2 Apr 2019

Event Promoter’s Ultimate Guide to Email Pro...

Our founders have been in the event industry for over a third of their lives. Part of our core philosophy is that we not only understand, but we believe that your audience should always be focused on you and that you should control the experience and messaging your audience engages with. This means that, yes, we are a white label (no brand) platform that integrates directly into your website(s) and Facebook page(s) with no redirects. This also means that we want to make sure you have the right tools and knowledge to build and grow your event brand. Try our free, no obligation platform today! 

Having an email database of your loyal fans and niche potential new fans is crucial, but the messages you send to them are just as crucial as obtaining the email list.

Keep these two tips on hand:

  1. Predict if your email will go to inbox: Litmus is a great, free tool to check if your email will make it to the inbox of your audience or not.
  2. Subject line length: Since most people open their emails from their phone, EventForce’s team recommends subject lines of approximately 50 characters or 6-8 words. Definitely, send yourself a test email to experience what your readers will. You can check if your subject line is good using a free subject line tester like this one from Omnisend.

Read on for some more tips from our team!

TIP: Don’t know who to send your emails to? Check out our Knowledge Base article on creating an email database: https://www.sparxo.com/knowledge-base/5-how-to-invite-people-to-your-event/

First Email

The goal of your first email is to get your audience and potential ticket buyer to open the email, read it, and, hopefully, convert to a registrant. The goal is not to shove a ton of information down their throat. Otherwise, they might open it, be overwhelmed with information and delete your email.

There are going to be two types of audiences you are sending a first email to:

  • Existing loyal fans – fans who have previously attended an event of yours
  • New audience

We believe that short, sweet, and simple is the best for a first email campaign whether to existing loyal fans or a new audience.

For your existing loyal fans, we suggest you to consider offering a private, early access to tickets option with a discount. Why? You already know they like your events since they attended before. You want to sell as many tickets from the start as possible to start generating a word of mouth buzz about your event. And you want your loyal fans to feel appreciated so they will come back and continue to support you.

Existing Loyal Fans

You might send something short and sweet like this one from Patreon:

We’d suggest including an image, flyer, or banner about your event and/or event brand as well. You might include a sentence about why they are receiving this email and early access to tickets for being a loyal fan and attending an event previously. The message is so short and plays on curiosity to get the reader to click the button which you will want to direct them to your event page on your website.

An alternative first email to existing loyal fans is a Save the Date. Here’s an example we like from Marketing United:

 

New Audience

The trick in sending emails to a new audience begins with picking the right email subject lines and text descriptions.

Here are some tips and tricks our team has compiled for you from EventForce, Optinmonster, and VerticalResponse:

  1. This event will have your LinkedIn circles talking
  2. Join all major influencers of [topic]
  3. You’re invited to [name of event]
  4. Hi [Name], free [Date]? Join us at [Event Name]!
  5. Largest [Event Type] in [Geographic Location]: [Event Name]
  6. [WEEKEND ONLY] Get this NOW before it’s gone…
  7. *Don’t Open This Email*
  8. Don’t miss [Keynote] on [Date] at [Event Name]!
  9. [Year] lineup at [Event Name], featuring [Performer Name]!

 

Here are some email campaign examples for you to reference:

Havaianas:

SteadFast Creative:

Hidden Dinner:

Women’s Conference of Florida

Web Summit Team:

AdAge:

Stylist:

Follow-up Emails

There are several ways and reasons to send follow-up emails to your database.

Here are some follow-up email reason:

  1. Discount codes: Making your fans feel special by selectively offering a discount code to their group.
  2. Early bird ticket levels expiring or ending soon: Sending a reminder email that the early bird tier is ending soon.
  3. Announcements: Try to keep announcement emails few and far between so as not to spam your audience. Good announcement emails might include a new celebrity or guest speaker or highlighting a sponsor donating the event’s food.
  4. Fun Facts: This might include statistics about past attendees such as job titles or income level, dollars spent or amounts raised. A fun fact email should be just that and the reader should feel that the information you’re sharing is interesting.
  5. Promoting your Event Partners or Sponsors: Get your audience used to receiving cool emails from you that aren’t alway about your event. If they are in the habit of opening your emails, they will also open your event emails. You might take time to send an email promoting the business or telling the story of one of your event partners or sponsors. Ideally, pick a story that aligns with who you are and what your event stands for.
  6. Follow-up Email: Send a thank you to your attendees and follow-up with a cool survey to get feedback from them. Or simply ask for their feedback through a button that opens an email directed to you or your team to receive. MailChimp offers a really cool way to integrate a survey directly into an email, so all your reader has to do is click one.
  7. Event Recap Email: Send an email recap highlighting the coolest parts of your event. You might include a video, GIF, and/or link to event photos linked back to your website to help boost your SEO.

With MailChimp, you can pre-schedule your emails and email follow-ups as well!

If you’re an event producer, check out our free, no obligation platform today! There’s no reason you shouldn’t be using your marketing efforts to grow your brand and SEO. You can still post your event on other sites or systems and easily import those sales data into Sparxo for data analytics and check-in! Try us for free today!

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

9 MISTAKES EVENT PRODUCERS OVERLOOK

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING

HOW CREATIVE STARTUP LABS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT THEIR SECRET UNDERGROUND POP-UP EVENT USING SPARXO

TOP 5 BIGGEST EVENT PLANNING FAILS IN HISTORY

QUIZ: WHAT’S YOUR EVENT PLANNER PERSONALITY TYPE?

HOW THE NIGHTWOOD SOCIETY TOOK CONTROL OF THEIR EVENT EXPERIENCE

THE ULTIMATE EVENT PLANNING CHECKLIST

TOP 5 STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL POP-UP

2 Apr 2019

Learn What Ticketing Companies Are Hiding – ...

Hundreds of ticketing companies start up each year. Don’t get taken advantage of by fine lines or small print. Find out who has hidden event ticketing fees.

 

It’s decided, your company will be hosting an event in a few months. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big event or small event, its success lies in good planning and preparation. Immediately, you do a quick Google search for the different event ticketing and registration platforms out there that can help you with event registration… and you come back even more confused than you were before you began.

