Our objective was to make event creation a clear and easy process. You’ll notice that the new start page is cleaner and more intuitive than the last iteration. Adding information is responsive and the start page now guides you through all the options.     Much like the previous version, you’re not required to fill out all your event’s info to move to the next step. This is by design as we want you to explore all that Ticketbud has to offer. We’re pumped about this new release and would love to hear your feedback. Feel free to comment below or get in contact with our support team. Happy event planning!    ]]]]> ]]>

We wanted to share a quick product update just in time for the spring season. Read on to learn more.

Android Ticket Scanner App: Bigger, Faster, Stronger

Back in January, we released a new version of our iOS app. Knowing that many Ticketbud customers use the Android version, we decided to give it a facelift as well.

In this update, we’ve made significant performance improvements to scanning and checking in attendees. This version is a lot snappier than before and our visual updates create a pleasant scanning experience. You’ll be chugging through those attendee lines at a blistering pace.

Other new improvements:

• View check-in count in real-time
• Display attendee’s custom answers upon scan
• Show sales by ticket
• Improved logic for check-in from list

A Simple Way to Upload an Invitation List

A big pain point we kept hearing about was uploading a CSV for invitations. This shouldn’t be an issue any longer.

We’ve tweaked our CSV uploader to verify each column’s information. By doing this, you won’t have to spend time tailoring your list to any standards. Simply upload the CSV, choose the fields and send out those invites.

Instant Attendee Gratification through SMS Ticketing

Another focus point for us recently is giving your attendees every opportunity to retrieve their tickets. Your attendees can now choose to get their tickets sent to them via text message upon purchase.

With the ongoing movement towards mobile, we wanted to ensure that your attendees can save and access tickets on the go. This helps with day-of check-in as well. Attendees forget to print out their tickets? No problem, just scan via their smartphone.

As always, comment below with feedback on these new additions. We want to hear your thoughts!

