Self-Serve Ticket Upgrades for Timed Entry Events make it easier than ever for your event to grow revenue without adding work for your team. Attendees now have a clear, simple path to upgrade their tickets online, which means more upsells with no added customer support burden.
Turn General Admission into VIP Sales
With self-serve upgrades, attendees can move from lower-priced tickets to premium options on their own. For example, a General Admission ticket holder can seamlessly upgrade to a VIP Fast Pass. The price difference between the original purchase and upgraded tickets is charged. While this same capability exists in Ticket Transfers, Ticket Upgrades provide a clear call to action and eliminate the need to re-select a date. This makes upgrades fast and frictionless. Plus, event organizers don’t have to intervene, answer emails, or process manual changes – TicketSignup handles it all.
Drive Upsells Through Email Marketing
TicketSignup makes it easy and free to promote upgrades directly to attendees. Each ticket purchaser receives a unique, personalized upgrade link that can be included in automated pre-event emails or in targeted marketing campaigns. These links are secure, verified by email (no passwords or logins required), and create a direct call-to-action that encourages upgrades.
How to Enable Ticket Upgrades
Events have full control over ticket upgrades. You define when attendees can upgrade, if they have to pay additional fees, and which ticket upgrade options are available per ticket type.
Go to Tickets >> Ticket Management >> Ticket Upgrades. Enable Upgrades, then fill out the required fields:
- “Upgrade Tickets” Custom Wording: You can use different language on the ticket management page. For example, “Upgrade to VIP”.
- Cutoff Time Options: You can set when attendees are able to upgrade their tickets. There are options for relative times based on the time slot start and end time, as well as an overall cutoff date. In the example below, attendees can upgrade their tickets until 2 hours after their time slot end time.
- Ticket Transfer Fee: You can set an additional fee that attendees need to pay to upgrade their tickets. In general, this is set at $0 to incentivize upgrades.
- Prevent Upgrades after Checkin: Checking this option won’t allow attendees to upgrade after their tickets are scanned and checked in with the Ticket App. Some events like haunts that bundle attractions with tickets and have multiple check-in points may want to leave this unchecked, to continue allowing upgrades once attendees are on site.
- Customize Registration Steps: Make Upgrades as fast or detailed as needed.
- Ticket Level Upgrade Matrix: Define which upgrades are allowed. For example, General Admission tickets may upgrade to VIP. There aren’t any upgrades available for VIPs.
Click Save Settings. When attendees Manage Tickets or go directly to Upgrade via Email Marketing placeholder, they now have the option to upgrade to VIP.
When an attendee upgrades all tickets, they will get a new QR code for the purchase. The old QR code with the original tickets is no longer valid. If a partial upgrade occurs, the non-upgraded tickets will remain with the original QR code and the upgraded tickets will be on the new QR code. In the future, we will implement improved linking so that scanning an old QR code for upgraded tickets will link to the new QR code in the Ticket App.
How to Incentivize Upgrades in Email Marketing
Include clear calls to action to upgrade tickets in emails sent to attendees, as well as automated registration follow-up and pre-event emails. There are two placeholders that you can use: %UPGRADE_TICKETS_URL% and %UPGRADE_TICKETS_BUTTON%.
Ticket Upgrades Reporting
Track Ticket Upgrades by going to Reports >> Ticket Transfer Report. Upgrades are highlighted.
Exporting the report allows you to view the count of Ticket Upgrades in a CSV or excel file.
Upsells That Scale
Ticket upgrades boost revenue for timed entry events.
- More revenue per ticket: Convert General Admission buyers into VIPs with a frictionless process.
- No extra work for your team: Attendees handle their own upgrades online.
- Marketing that sells for you: Personalized links make it easy to promote upgrades with TicketSignup’s free Email Marketing.
- Happier attendees: People can quickly enhance their experience without waiting on support.