Why? Because just like everything else out there in the market, you have to wade through paragraphs of marketing mumbo jumbo and then scroll till the end or jump a few pages more to see what fine print you might have missed — and even then, you still might not be getting the full story. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies just told you up front what you were getting and how much it would cost, no hidden fees or stipulations and all? Ah, the ideal world.

Well, we’ve done the research and here we are to break it down to you in easy, bite-sized morsels of information, you know, so we save you time on hiring a mathematician just to calculate ticketing fees!

Brown Paper Tickets

Brown Paper Tickets advertises a really eye-catching fee of $0.99. Whoa, you say, only 99 cents? That’s a steal! Yes, well, as with a lot of other things, make sure you check the fine print!

On their Pricing page (https://www.brownpapertickets.com/pricing.html), you’ll see this little table:

*Update 4/10/19: Brown Paper Tickets has since increased their fee to $0.99 + 5%

First of all, the fee actually is $0.99 + 5%, not just a flat rate of $0.99. Also, if you use a popular credit card processor like Paypal of Stripe, you won’t get to charge the total fees to your customers, because you will need to pay your credit card processing fee (which is normally 2.9% + $0.30) and Brown Paper Ticket’s fee ($0.99 + 5$). This essentially means that you’re paying Brown Paper Tickets at least 5% out-of-pocket of your ticket price while you pass on the $0.99 fee and the credit card processing fee to your customer. That’s knowing you have additional costs on your end before you even sell a single ticket!

They do make it sound very nice though, that they are giving you money to offset your costs… and well, that is until you realize you’d have to pay way more than what they are “giving” you to cover your credit card processing fees!

Another fine print that’s important to consider is this:

Should you ever need to cancel the event, you are charged $0.99 + 5% if using their credit card processor, or if you’re using your own processor, $0.99 + 5% PLUS the fees from your own credit card processor.

While these fees aren’t exactly hidden — they’re stated clearly on their pricing page — a little math does seem to be needed when you realize you’re not exactly getting the $0.99 good deal you thought you were getting. So be an informed customer and consider these factors when using Brown Paper Tickets.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite offers two different tiers of pricing for normal events (they also have a custom Premium option for super large complex events) — their Essentials package is 2% + $0.79 per ticket and their Professional package is 3.5% + $1.59. You can see what they offer in each package here: https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/

However, a quick look at their Frequently Asked Questions pertaining to pricing also reveals this little info bit:

This means that while they say they let you pass the Eventbrite fee to your customers, what they mean to say is they ONLY let you pass the Eventbrite fee to your customers. At the end of the day, the credit card processing fee will still come out of your own pocket; there is no way of passing this fee to your customers.

What’s more, Eventbrite is mum about their maximum fees, while from our research we’ve found that their maximum fee in the last year alone has fluctuated from $19.95-$24.95!** Update on their maximum fee as of July 2019: They removed their maximum fee and no longer cap out. This means their rate is applicable for the entire ticket price with no maximum fee. That’s a whole whopping load of fees! Always check with the event ticketing site you’re considering what their maximum fees are, so you and your event goers don’t receive any “surprise” fees!

Finally, one drawback of Eventbrite is even though they claim to allow direct integration to your website, unless you are one of their major clients or unless you follow a strict list of rules, really all it does is redirect your customer to their website.

This is something to take into consideration especially because most companies would prefer to keep their online traffic on their site alone. This also means that embedding Eventbrite will not help your SEO if all of your customers are redirected to Eventbrite to complete their purchase. Your bounce rate will be high and retention rate low, while Eventbrite will maintain a low bounce rate and high retention rate increasing their own SEO. In the end, you will simply be helping Eventbrite’s SEO and branding, not your own.

Sparxo

The Sparxo pricing page is so simple we couldn’t even be bothered with tables! It’s just so straightforward — $1 for tickets under $25, $2 for tickets priced between $25 and $50, and $3 for tickets $50 and above.

One really great thing to note is this:

“The maximum Sparxo convenience fee is $3.00 + 2.9% + 0.30 per ticket. This fee includes the Sparxo application fee and the credit card transaction fee. The whole fee can be passed onto the customer or internalized or split.”

The whole fee! Yes, this means you can pass ALL your fees onto your customer — not only the Sparxo ticketing fees but also the credit card processing fees.

So essentially the math equation would be: $3.00 + 2.9% + 0.30 + all fees passed to customer = you keep 100% of your ticket price! We don’t know about you, but we believe 100% sounds just about right to us!

Also, in comparison to Eventbrite, Sparxo event registration does not call for any sort of redirection whatsoever. You maintain and control the entire brand experience with your customer. With Sparxo, you increase your retention rate, decrease your bounce rate, and boost your SEO all by doing exactly what you’ve already been doing.

Another plus to the Sparxo platform is if you find yourself having to deal with the sometimes-unexpected refund and/or cancellation situations. Well, you can put your worries away. Need to refund? Your customer’s get their Sparxo fees back too. Need to cancel? Pay no cancellation fees either.

To sum it up, you can refer to this simple table:

*If you are a major client fo Eventbrite’s or you follow this specific list of rules, then and only then can you directly embed Eventbrite into your website with no redirects:

1. You must use Eventbrite payment processing.

2. Your website must be secure with an HTTPS certificate on your website.

3. You can only sell tickets in the following currencies: USD, CAD, GBP, AUD or EUR

4. Does not work for events with multiple dates or times available.

5. Does not work when group registration is turned on.

6. Does not work with using “additional items” for sale for things like t-shirts.

7. Does not work when your event is password protected.

8. Does not work with the “Will Call” feature.

9. Does not work when adding multiple embed codes on the same page for the same event.

Note: For major festivals or large events, event ticketing sites typically offer special deals or integrations. The table above is what is offered to the general public and average event organizer or event producer.

We hope that we’ve made it easier for you to see which event ticketing platform offers what and at what cost so that you can find the best one that suits your needs! We wish all companies and ticketing systems were as transparent and upfront as Sparxo. Since that isn’t the case, we hope you found our research valuable. Happy event-ing!

