Welcome to the Tixologi Newsletter, where we break down the latest news in ticketing and event production. We keep you up to date, so you can focus on selling tickets.

Industry News

While there has been no shortage of ticketing news in the past several weeks, here are a few important headlines that caught our attention. Ticketmaster still can’t seem to get their Verified Fans program to work properly, Legends acquires ASM Global which will certainly shake up the industry and F1 prices in Vegas take a hit, which could signal that some of the F1 hype has worn off in North America.

Main Story

The Importance of Accurate Communication with Your Attendees

In the events business, just like any business, customer communication is a central key to running successful events and building a brand. While you would think that the challenge of communicating effectively and efficiently with your attendees would have been solved by now, the reality of it is, ticketing providers are struggling to get this right.

In communication to attendees leading up to the event, ticketing providers are damaging event producers’ reputations by using inaccurate ticket holder data - resulting in the wrong messages often sent to the wrong people. This leads to disjointed or confusing communication with attendees before the event and undermines ticket-holder satisfaction. The post-purchase, pre-event period is critical and this is where traditional ticketing providers are having problems.

• Ticketing providers are not reaching out to the original/primary ticket purchasers who no longer hold the tickets

• And they are NOT communicating with the people who now hold the tickets and bought them from the primary purchasers

Try to put yourself in your ticket buyers’ shoes:

You bought tickets to an event that you thought you could attend but ended up having a scheduling conflict. You sell your tickets on a secondary marketplace and try to forget that you aren’t able to go to the show you were super excited about. Yet even though you sold your tickets a few days ago, you wake up to an email from the ticket marketplace giving you tips to prepare for the event. Super frustrating and frankly, annoying!

OR, worse, you weren’t originally planning to go to the event but bought tickets through a secondary marketplace. Post-purchase, you don’t receive any information about the event. Maybe you don’t think twice about it, but likely you have questions and head to your browser to find out more. When do the gates open? Is there food available for purchase? What are the best parking options nearby? It suddenly feels like a lot of work to attend this event and make sure you get the important details sorted so when you arrive you can focus on enjoying the event.

In both cases, attendees end up either frustrated, confused or both. Not exactly the seamless experience you want your attendees to have.

Another communication accuracy issue undermines your success on the event marketing/promotion side of things. Invalid emails are often sent to potential attendees who have previously explored purchasing tickets on either a primary or secondary ticket site. Due to flawed marketing tools re-targeting emails to potential purchasers are missing the mark, often sending inaccurate or irrelevant promotions that aren’t compelling to the purchaser.

To give you an example, last week our Tixologi CEO (based in the Boston area) went to look for tickets to the Boston Celtics, when his hometown team (the Toronto Raptors) was coming to town. The ticket prices were absurd and he ended up not purchasing. Then, Saturday night at about 9 PM and likely near the end of the game, he got an email from Vivid Seats with a discount code for tickets to this game. Here’s a picture of that offer email:

Obviously, he didn’t want a discount for an event that is almost already over! Not only did he not purchase tickets, but it left him annoyed with the event organizers by receiving a note about something that he couldn’t even act on.

It doesn’t have to be this difficult! At the very core, it starts with capturing accurate data on who holds the ticket at any point in time, not just the person who bought the ticket in the first place. Then, the offers need to be relevant and timely, not showing up too close to the event or even post-start time. The final piece is pulling in additional data sources (like previous show history, interests, etc.) to provide more targeted and relevant offers. Yet nothing else matters if the true ticket holder isn’t the one receiving the communication. So ask yourself, do you know who your true ticket holders are? If not, there’s no better time than now to start building an accurate fan database.

Customer Spotlight

Pro Padel League

Padel, sometimes called padel tennis, is a racket sport of Mexican origin, typically played in doubles on an enclosed court slightly smaller than a doubles tennis court. It’s the world’s fastest-growing sport with over 25 Million players worldwide and is just getting started in the US. Tixologi recently partnered with The Pro Padel League to ticket their All-Star game in San Diego at the Barnes Tennis Center on November 18. The event saw hundreds of people clamoring for an opportunity to get up close, to watch this exciting new racket sport.

Product Updates

It has been a busy couple of weeks at Tixologi and we are excited to roll out several small fixes as well as a few new features.

Email Marketing

Event organizers can now send fully customized emails to their attendees about upcoming shows. You can select existing attendees or upload a list of your own.

Videos on Your Ticketing Page

Give your fans and attendees more to look at with embedded videos on your ticketing page. All it takes is adding a quick link during setup to add a totally organic-looking video to your page.

Custom Fields

Do you need more information about who's coming to your events? Add in custom input fields at the end of your checkout to get to collect any necessary information.

Updates to the Producer App

We've updated our scanner app to make the in-person ticketing experience smoother than it ever has been before.

Ready to revolutionize your ticketing?