top revenue driver for the music industry, followed closely by live music. Spotify is the biggest of the music streaming platforms and is the hub for over 200 million active music fans. These fans are already engaged and are more likely to turn a listening experience into a live experience. In 2018, Spotify generated over $40 million in ticket sales for 700 artists. For venues and event promoters, this means an audience that is more likely to buy tickets to an artist they know they listen to.

One of Spotify’s newer features, Ad Studio is a self-serve ad platform that allows venues and promoters to advertise upcoming shows to Spotify’s freemium users. Spotify is the perfect tool to add to your current marketing mix and gain an extra layer of exposure to another type of fan, one who is actively listening to the artist that is coming to your venue.

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How Spotify Ad Studio Works

Spotify lets you tap into their database of over 200 million listeners and promote your events directly to music fans. In Ad Studio, you can create audio ads and target based on demographics, genres, mood-based interests, and the fanbases. 

For your event, you will need to specify your targeting based on the artist and affinity artists. Our, in-house digital marketing agency, Rockhouse Partners, also recommends preliminary artist research to find affinity artists, the ideal geographical parameters, and age range to target.  If it’s an artist you have had at your venue before, you can verify similar artists through the Etix Purchase Correlation report.

Another important step is choosing when you should implement Spotify Ads. Spotify Ads are great for increasing event awareness, which is important at the beginning of your event lifecycle, close to your onsale date, and at the closing period, which is 1-3 weeks before event. These are the periods when awareness is more important, especially if you are in the closeout period and you have a show that is not selling as well as you had hoped. 

For your audio ad, you will need an image, ticket link, and a transcript of your ad. Make sure you add a partner Id to the ticket link to track your conversions.  If you prefer not to upload your own audio, Spotify allows you to choose one of their voice overs with background track included. These ads are then served to non-subscribing users between song plays based on your targeting parameters. 

Benefits of Spotify Ad Studio

• Strike through the noise and promote directly to a database of engaged listeners of the artists that come to your venue or event. 
• Increase venue and event awareness, and draw new customers to your venue
• Increase your email list, and turn them into new ticket buyers into loyal concert goers. 
• Pinpoint your best audience with targeting features that are driven by listening interest and behavior. 
• Target across desktop and mobile devices, depending on where your target audience spends the most time. 

Spotify Ads in Action with the Clyde Theatre

Once a vacated movie theatre, now transformed into a premier music venue in the heart of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Clyde Theatre produces over 100 concerts annually, ranging from country music to alternative to niche genres. Since opening in 2018, The Clyde has built up its presence in the Fort Wayne area through a full-funnel marketing campaign and some assistance from the Rockhouse Partners team.

For each concert The Clyde creates a front-end and back-end campaign that generates big buzz during announcement, momentum buildup with mid-cycle giveaways, and an ending ticket sales push. The marketing channels include a street team to flyer, radio promotions, Facebook and Google Ads, and even a little TV.  Depending on the concert and the primary demographics, The Clyde focuses more on the channels where they know the fans will be. 

This was The Clyde’s strategy for an alternative rock show for the band, “I Prevail.” Using Spotify, they created a target audience based on the band’s listeners’ affinity artists and the opening act to reach a younger fanbase that may not have been aware of The Clyde. The ads ran during the closing period right before the show, generating a high number of impressions. Adding Spotify Ads to the marketing mix helped reach more younger fans and increased the number of newcomers to the venue — people drove over 150 miles from Cincinnati, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois to attend this show.

MORRISVILLE, NC—Etix, an international ticketing solutions provider to more than 2,000 clients in 40 countries, announced today that it has acquired both Michigan-based Star Tickets and Arizona-based TicketForce. Combined with rapid organic growth, these targeted acquisitions further expand Etix’s footprint in the event ticketing space. These acquisitions are the latest in a series of companies acquired by the North Carolina ticketing company since founder and CEO Travis Janovich returned to the helm in 2015.

“We continue to be strategic in pursuing growth acquisitions, and both TicketForce and Star Tickets are great fits within the Etix family,” said Etix CEO and founder Travis Janovich. “We look forward to working with both the Star Tickets and TicketForce teams to ensure their clients receive the best technology and service in the industry,” adds Paxton Badham, Etix President.

“We’ve been impressed by Etix’s clients-first approach and elected to partner with them knowing that our clients will be in good hands,” said Star Tickets President Jack Krasula. “Their client services focus and manpower will be a great asset for our clients. We are truly excited.”

TicketForce co-founder and CEO Lynne Smith also recognized the shared values between her organization and Etix. “When we started TicketForce, we wanted to mesh our love of live events with our ability to deliver technology that clients and fans could use,” remarked Smith. “We see this mirrored in how Etix approaches relationship-based service with smart, tech-based solutions. We look forward to working alongside the Etix team to continue to provide first-class service and technology to our clients.”

Star Tickets and TicketForce are Etix’s fourth and fifth acquisitions in the last two years. Targeted acquisitions have successfully supplemented fast-paced organic growth over the same period.

“We continue to aggressively invest in our technology and add key employees to ensure we meet and exceed our clients’ expectations,” said Travis Janovich. “We plan on carrying our strong momentum into 2020 and beyond.”

About Etix

Founded in 2000, Etix is in an international, web-based ticketing service provider for the entertainment, travel and sports industries. As the largest independent ticketing company in North America, Etix provides flexible and secure online and box office ticketing solutions, integrated digital marketing services, and robust e-commerce fulfillment to more than 1,800 fairs, festivals, venues, theatres, arenas, performing arts centers and multi-use facilities. Headquartered in Morrisville, NC, Etix has offices in China, Germany, Holland, and Japan, as well as Rockhouse Partners, a full-service digital marketing agency.

Primary Contact

Aaron Bare Director of Marketing, Etix