Try a no obligation, free account with Sparxo today! www.sparxo.com 

11 Mar 2019

5 Social Media Trends To Look Out For in 2019

You already have a social media account on every platform, now what?

There’s a big misconception about what social media is and how you can maximize it to drive awareness for your event and sell tickets.

So, what are the digital marketing trends that we are looking at in 2019? According to a recent report from Nielsen (data and measurement company), U.S. adults spend 10 hours and 24 minutes per day interacting with media across all of their devices.

Given that so much time is spent online, it is pertinent that brands and event producers keep themselves up to date with trends on how their audiences consume content on online platforms, especially social media. To have an eye for emerging tech and trends and its early adoption helps massively to stay ahead of the curve.

Having personally worked with various brands and influencers, here are some of the trends, I think are essential to keep in vision while navigating the social media landscape in the coming few months. Here we will talk about social media trends to adopt for 2019 outside of the typical Instagram, Facebook or Twitter campaigns.

  1. Nano Influencers –

With trends continuously affecting purchasing decisions, influencers have a huge impact on how brands engage audiences and spend money on ads. Marketers are investing more of their budget into influencer marketing.

However, we are seeing a huge shift in terms of what kind of influencers brands are approaching. One of the biggest challenges influencer marketing faces is the lack of guaranteed sales from campaigns. To solve this, a lot of brands are resorting to the avenue of nano-influencers.

Nano influencers (even smaller than micro-influencers) refers to everyday consumers who have a small but loyal following. Brands have started identifying influencers from their current consumer base who already believe in the brand. They incentivize them to promote the brand that they already love through social channels and word of mouth. Since their community is intimate and trusted by their network, thus creating valuable awareness for the brands.

According to a Forbes article, Kate Edwards the COO of social marketing technology startup, Heartbeat, that works with over 200,000 nano influencers and 250 brands says, “Brands have always known that word-of-mouth marketing works well, but it hasn’t been until now that we’ve had the technology to activate this channel in a scalable, cost-effective way,” explains Edwards. “That’s why brands are moving away from influencers and celebrities, and more toward recognizing the voices of everyday consumers.”

What does this mean? – Event brands need to re-evaluate how they are spending their marketing budget to include influencer marketing by identifying their key, loyal fans with a following. It’s important to define the goals of the campaign before deciding the kind of influencers your brand wants to work with. With Sparxo, you can easily locate your loyal fans who return to your events year after year.

2. Chatbots/AI

AI and chatbots are on the rise to drive personalized experiences across different channels. Platforms like Google and Facebook have been continuing to adopt artificial intelligence to enhance customer interaction.

Facebook, for example, uses AI in the form of neural networks and deep learning for image recognition that makes it easier to find friends. Filtering timelines and streaming has also become much more efficient with the use of AI. Twitter, on the other hand, is also working on using AI and machine learning to categorize every single tweet. The aim is to provide content people care most about at the top of their feed.

AI on a whole can also help event brands understand event going habits, environmental factors and what motivates attendees to make decisions. By learning these factors, you can curate content for your audiences in a much more tailored fashion.

When it comes to chatbots, we are seeing a steady rise in usage. Community management and customer service have become a huge focus area for most companies and that’s where chatbots are making a deep impact. If you are producing a large event, you might consider offering a chatbot to handle your attendee questions. And, when the bot is unable to navigate through the scenario, it seamlessly switches to an employee.

In fact, according to Gartner’s forecast, by 2020 organizations will succeed in capturing 85% of customer contact with technology.

What does this mean? Event organizations need to market and sell smarter by exploring and investing in tools that use AI or chatbots -as their usage is going to become much broader in the coming months. Adoption of such tools will assist to expedite operation and help organizations identify their target market and customer persona more accurately. Automating your work and identifying key attributes of your first time visitors and returning fans is key to developing an event brand that lasts.

3. The rise of Vertical videos

Do you usually capture content on your phone horizontally or vertically? Likely the answer is vertically. In fact, as per the Movr research, we hold our phones vertically 94% of the time.

Keeping this data in mind, content is adopting a new format – the vertical video

Snapchat pioneered the vertical video content format and Instagram followed suit first with its stories, stories live and then IG TV

We also saw the rise of vertical videos in sports media such as ESPN that launched a vertically oriented version of its flagship show, SportsCenter via Snapchat. The segment was launched to target younger viewers who are consuming stories in short bursts.

Buffer also performed testing to gauge the effectiveness of vertical videos on Instagram and Facebook. It found out that vertical video outperformed square video within the Facebook and Instagram News Feed especially stories. Brands today understand that they have to produce content that grabs attention from consumers at the moment and tell a story. And vertical videos succeed in providing that intimate look which makes consumers part of that story.

Plus the ease of shooting through vertical videos makes it easier to capture and share content which is a huge part of marketing products.

Another thing to keep in mind is that vertical videos are constantly evolving. Instagram is adding new features almost every day from interactive polls, Q&A to stickers, etc. Augmented reality continues to change both the storytelling landscape and consumer experience – opening up more ways fans to engage with their favorite brands.

What does this mean? – Event brands need to rethink their video strategy and editing process. They have to move away from producing just the regular run of the mill pre-recorded videos and instead think about integrating live content in their video marketing strategy that is relatable, captures the emotions of the moment and is easy to share.

4. Curated & Immersive Experience :

One size does not fit all. More brands are adopting this mantra to change the way they provide experience to their users.

Whether it is Netflix suggesting your shows to watch based on your likes/dislikes, Stitch Fix making shopping easier by sending you personalized styled outfits, Airbnb recommending personalized trips and activity or even e-commerce sites showing “you may like” products based on your past purchases – the usage is becoming endless.

Consumers expect brands to remember who they are, what they like, what they dislike, whether they prefer purchasing online or on-site and are willing to spend a premium to receive such custom-tailored service. We especially see this with sales of VIP packages offering custom experiences at events.

A lot of brands and marketers are thus investing more time and budget on data analysis to understand what their audience wants. It helps them curate their customer service, UX, emails or even packaging to entice the audience and increase revenue, loyalty and decrease drop-outs.

Another popular trend to take notice of is – the growth of immersive experiences.