(Author’s Note: This is part of a 5 email mini-course for planning a New Years Eve party. If you’d like more actionable tactics for throwing an NYE event, click here.) It is time to unleash your beast of a NYE event to the masses. This week, I’ll be breaking down marketing channels that you can use to fuel your ticket sales. Each part of this post will cover owned, earned, and paid channels. Before diving into each channel, let’s go over the tools you’ll use within your ticketing system to leverage marketing efforts. Scheduled Ticketing: Allows you to schedule a start and end date for tiered ticket prices. I recommend going beyond just offering an Early Bird and GA. By offering several rounds of tiered pricing, you will create scarcity and can judge interest for your NYE event. Discount Codes: Create discount codes to generate more ticket sales. Great for using on ads targeted at specific groups. These can also have a scheduled start and end date as well. Referral Tracking Codes: Use to track all your online marketing efforts. You’ll be able to track the number of clicks and tickets sold. This is a no-brainer and will tell you where to allocate your marketing dollars. Complimentary Tickets: Ideal for sending tickets to influencers or doing free ticket giveaways. Owned Media Tactics Owned Media: Using marketing channels that you have full control over. This is where you can leverage relationships with an existing customer base. Each channel type is bolded with examples of how to leverage them. Email/Mailing List: This could be a mailing list from previous events or, in the case of a venue owner, a dedicated subscriber list for updating your fans. An easy win with this channel is creating and sending invitations. This is part of your built-in audience so it makes sense to start here. For sending invitations, you can use the email invitation tool offered by your ticketing solution or go with something like MailChimp or Paperless Post for more customization. I like Paperless Post for NYE as they have nicely designed templates and you can do print or online invitations. Blog/Website: Another easy win here. In the case that your venue/bar is hosting the NYE event, promote the hell out of it via a blog announcement or right on your website. Look at it as free advertising with the only costs involving your time. If you are working with a client, ensure that they write a blog post announcement. If they don’t have a website, it might make sense to set one up if the event is large enough. It’s super easy to launch a website with a site builder like Squarespace. As an aside, you can also embed a ticket widget on your own site for seamless ticket purchasing. Social Channels: Take a look at leveraging social networks if you or your client already has a built-in following. Ensure that these followers could be part of your potential NYE audience. It will be a giant time suck for you if this isn’t the case! Understand that each channel requires a different approach to gain attention. The workings of a Facebook post will differ from composing a tweet. Also consider experimenting in not-so-obvious social channels if you see an opportunity. I suggest doing ticket giveaways or offering promo codes through these channels. There’s an opportunity for a viral effect here which could extend your potential reach. Venue: If you own the venue for your NYE party, might as well advertise to the customers already walking through the door. Post flyers, chat with patrons about NYE, offer promo codes etc. Earned Media Tactics Earned Media: Getting other people to talk about your event. Your promotional efforts generate free publicity and you’ll get to reap the benefits. Word-Of-Mouth, Viral Effects: Remember when we talked about creating a theme around your NYE event so it sticks out like a sore thumb? Well if you took the time to do this, Word-Of-Mouth should be a natural progression. People like to tell their friends about exciting events that they plan on attending (duh!). This is especially true for New Years since everyone usually gets together in groups to celebrate. Let’s look at this real-life example: I took a screenshot of the comments from a large festival’s Facebook post. This particular post revealed their comedy lineup. In the comments, you can see people tagging their friends so that they also see the post. The viral effect in action! What’s interesting about earned media is that they usually begin on an owned channel. In this case, the festival posted on their own Facebook account but earned the attention of their followers. Pretty cool stuff. With a event registration system like Ticketbud, you’ll also benefit from built-in social sharing. After completing a ticket purchase, your attendees are prompted to share your event via their social networks. This is a win-win for both you and the attendee.  The attendee gets to share your event with their friends and you get to extend your reach without doing any work. Co-Promotional Tactics: Two types that come to mind here.  The first is leveraging the audiences of parties who are affected by your NYE event’s success. This includes your sponsors, booked entertainment, and the venue (in the case that you aren’t already the owner). If these parties aren’t already promoting for you, reach out and make sure they get on it. A quick blast through their own channels takes no time and exposes you to a completely new audience.  Giving them unique referral codes to use is a great way to see who’s driving the most traffic to your event page. Another co-promotion tactic is identifying influencers and sending them complimentary tickets for the NYE event. While this at first seems counterintuitive, it could score a huge return for your ticket sales. Let’s say your throwing a black-tie NYE event and have a connection to a pretty big socialite in your city. If said socialite has a huge network that is a part of your potential audience, why not shoot him/her a couple VIP tickets? For all you know, they’ll end up going and bring their network with them. Paid Media Tactics Paid Media: Paying to leverage a channel. Since this involves spending money, you’ll want to determine a budget to stay within. Social Advertising: In my opinion, this can be your most fruitful paid channel if executed correctly. I like Facebook Advertising as you can target specific demographics. Promoted Tweets is also viable option as you can target certain users’ followers and interests. The anatomy of creating either a Facebook or Twitter advertisement is pretty similar. Each ad you create should contain:

• An image
• Solid copy to entice an action
• Unique referral or discount code link back to your event page to track results

• Event flyers: Easy to make and distribute if you have enough people helping out. This is technically owned media but I’ve wrapped it in along with other offline methods.
• Magazines: Get in touch with local magazines if you’re going down this route. Request information regarding reader demographics, circulation, and publication frequency. This should come in the form of a media kit PDF.
• Newspapers: Similar setup to magazines. If your city has alternative, culturally-tied newspaper, I’d inquire about advertising opportunities over traditional. These readers are more likely to be interested in attending events.
• Billboard: If your NYE event and budget are big enough, billboard advertising could work for you. I recommend checking out Adstruc which is a solution that helps you plan and buy outdoor advertising.
• Radio: Just like our other offline options, stay local to be more targeted. Work with the radio station to determine if your ad will be relevant to their listening audience.

(Author’s Note: This is part of a 5 email mini-course for planning a New Years Eve party. If you’d like more actionable tactics for throwing an NYE event, click here.) In case you missed previous emails, we’ve gone over choosing a theme and locking down your venue. Now we’re ready to start selling tickets. Ideally, you’ll want to use event registration software to kickstart your sales. This is especially true for NYE events. While some party goers procrastinate and make a last minute decision, many are ready to nail down their plans and buy tickets in advance. Through using an event registration system, you’ll build an event page for online ticket purchasing. Not only does your event page facilitate ticket sales but it also presents a great marketing opportunity for you as well. Think of your event page as a flyer on steroids. Bear with me here… An event flyer done well has attractive design elements, basic information about the event, and possibly a web address for more information. Here’s a decent example:

• Do I want to sell VIP tickets along with General Admission?
• Do I want to offer early bird pricing and increase price as time goes by?
• Do I want to offer group ticketing or the ability to purchase tables?

