Building a Sense of Urgency
TicketSignup offers many features and ways in which events can creatively encourage a greater amount of attendees for their upcoming events. This is a first in a series of blog posts to help provide specific methods to increase ticket purchases through pricing. Two approaches that can be used in tandem that build a sense of urgency for earlier ticket purchases are Limited Quantity Coupons and Date-Based pricing.
Encouraging attendees to purchase tickets earlier has a compound effect in increased tickets sold since early purchases create a greater window of time for attendees to spread the word about your event to their friends and family. This word-of-mouth form of marketing is very powerful and a significant driver for ticket purchases.
Limited Quantity Coupons
Limited quantity coupons are price discounts that are applied to ticket purchasers thresholds. For example: the first 100 buyers receive 10% off. This is an ideal strategy to use when opening ticket sales and is a great way to kick off excitement for your event. This can be set up to apply to either the entire event or for specific ticket groups (opening week, first day) or levels (adult ticket, child ticket, morning ticket, evening ticket).
To do this you can set up a coupon code that can only be applied to the first 100 individual ticket buyers that input the discount code. Once the coupon code has been used 100 times it will no longer be useable. To set up this coupon within your event dashboard navigate to Financial>> Coupons >> Advanced options.
Date-Based Discounts
Offering discounts based upon date-based or time-based settings are an excellent way to create a sense of urgency and encourage participants to register earlier rather than waiting until the last minute. As attendees realize that the price is going up, they are encouraged to take advantage of the reduced price.
Some examples of applying this approach include:
- Promoting Tickets one season ahead, for example you can promote tickets to the pumpkin patch at a discount to people attending your farm during sunflower season.
- Early bird discount for ticket purchasers one week before opening day.
- Promoting a price increase on a well known date. (Buy your tickets to a Christmas Light show before Thanksgiving)
If you want to take things a step further, you can combine this with some type of event swag to give them that extra incentive. (Buy your tickets now and pick one extra pumpkin for free)
To set this up you simply create different ticket purchase periods with the changing price like shown below. Navigate from your Event Dashboard>> Tickets>> Pricing
Promote Your Discounts
These time-sensitive pricing strategies rely heavily on awareness and promotion of the discounts for their effectiveness. People are inundated with information and may miss an email or social media post. We suggest you set up a campaign where a series of emails are sent to communicate when ticket sales open or when date-based pricing discounts start and always remind them when they are about to end. This should also be combined with other forms of promotion like on your social media sites and on the front page of your website. In any promotion you do make sure to include a clear call to action and the link to buy tickets!
Important Tip!
Be selective on your discounts. Implementing too many price increases will reduce the power of any one increase.
Questions?
If you have additional questions, please contact your account manager or email info@ticketsignup.io.