Franz Aliquo, Creative Director at ad agency RPM quips – “The easiest way to create shareability is to give people an experience.”

Whether it’s the brightly-colored, Instagram-worthy rooms of the Museum of Ice Cream ( MOIC), curated design photo booths at the Color Factory or even immersive theatre like “Sleep No More” – A theatre experience set in an abandoned building in Manhattan. Participants follow characters and explore different areas of an intricate “hotel,” as performances inspired by Macbeth unfold in parallel throughout the building.

It’s these powerful, unique and “FOMO-inducing” models of curated marketing to an immersive experience that creates a framework for shareability – for people to get involved and take ownership of scaling the experiences.

What does this mean? – Event brands need to be more creative than they ever have. Whether it is in your post, blog, video or customer experience, it’s no longer a luxury to provide tailored experience, rather than a necessity. “Make them notice” is become the new norm of 2019 marketing. Make sure your event experience is memorable from the moment they go to your website and register to their first step entering your event.

5. OmniChannel Marketing

Today’s Gen Z has become very comfortable in shopping online. So much so, that they expect online shopping to have the same benefits as in-store if not more. And that’s where omnichannel marketing comes into the picture.

“Omnichannel refers to the approach that provides the customer with an integrated…experience. The customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store, and the experience will be seamless. It ensures marketing strategies are geared toward enabling customers to convert on any channel. “(Google Definition)

Another reason why it’s imperative to have such a seamless experience is that most people own multiple devices these days. In fact, according to research done by Google, 90% of multiple device owners switch between an average of three devices per day to complete a task. This means that a purchase can start or end at any time, at any place, on any device. Therefore it’s becoming more necessary for businesses to provide an integrated user experience to prevent customer drop-outs. Starbucks is a prime example of a brand who is nailing the omnichannel marketing with its app rewards and ease of order in-store.

As opposed to the traditional multi-channel marketing, omnichannel marketing is a new approach that focuses on curating a cohesive user experience for customers at every touchpoint. This differs from traditional marketing, where individual channels were optimized without taking the whole experience into mind. The goal here, however, is to transcend any one medium and provide shoppers what they want, when they want, where they want. Omnichannel marketing puts the customer at the center of the experience.

What does this mean? – Event organizations need to start thinking about digital experience as a whole rather than one medium at a time. Instead of having various channels like ads, blog, social media, email, or online compete against each other, they need to work in tandem and provide the same experience individually or as a whole. This also means event organizers should consider selling tickets on as many channels as possible. Sparxo is uniquely designed with this in mind. With Sparxo, you can sell tickets on multiple channels and aggregate all of your data in one place for analytics and check-in. Try it for free today!

—

What’s the biggest trend you think will play a pivotal role in the digital landscape?

Here at Sparxo, we understand the importance of your brand and brand experience. That’s why we developed a white label, no brand event ticketing and registration platform that you can use for free. You keep 100% of your ticket price with us! Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today!

 

Original article by Nupur Singh on LinkedIn

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING: A GUIDE FOR EVENT BRANDS

5 Mar 2019

7 Ways to Use Your Website to Sell More Tickets

Written By: Carl Diesing

Events are a big deal and so is your brand. Find out the 7 ways our team has discovered how to sell more tickets using your website. Whether your company hosts a few casual professional meetups, an annual fundraising gala, or even multi-day MICE events, we’re talking a substantial investment of money, time, resources and effort from your event team. And for every event you organize, you want to see some form of ROI – sales, donations, new leads or contacts, conversions down the sales funnel, customer loyalty, or even just creating awareness in or making a positive impression on your market or community.

But maximizing the impact of your event is not something to be left up to the last minute, or a single task to be scheduled right in between ordering brochures or sorting seating arrangement. To get the best out of your event, you need to plan early, and the key, really, is to start milking your resources for every ounce of audience engagement you can get. One amazing resource that you own entirely and which you fully control – is your website. All you need to learn is how to harness the power of your online tools to create maximum impact on your potential attendees. Keep reading for 7 ways to use your website to sell more tickets!

  1. Integrate, integrate, integrate

In today’s markets, information is king, and being able to work with your data will always translate into more opportunities and more potential. Ever heard the saying “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”? Yup, that’s not a situation you want for your company to be in.

Integration across platforms, therefore, has become a growing need when it comes to a company’s back-end systems. In planning any event, you’re looking at utilizing a whole host of tools such as a registration and ticketing platform, marketing tools, CRM platform, website management tools, social media tools, database and contact tools, event planning and management tools, logistics tools… Imagine the chaos if all these separate tools and entities didn’t speak the same language! Your data needs to flow seamlessly across platforms so that at one glance you know all you need about Mr. John Smith, for example, in order to market directly to him.

When you’re planning your event, you shouldn’t have to worry about things like identifying repeat customers, identifying which marketing tools are working best for you, or how to export your attendees into your CRM system. Sparxo allows you to automatically track engagement data and gain real-time insights into the effectiveness of your event marketing and promotion efforts. Sparxo allows you to directly integrate it’s event registration and ticketing platform directly into as many webpages as you’d like so that you can track exactly where your attendees find you. Sparxo also allows you to aggregate your data across other platforms by importing your sales lists into Sparxo. Sparxo will combine that imported information and pinpoint who is a loyal fan and who is a firsttime attendee. This also lets you use one check-in system for everything.

  1. Simplify.

How many clicks does it take for an interested person to sign up for your event? It’s a little bit like playing golf – the less, the better! When you’ve sparked a little bit of interest in someone – even if it’s just the tiniest instance of a spark – you certainly do not want to lose them thanks to some clunky user interface or weird domain redirection. No! You want to make it as easy as possible for them to sign up for your event. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to achieve this. You want your event hosted on your own website, you want it embedded into your social media pages, and you want to make registration a breeze. With Sparxo, all this is possible.

  1. Content marketing

SEO is a buzzword you’ll see everywhere, but it stands for search engine optimization, which is boosting your visibility online. And you can certainly boost your event’s reach and impact by marketing relevant content to your target audience. This is the value add you offer as a company. This is how you engage your audience and win them over. Here are some things you can do:

* Write and publish a few blog posts about your event. You can cover a different topic every week, from conducting interviews with the people involved, to offering behind-the-scenes looks into your planning process. Get people excited about your event taking shape. Hook them with teasers while capturing their curiosities.

