Haunts are busy setting up events for 2023 and some are even starting to sell tickets. Last year we worked with dozens of haunts, including ten haunts that sold over 10,000 tickets. The number of haunts using TicketSignup in 2023 has already more than doubled, and we continue to onboard more haunts each day. This blog covers some new features and ways that TicketSignup is helping haunts sell more tickets and manage their events this year:
- Free Marketing Tools: Cut costs and sell more tickets
- Ticket Purchase & Management: Fast and easy for attendees and your team
- CheckIn App and Point of Sale: Manage on site ticket & add-on fulfillment and purchase
- TicketSignup’s Pricing: Not per ticket
Free Marketing Tools
Free Email Marketing
TicketSignup’s free Email Marketing is purpose-built for events. From marketing emails to event communications, TicketSignup Email Marketing is always free and always easy to use. Haunts can upload all of their contacts to send out marketing emails for free. Compare this to Mailchimp and TicketSpice‘s pay-as-you-go credits, which cost $.02 per email sent. For a haunt that wants to send 10 marketing emails to a list of 20,000 contacts, this can cost over $4,000 per year!
We’ve had haunts upload over 100,000 contacts at a time and send emails for free with best-in-class layouts AND deliverability. Our marketing team here at TicketSignup uses our own Email Marketing platform to send newsletters and other company emails out to over 280,000 contacts – for free!
We continue to add new features for Email Marketing. Some of the key ones for haunts include:
Data Replacement tags to include important event & ticket info – like Manage Tickets for self-serve transfers if you need to cancel a night due to weather.
System Lists for attendees. Schedule & send event communications; the lists will dynamically update as more people buy tickets.
Automated Drip Campaigns to promote referrals and other promotions that help you sell more haunt tickets.
Email Builder to easily create spooky emails (or paste in your own HTML!)
Design Components to create custom designs and creatively lay out content.
Email Capture that is customizable and allows your haunt to grow email lists.
Free Websites
Haunts are also able to save money and time with free Websites. The Haunted Stage Stop stopped paying for Squarespace and is using TicketSignup’s free website instead: https://www.hauntedstagestop.com/. And yes, TicketSignup hosts domains and subdomains, like https://haunt.ashlandberryfarm.com/, for free.
Like Email, we continue to add more capabilities for websites:
TicketInsights delivers real-time, easy-to-understand website traffic analytics to show website views, ticket purchases, and transactions. Understand what drives ticket sales for your haunt.
The Website Builder makes it easy to add dynamic & static content, rearrange sections, and organize content into menus and pages – no webmaster required. Theme options give you custom scary websites.
Layout options give you control over your content – from padding, image display, and more.
Click to Text is featured on social share buttons throughout websites.
Content blocks give you lots of flexible ways to display content – feature price increases, video, and more.
And More Free Marketing Tools
Last year, automated Referral Rewards were one of the most cost-effective tools to grow haunts. TicketSignup makes it simple to set up your rewards (i.e. Refer 5 friends, get $20 back) and we automatically refund the ticket purchasers’ credit card when they reach that threshold. A recommendation from a friend to buy tickets is going to work better than any paid ad. Furthermore, most people refer a friend or two, and very few reach the threshold to trigger a refund. Several of the top 10 haunts implemented a Referral Rewards program last year and generated about $37,000 in ticket sales for the cost of $452 in refunds. That’s a dollar spent for $81.66 in new ticket sales!
We’ve added even more features for marketing in 2023, including Google Analytics 4, TikTok Tracking Pixel, and custom source tracking codes that integrate with TicketInsights. We’ve also enhanced the TicketDashboard with even more tools to track ticket sales.
Ticket Purchase & Management
How long does it take to buy tickets for your haunt? On TicketSignup, attendees can select timed entry tickets and add-ons, check-out, and add tickets to Apple Wallet in less than 45 seconds. Paying with a credit card? We’ve eliminated the need to enter a billing address making that even faster too!
Last year, 5.17% of all tickets transferred to a different date. TicketSignup’s self-serve transfers made this seamless and reduced dozens of manual customer service hours for haunts. TicketSignup also added a lot of functionality to facilitate different ways that haunts include attractions with tickets. We’ve added even more features to make TicketSignup easy for all attendees and haunt owners:
New self-serve ticket management coming soon. Even easier for attendees to transfer tickets, resend confirmation, and more.
Free Text Messaging for event communications.
Dashboard page access so that you can give team members access to some but not all pages.
Ticket Sales Notifications so you can get a summary of each day’s purchases delivered to your inbox.
Next-generation Ticket Reports that makes it easy to view, customize, and export your ticket data.
Season and Event Passes to enable multiple check-ins to your haunt.
CheckIn App and Point of Sale
The most popular feature on TicketSignup is the Ticket App. From scanning tickets, fulfilling store purchases, and selling tickets on site, TicketSignup has the best (and always free) technology for on site operations.
All ten of the top haunts used the Ticket App for CheckIn at their events, checking in 95% of tickets sold. The 5% of tickets that weren’t checked in are no shows – that’s revenue that haunts kept and additional capacity to sell more on site tickets. It’s fast to scan QR codes (Apple Wallet means more people will have this!) and easy to lookup a ticket by purchaser name or email.
We’ve made the Ticket App even better this year!
New and improved UX to make the Ticket App even easier to use.
Check in all or easily do partial check-ins if groups arrive separately.
Fulfillment for attractions and additional purchases – with or without tickets!
Filter to view a specific date and/or ticket type.
Flexible configuration options for tickets and store/attractions.
Print tickets and customize other device settings.
Haunts want attendees to buy tickets online because they can make more money and prevent long lines on site. TicketSignup has QR Codes, and Apple Pay makes it even easier for attendees to buy tickets. For haunts that want to accept cash and credit card, there is TicketSignup’s Point of Sale, integrated with Square. Sell tickets and/or add-ons, with flexible options to check-in immediately or print tickets with purchase details.
TicketSignup Pricing
TicketSignup is free for haunts – we don’t charge for any of the above features. We only charge a processing fee on transactions, which haunts can pass on to attendees.
- Per Cart, NOT per Ticket. Last year, the average haunt sold 2.74 tickets per transaction because people like to attend with family & friends. That makes TicketSignup cheaper than other ticket platforms that charge fees for each ticket sold.
- ALL Credit Card Fees Included. Easy Financial Reconciliation – No Separate Merchant Accounts.
- Volume Pricing available starting at 5,000 tickets.
Since fees are very inelastic and customers are used to paying fees per ticket, haunts have room to grow profits by increasing the TicketSignup processing fee and keeping the difference.
Integrated financials make it easy (and free) to issue refunds, although just .28% of ticket sales were refunded. Refund notes indicate that this was often due to Covid or sickness. The top 10 haunts had an average of 2.8 chargebacks each. TicketSignup fights chargebacks on behalf of customers; we won and reversed the majority of these chargebacks for our haunt customers.
The other really big benefit to TicketSignup customers is automated sales tax collection and remittance. We take care of everything for haunts, taking many hours of work, as well as fears of incorrect calculation, off of haunt operators.
Setting Up Your Haunt
We’re here to help! Our entire team in based in the US, making it easy and convenient to work with our team of dedicated account managers and support to get your haunt set up and running. Want to learn more? Schedule a call today: https://info.ticketsignup.io/contact-us/. We can’t wait to help haunts with TicketSignup’s free platform this year.