(Author’s Note: This is part of a 5 email mini-course for planning a New Years Eve party. If you’d like more actionable tactics for throwing an NYE event, click here.) Finding a venue that works for your New Years party is insanely important. This decision alone will dictate your success going forward. Picking the wrong spot can be a death sentence. My death sentence example Living in Austin, I’ve been lucky enough to attend SXSW almost every year. For those who aren’t familiar with SXSW, it’s pretty much the biggest festival of all things music, film, and tech. The week-long event has grown to the point where corporations routinely pour thousands of dollars into sponsoring free parties. In exchange for covering downtown Austin in advertisements, SXSW attendees get access to copious amounts of free booze and live music all week. Not a bad tradeoff. This past SXSW, My friends and I ventured downtown in search of some free parties. We had targeted some promising ones the day before but kept striking out everywhere we went. SXSW was hitting critical mass right before our eyes in the form of giant lines to get into every venue. Our frustrations were reaching the point of almost calling it a night. As a last ditch effort, I checked my Twitter feed to see what options we had. Lo and Behold, this tweet popped up: Awesome, we had a lifeline! Now we just needed to figure out where the venue was. After doing some digging, it became obvious what the answer was to the above tweet’s question. This party was completely out of the way from all the SXSW foot traffic. We had a hike in front of us but decided to make the trek out of sheer desperation. After finally arriving to the venue, we were greeted by an open bar with one lonely bartender. This place was virtually empty for its size. While we ended up having a great time (the party itself was well executed), I thought it was a missed opportunity for the organizer. The party seemed to have a large budget behind it but the venue’s distance from all the action ultimately hurt the turnout. Bonus Task: Find a Venue That Works for Your NYE Party 1. Figure out your needs – How many guests are you expecting to attend? – What type of entertainment do you plan on providing? – Determine your event budget – Building on your theme, what type of atmosphere are you shooting for? – Where are your potential guests located? Additionally, list all your NYE event’s requirements.  This includes catering, audio/visual equipment, seating arrangement, etc. 2. Research your venue options Now that you have a solid idea on your needs, you can begin research by zeroing in on venues that will be a good fit. Here’s 3 online tools you can use to make the research process easier: Venue Listing Sites: There’s a couple sites out there that will match your event to venues in their network. These companies specialize in finding venues so its smart to start here. Check out Eventwire, Eventup, eventwist, and eventective. Yelp: Yelp has a pretty comprehensive list of venues no matter what city you’re in. Go to Yelp.com and type ‘venue’ or ‘event space’ and you’ll get a ton of results. Craigslist: This should be your last resort. It takes a bit of digging to get what you need and the results are usually mixed. To look at options, go to craigslist and click on ‘event services’ in your area. 3. Narrow down your list and get in touch I suggest widdling your list down to 3 venues. This makes reaching out manageable while giving you some options to choose from. Venues on New Years are in high demand so get in touch with the right person at the venue as quickly as possible. You’ll want to have a contractual agreement with the venue to secure the space. They will present one to you once everything has been verbally agreed on. This benefits both parties from a legal perspective.  Make sure to read over the fine print and measure the costs against your budget. A NYE party won’t be any fun if all you can afford is an empty venue. Next, we’ll dive into creating a classy event page for selling tickets and attracting visitors on the web. This is the fun part! Cheers, Jack]]]]> ]]>

(Author’s Note: This is part of a 5 email mini-course for planning a New Years Eve party. If you’d like more actionable tactics for throwing an NYE event, click here.) A few weeks ago, I took a vacation to an island in South Carolina. It was a tiny island but there was a bustling bar district within walking distance of my place. The first night I ended up at a bar called Poe’s Tavern. Themed after Edgar Allen Poe, the bar played audio of his books in the bathroom. It was actually a pretty cool place and a different experience from everything else on the island. I dropped in at a couple of the other bars but always found myself coming back to Poe’s. It helped that they weren’t shy with their pours either.