* Make use of cross-platform marketing. Reach out to relevant other online publications in your industry or locale. Ask them to post about your event and link it back to your website. Get your event’s corporate sponsors in on the online promotions. Get the word out as much as possible amongst the community.

* Startup engaging conversations with your registered attendees on social media. Generating these types of organic interactions will boost your event’s visibility as well as create hype and excitement for the event.

Everybody is curious, so use it to your best interests. Create valuable, interesting content that revolves around your event to not only grow your potential audience but keep your registered audience captivated and looking forward to your event. Sparxo uniquely allows you to do this. Enabling you to engage directly with your audience is a core foundation of Sparxo’s philosophy. The longer you retain your audience on your webpage, the better your organic SEO. 

  1. Reach out to industry influencers

Just like the point before this, social media influencers can be extremely effective partners for promoting your events. They are well-connected, have a good following, and are usually credibly regarded when sharing their personal and/or professional insights, depending on their background. Find out who the worthy influencers are for your sector or locale and reach out to them. Finding a mutually beneficial way of working together can work well to boost the reach of your event by a digital mile.

  1. Research your registered attendees

Now that you know who is signing up for your event, what can you do with that information? With Sparxo, you get full data breakdowns including their background and history of engagement with your organization. This helps you identify certain individuals for networking purposes, for example. Knowing your attendees means being able to identify your opportunities better and solidify strong strategies that work for these individuals.

  1. Offer a pre-sale option

Why give up a chance to make a sale before you even get your customers in a room to give them the official sales pitch? When registering for your event, you can give customers the option to purchase certain “add-ons” that are relevant to your event. For example, you might have a casual lunch-time networking event in between conferences. You might also offer merchandise or premium packages for your products and/or services for pre-purchase, or the possibility to purchase the books of one of the speakers at your event. Not only does all this generate extra revenue, but it continues to interact with your attendees and keeps the event fresh and exciting for them.

  1. Make the early birds feel special

It’s up to you to give them the worm! Early bird promotions can drive ticket sales in the lead-up to your event. You could offer coupon codes which people can share with their friends, create tiered packages or early bird packages with extra perks or at lower price points, or offer free merchandise or useful bonuses to a certain amount of first-in online registrants. Whatever it is, making your early registrants feel special isn’t that difficult or too expensive, and it can certainly go a long way in converting your attendees into loyal customers down the funnel!

With a combination of all these tips, you can develop an amazingly effective event marketing and audience engagement strategy that works for your unique event and your company’s needs. Here at Sparxo, we understand the importance of your brand and brand experience. That’s why we developed a white label, no brand event ticketing and registration platform focused on giving you tools to build your brand, directly connect with your audience, and analyze the right data. And, you keep 100% of your ticket price with us! Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today! Happy eventing! We hope you enjoyed this article on how to sell more tickets using your website!

 

About the Author:

Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

 

25 Feb 2019

A MEATING OF MINDS — How This Company is Cha...

As a local company, you have something important to offer to your customers and the community; and it’s not just your products and/or services. It’s knowledge. Yes, it’s that age-old, wisdom-laden, ever-elusive and highly-intangible thing that makes you who you are, and makes you stand out from the crowd. Learn how this company is changing the way meat is consumed.

And knowledge comes in the bucket loads, when it comes to our event partner Portland Meat Collective. With a motto and philosophy that’s all about how to “keep meat real”, Portland Meat Collective is undoubtedly your go-to school on the West coast for hands-on classes revolving around one area of goodness — yes, you got it — meat. They know it best, and figured they were sitting on a gold mine of information that needed to be shared with the world!

You see, it all started way back in 2009 when a then- magazine editor and food writer by the name of Camas Davis embarked upon a little idea to find out how pork is sourced, you know, literally from the farm to the table. That took her on an incredible journey to France, where she studied the entire process first-hand from farming to butchery to charcuterie. It was an intensive and involved process that begun with growing the grain that feeds the pigs, up to the part where every single part of the animal was carefully and economically turned into wholesome food to be enjoyed by knowing customers. The meat was eaten with a reverence and respect that Camas had not experienced in the States, and she was determined to bring it with her as she headed back home.

Camas Davis

So began Portland Meat Collective as the local platform to highlight the processes behind your pork. The idea was that by bringing the community into the hands-on process of whole-animal butchery and charcuterie, consumers can truly come face to face with sourcing good, clean, fair meat, and just how important sustainable farms and humane meat production and processes are.

PMC founder Camas Davis teaching a pig butchery class @FeastPDX

 

And just how are these revolutionary ideas transposed onto consumers? Why, good old-fashioned education!

Portland Meat Collective has something to say and to give their ideas a voice, they have partnered with Sparxo to offer highly interactive classes and workshops to the community.

If you’ve ever been curious about just what goes into and around turning a pig into a sausage or bacon, for example, or you’ve wanted to try curing your own dried meats such as pancetta right in your own home, or you’d love to be able to break down a whole pig into beautiful and amazing cuts, with your own two hands — or it could be simply that you’ve never heard of the word finocchiona before and you’re immediately intrigued to learn that it is (a type of salami that hails from Tuscany) — whatever it is, Portland Meat Collective has a class specially designed for you.

A wide range of instructors work with Portland Meat Collective to get all that solid information to you — butchers that have studied old-world curing in Italy, to farmers who double up as beekeepers, and make their own soap. Meanwhile, Sparxo works hard with Portland Meat Collective behind the scenes to handle all their events and customer registration experiences, so they can truly focus on what they do best: keeping meat real.

A PMC class which includes a light meal as well

Now it’s time for your voice to be heard. What message does your company have to share with your community? Let us here at Sparxo make your company events effortless so that you too can focus on sharing the good stuff, the stuff that truly makes you – YOU.

We understand and value the importance of your brand and brand experience. That’s why we developed a white label, no brand event ticketing and registration platform that you can use for free. You keep 100% of your ticket price with us! Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today!

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

9 MISTAKES EVENT PRODUCERS OVERLOOK

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING

HOW CREATIVE STARTUP LABS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT THEIR SECRET UNDERGROUND POP-UP EVENT USING SPARXO

TOP 5 BIGGEST EVENT PLANNING FAILS IN HISTORY

QUIZ: WHAT’S YOUR EVENT PLANNER PERSONALITY TYPE?

HOW THE NIGHTWOOD SOCIETY TOOK CONTROL OF THEIR EVENT EXPERIENCE

THE ULTIMATE EVENT PLANNING CHECKLIST

TOP 5 STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL POP-UP

8 Jan 2019

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

In the weeks leading up to your event, you might find yourself waking up at night asking yourself, ‘Do I have the right venue? Will my event sell out? How can I get more people talking about my event?’ All of this effort goes towards creating that perfect event that will wow your attendees. Your goal is to offer a breathtaking experience so that they will have naturally tweet/blog/post/comment/vlog about.

But did you know that creating an event your attendees talk about starts way before they ever step foot into your event?

Your attendee is just like you and me – bombarded on a daily basis by commercials, messages, advertising, brands, promotions and yes, events. So, how can you engage your attendees between the time they sign up for it until they actually attend? How do you keep them hooked and slowly – but surely – reel them in? How can you get them talking about your event? Because Sparxo cares about you and your event experiences, we are sharing these tips and tricks that will guarantee you the ultimate event engagement and audience engagement!

 

TEASE TEASE TEASE

Teasing your attendee is a brilliant way to catch their attention and remind them about your event. For example, if you’re launching a new product at your event or have a special guest, you might send out little hints and clues without giving anything away. If you know your customer well, you’ll know what they want from you – keep teasing them letting them know something is going to be revealed at the event that is going to blow their mind because it meets their needs or provides them with benefits you know they crave for. 

Video content is the best way to captivate and engage your audience.  According to a study done by Kleiner Perkins, mobile video usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the last two years.

Consider creating teaser video clips of no more than 30 seconds to capture your audience. Three good reasons to create a video are to do a pre-launch announcement of your event before ticket sales launch, launch ticket sales and registration, and event reminders and FAQs.

BEHIND THE SCENES

People love watching the “making of”, especially if it’s a worthy talking point.

“Did you know that such-and-such event next month is going to feature (insert amazing technology/entertainment/celebrity/food)?” makes for great water cooler talk for your attendees in their respective offices.

People also get a sense of calm and joy from watching complicated things get put together in seconds, or watching orderly repetitive things being done – we really are so weird, aren’t we? – but these are video content you can think about producing pre-event.

Sharing behind the scene stories through videos and pictures on your event’s social media page will really help people feel that they are part of the making of the event.

 

 

UNIQUE HASHTAG

You might think this whole hashtag thing doesn’t have the same pow it once did, but then again maybe you’re using it wrong! #CTOAE18 is a horrible hashtag unless you are someone established.  

Putting a bunch of letters and alphabets doesn’t work for a couple of reasons – first, no one is going to remember it. Second, no one is going to know what it stands for  – e.g Come-To-Our-Amazing-Event-2018. And lastly, they won’t care enough to find out. They will care, however, if it is easily understood and short-and-easy to remember like #SlothForPresident or #ComicCon.

#SlothforPresident or #ComicCon work because they are examples of a very visually captivating concept that people actually can imagine in their heads and understand what the event is about.

Think of one cool-as-hell selling point, even as silly and stupid as it might seem, and sell it, sell it, sell it. Creating easy and unique hashtags encourage people to share the event.

 

GET PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT IT

Today, we live in a world where word-of-mouth marketing and social media are everything. Working with influencers, speakers, celebrities, twitter personalities can really help propel your event.

When many people are talking about the same thing, it creates a buzz that truth-be-told, might not even exist – but that’s marketing, isn’t it? Creating hype and buzz where there is none. You have something exciting going on, now get people excited about it by showing how excited other people are about it. Excitement is contagious!

Offer free tickets in return for people sharing about your event. Or even host a contest or giveaway in return for a prize or free tickets. If you have some money to invest, you can always work with influencers, industry experts and celebrities to talk about your event with their audience. Some might even do it for free if they think it will add value to them and their audience.

BUILD A COMMUNITY

It’s easy to build a community these days – just start an event page on Facebook, and done! Yay! So now, all your attendees are there in one “chatroom” so to speak. What do you do with them? The first rule of audience engagement is to… engage your audience! Give them something to talk about, give them a platform to let their voice be heard. Organize polls to ask them what they prefer, have special posts where they get to ask their questions directed at certain speakers (which you will use in the Q&A during the event), have “Guess this speaker” blur picture contests where they can win a free coffee at your event, ANYTHING! Keep them coming back to this page and engaging with you.

 

CUSTOM REMINDERS

Now that you have a group of people all eagerly waiting for your event date to arrive, use the information that you have gathered from your event page in the rest of your pre-event audience engagement strategy. Tweet some questions that have been asked and encourage your attendees to go to your event page to ask their own questions. Remind them about the topics that will be discussed and the questions that will be covered in email reminders, and direct them to the event page once again. Give them little nuggets of teaser information that just barely scratch the surface in answering their questions, thought-provoking things they can share on social media. You’ve been successful so far in intriguing them and piquing their interest… now let’s get them more and more involved.

 

GIVE THEM THAT ONE THING TO RECOGNIZE

Now that you’ve learned some tricks of the trade when it comes to event engagement, how can you put them all together? Let’s run with the idea of #SlothforPresident as mentioned earlier – if you make this the one thing people can recognize, you’ll maybe have the sloth share some quotes on Twitter and Instagram, maybe even write a little note from his perspective on LinkedIn or your company’s blog. Giving your audience one thing to recognize – in other words, cohesive messaging – means that your event messages will never get lost in the sea of marketing they see all the time. You will always stand out. You won’t be out of the box, you’ll be the pretty red shiny bow on the box.

Your event engagement is going to keep reminding them that of all the wonderful things they will receive once they open the box – which is attending your event!

 

If we missed something that works for you to engage your audience, please let us know because Sparxo cares! You can email your Sparxo representative or send us a message to contact@sparxo.com. #teamSparxo #SparxoCares Signup today for your free, no-obligation account!

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

9 MISTAKES EVENT PRODUCERS OVERLOOK

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING

HOW CREATIVE STARTUP LABS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT THEIR SECRET UNDERGROUND POP-UP EVENT USING SPARXO

TOP 5 BIGGEST EVENT PLANNING FAILS IN HISTORY

QUIZ: WHAT’S YOUR EVENT PLANNER PERSONALITY TYPE?

HOW THE NIGHTWOOD SOCIETY TOOK CONTROL OF THEIR EVENT EXPERIENCE

THE ULTIMATE EVENT PLANNING CHECKLIST

TOP 5 STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL POP-UP

18 Dec 2018

Sparxo Ticketing, a Free White Label Event Ticketi...

Your event brand should always be the focus of your event attendees. You shouldn’t have to work hard and spend money on ADs only to redirect your attendees to a third party event ticketing platform. We are proud to announce our white label event ticketing platform. Our focus is on building great solutions and not on charging fees on top of fees. Event organizers have full access to our entire platform for free. We simply charge a small fee that is passed to your attendees. (Or you can choose to absorb the fees or split the fees.) Our fee never goes above $3.31.

Easily set up your events on our white label event ticketing platform and fully integrate it into your own website within minutes! Keep your attendees focused on your brand the entire time. It’s time to utilize your marketing efforts to grow your own SEO (search engine optimization) and not some other third party event ticketing platform.

With Sparxo, you can sell tickets directly on your website with no redirect, ask custom questions, sell from your Facebook fan page, aggregate any data from other systems in one place, and manage your entire customer experience from one place. Sparxo offers onsite operations and systems such as Sparxo Check-in, Sparxo POS (point of sale), and onsite registration staff available for hire.

Join us! We are leading the next generation of event experiences, empowering event brands and producers to control and manage the entire event experience from digital to physical.

For more information about our white label ticketing platform, read more below.

 

 

Description

Are you tired of relying on a ticketing system to sell tickets? Are you tired of redirecting all of your traffic and attendees to someone else’s website? Do you want to own your entire customer experience from event registration to check-in and the onsite event itself? It starts here – with white label event ticketing! Set up your event and start selling tickets from your website in minutes!

Funds

Tired of waiting until your event is over to collect funds? Tired of being surprised with unexpected ticketing or processing fees? That’s why we believe in transparency and we choose to work with Stripe. With our partnership with Stripe, the entire registration process and check-out remains white label and on your website. You also receive funds before your event! Funds are automatically deposited into your bank account on a rolling basis.

Integration Options

Our designers took great care to offer beautiful and easy integration options. You can integrate our white label ticketing platform through a Buy Button, Widget, Events Calendar, or Event Card List View. All of our integration options and our splash page URL are all mobile optimized.

Our Events Calendar and Event Card List view automatically update events to your website once they are integrated, simplifying the work your webmaster has to do moving forward.

Sparxo is FREE for FREE events:

Are you an event professional looking for ways best sell your tickets and promote your brand? Sparxo is the right white label event ticketing platform for you. Here are some premium features:

  • Sell tickets to your event with Sparxo Ticketing for a small convenience fee
  • Order secure paper tickets that work with Sparxo Check-in
  • Design beautiful splash pages with HD pictures, YouTube videos, Soundcloud files, maps, text, and cross promote your other events.
  • Embed purchase flow or RSVP flow on your website and Facebook page
  • Embed calendar or a card view to elegantly lists all your events on your website
  • Mobile check out flow optimized for smartphone RSVP and ticket purchasing
  • Collaborate with other event producers and share events between Sparxo accounts
18 Oct 2018

4 Reasons Why You Should Choose Sparxo As Your Eve...

Creating and planning an event is hard work, especially when you are competing with hundreds, if not thousands of other events happening on the same day at the same time. This is why focusing on efficiency on all aspects of event planning — from selling tickets to event distribution and guest check-ins — can reduce the stress load. With Sparxo, there are multiple features that can help you ensure you have an intuitive platform to sell tickets.

Save time

Time is money. We all know that. After all, you don’t want to be stuck on a ticketing platform that is too technical or complicated to use. You have enough on your plate with the setup of the actual event itself. That’s why you want to choose a platform and team to work with like Sparxo. We have created a user-friendly, intuitive and convenient platform for event planners whether new or experienced to design their unique event page in minutes. We know the importance of making sure your event is all about your brand and only your brand. That’s why we have created an easy-to-use splash page designer where you can add images, YouTube videos, SoundCloud music, maps and more to customize your unique event page.

You can also seamlessly integrate ticket sales directly onto your website with no redirect or install our Facebook page application which automatically updates itself as events are published, saving you a lot of time. Not just that, Sparxo enables direct two-way integration to the venue’s website as well. For example, an events calendar will auto-update as events are created on your account or on the venue rental accounts, and events set up on rental partners’ accounts will auto-post onto your website and Facebook fan page once Sparxo is installed.

We also help you make quick ticketing decisions such as choosing multiple ticket levels to drive demand, setting up promotional deals, attaching your terms and conditions and customizing confirmation emails. The time-saving features are endless with Sparxo!

Save time by integrating ticket sales directly onto your website with Sparxo

 

Reduce barriers to ticket purchase

One of the most stressful aspects of event planning is collecting and tracking payments. You want a trustworthy platform that is easy-to-use and makes secure payment transactions so that you don’t lose customers along the way. With Sparxo, we have integrated the Stripe payment application that processes transactions within 2–5 days after a ticket purchase rather than after your event is over. The best part is that throughout the whole ticketing experience, attendees never get redirected to another site. This is great for ensuring you keep their attention on your event and that they follow through with the ticket purchase.

If you decide you want to collect payments onsite at your event itself, you can easily do so with the Sparxo POS system. This is another convenient feature where tickets and attendee information continues to be tracked on our system and all your accounting is in the same place. On top of that, you can also easily manage refunds right from your dashboard on Sparxo and 100% of our fees are also refunded.

Focus on making a great first impression

When your attendees arrive, you want them to be blown away by your event and not be stuck in a long slow line waiting to check-in. First impressions are important. With Sparxo, they can be welcomed with our efficient check-in system where our scanning solution ensures that entry is secure and easy. We’ve successful checked-in 1,000 attendees in under 30 minutes with one trained ticket scanner. You can have your team use their smartphones to scan guest tickets for entry via the Sparxo mobile check-in app. This app helps you scan QR codes quickly, easily search attendees by name/email/code, import third-party tickets and automatically review check-in statistics.

The convenience of having automated check-in features at your fingertips is invaluable, especially when the alternative is manual management that is time-consuming and inefficient.

Sparxo’s efficient check-in system ensures that entry is secure and easy.

 

Constantly improve your event strategy

Data is king and is driving better decision-making and performance in all aspects of our lives. So why not event planning as well? Having a convenient system that allows you to collect, track, own, export and review customer data enables you to improve your ticketing and event distribution strategy on the go. With Sparxo, you don’t have to be a data scientist to do any of this. We make it simple and easy for you to view, filter and search through your data. We also help you analyze your data with convenient data dashboards that create charts and other visuals, helping you make informed decisions.

Furthermore, you could enhance your event strategy by being a part of our affiliate marketing program — every Sparxo partner or an affiliate receives a commission for events that use Sparxo at their venue or even outside of their venue. It’s a win-win with.

9 Oct 2018

5 Surefire Ways To Sell Out Tickets

Looking for surefire ways to guarantee a SOLD OUT event? Here are a few tips to help you on your way to success!

Early bird pricing

Generating a FOMO (fear of missing out) in your audience is an important part of selling out your event. Having 2–3 early bird pricing tiers with limited sales timeframes helps create a sense of urgency, which makes people want to secure their tickets right away before ticket prices go up to the next tiered price. You should consider putting marketing efforts towards encouraging people to buy their tickets before the next price increase by advertising “7 days left”, “48 hours left”, and so forth. If your event is annual, it’s a good idea to offer early bird loyal fan pricing to last year’s attendees who will likely be your biggest returning supporters. Remember, it’s all about incentivising attendees.

Have a couple of categories for your tickets to increase sales

Optimize social media marketing

A key to keeping your audience engaged with you on social media is to commit to weekly updates on all your social media platforms. You want to give your target audience compelling reasons to attend your event and stay engaged with your brand. To attract attention, you may want to consider hosting contests, doing giveaways, or setting up games to promote your event and drive ticket sales. Make sure you have specific call-to-actions and website links to more information to make it as easy as possible for potential attendees to register for the event. This is also a great time to consider advertising on social media through paid content which can help you reach very targeted audiences.

Optimize social media for your events

Get sponsors to promote

Your sponsors will also benefit from more attendees. It’s a good idea to bring them in to help promote your event together. You could make it easier for them by providing template content that they could use on their social media channels and networks to market the event. Depending on how involved sponsors would like to be, you could also co-create promotional campaigns that include competitions and other call-to-actions.

Get creative with guest posts

Consider inviting different people to write guest blog posts to add more peer content to your event marketing efforts. For example, you could ask your first few registrants to write a paragraph or two for you to use as a blog post about what they are looking forward to at the event; if you have attendees who came last year, ask them to write about their event experience in return for free tickets. You can also ask your speakers/performers/experts to write a post to add more color to the event. Get creative with the type of content you generate.

Find the right ticketing platform

All your marketing efforts are pointless if you don’t maintain control over your brand, website SEO, and event engagement with your audience.  Sparxo is a great platform to use for ticket sales as it ensures all the conveniences are at your fingertips. Sparxo lets you embed event registration and ticketing on to any website with no redirect or brand logos, create media-rich pages to help with your brand and marketing efforts, offers an easy guest check-in app and allows you to own all your data so you can track your progress. There are no tiered levels of access to features. Everyone has full access to all features. We listen to our clients and continuously improve our features to offer the best event management platform. We believe you should own your brand and always have control over the experience your audience has from digital to physical. Plus, you keep 100% of your ticket price with Sparxo.

 Sparxo provides an easy-to-use interface to sell tickets.
Signup today for a free account!
6 Jan 2018

Where should you post your event? Eventbrite, Meet...

Choosing which ticketing platform to launch your ticket sales on is often a hard decision, especially when you are hustling to grow your brand and reach a wider audience. Our secret tip is to leverage many services to get as wide of a reach as possible, instead of having to choose a specific platform to use. Millions of event goers browse Eventbrite, Meetup, and Facebook for events. Use these platforms and other local event listing sites to spread your event and sell a few tickets.

The Problem with Relying on Others to Market for You

There is a hidden cost to these sites beyond their transaction fees. Event aggregation sites often steal your brand equity and cross-promote your event with others just like yours. Your brand, and where you lead people is really important if you are planning to have recurrent events. This is why we recommend you lead your ticket buyers to your branded website. Then, when sending email blasts, buying ads, or working with influencers, every link should point to your website for tickets. This way, your brand has a chance to grow.

You don’t build brand loyalty when you rely on other platforms to promote your event. Event goers need a reason to learn more about your brand, mission, and grab a better idea of how they can keep engaged. Selling tickets to an event is a great way to attract people to your site. Once there, your site acts as another touch point for your brand.

Always Promote Your Brand

There are advantages when promoting your website instead of a random ticket check-out link. When visitors stay on your website longer as they buy tickets for events, this improves the time on page and dwell time metrics. Having the ticket check out flow embedded on your website also reduces bounce rate. Both of these improvements are good for your website’s SEO.

Sparxo makes it easy to embed your whole ticket registration flow on your website. Once someone buys a ticket, they are still on your site. This way, you are always marketing your brand. Use other event sites to help promote your event, even sell a few tickets. Import these extra tickets into Sparxo so that check-in operations are seamless. Once you capture their contact information, send them to your brand from that point on.

Also, use Sparxo to understand your audience better. Easily understand repeat customers and which marketing channel brought them to your brand, no matter if tickets are bought through your site or imported from another platform

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING: A GUIDE FOR EVENT BRANDS