According to recent studies, the total revenue from online event tickets in the UK is set to hit 4.2 billion US dollars before 2020. This is a rapidly growing and constantly evolving market. The growing trend in online event tickets presents unique opportunities for event organisers, cultural centres like museums or galleries, and institutions like tourist offices to increase sales in 2019.
However, many businesses are still struggling when it comes to event ticket sales online. Despite the ecommerce trend, 68% of online shopping carts are abandoned, meaning that around 7 out of every 10 people that reach the final stages of your booking flow don’t complete the processes. Recent studies have shown that a total of around £18bn is lost in sales each year by British consumers abandoning online shopping baskets. In addition to this, businesses are failing to build trust across audience demographics. Though online event sales are popular among 16-44-year-olds, just 15% of the market segment aged 65 and over have purchased event tickets online, demonstrating a failure among ticket providers to offer customer experiences that build positive trusting relationships with customers of all ages.
This takes place against a backdrop of intense competition. Customers have more demands on their time and can access endless information online regarding activities and cultural events. In order to cut through the noise and stay relevant from among the noise, your business will need a future-proof strategy for event ticket sales for 2019. With a constantly changing digital landscape, we’ll bring you some future-proof ways to sell tickets in 2019.
Leverage Cross-Selling
Imagine you already have a customer that’s making a purchase on your website, and is therefore interested in the type of tickets you have to sell. Wouldn’t it be great if you could sell them additional tickets during the checkout process? This is called cross-selling. An interested or existing customer is a golden opportunity for increasing your ticket sales in 2019 since you already have an insight into their needs, interests and behaviours. Indeed, acquiring a new customer can cost up to five times as much as retaining an existing customer.
Perhaps a customer books a ticket to an exhibition at your gallery, meaning you could also interest them in a talk on a connected subject the same day? Alternatively, maybe a customer is booking a cinema ticket, and you let them know that you’re showing a film by the same director the following week that they might like to attend? Be sure to leverage all the data you have access to, in order to offer your customers additional products or events you know will appeal to them whilst they shop. The art of cross-selling means always offering extras that add value and never bombarding your customer either. Master this art and you could boost your ticket sales substantially for 2019.
Sell Across Channels
The modern consumer comes with the highest expectations yet. They want to book tickets for their event when they want and where they want. They have their preferences when it comes to UX, and in particular when it comes to ticketing channels. Some are loyal Ticketmaster purchasers and won’t go elsewhere, whilst others want to book on their country’s local ticketing channel.
The answer to meeting the demands of the modern consumer in 2019? The more channels your tickets are available on, the better your sales figures. In the past, businesses have been held back from distributing their tickets across multiple channels due to the administrative effort required to manage numerous points of sale at once. Indeed, you’ll need to coordinate the on-sale, upload and update event information, manage discounts and sales, and distribute inventory strategically. But nowadays, with ticket distribution services like Onebox offering a channel manager feature which enables event organisers to gain total visibility on multiple channels at once, there’s no excuse. You can manage inventory and keep an eye on a number of different channels at once all through your ticket distribution platform. So, offer your customers the opportunity to book using their favourite channel. With customer comfort and convenience comes buyer confidence too: so you’ll see your ticket sales increase in no time.
Use Video
Did you know that, according to a recent Forbes survey, 90% of customers think video helps them with their buying decisions? Among that percentage, a massive 64% of customers responded that a video makes them more likely to complete their online purchase. Video marketing is on the rise, with 96% of event creators planning to stream live video this year. There’s no use planning visually exciting, dynamic and appealing events if your digital marketing and sales processes for those events aren’t visually exciting too. Delight your customers with a positive user experience of your site by including video content to give them a sense of what your event, festival, show or experience will be like. Not only will it lead to higher ticket sales for the new year, but it’s also been proven to improve brand recognition and boost your SEO. So what are you waiting for?
Go Mobile First
There are an estimated 10 billion mobile connected devices currently in use. Google has started running mobile-first indexing meaning your ranking is directly affected by your mobile performance. Research also shows that 90% of modern consumers use their smartphone for online shopping. All this points to one big trend for increasing sales in 2019: mobile. There’s nothing more frustrating as a user than heading to a mobile site to purchase an event ticket, only to find that the website is slow, glitchy or confusing to navigate from your phone. Therefore, your business should be offering a responsive ecommerce experience across devices and customer touchpoints in order to succeed in the evolving landscape of online ticket sales. An all-in-one ticketing system can help you optimise your booking flow for mobile so you can be ready for the challenges faced by the dominance of mobile in the year to come.
Get Analytical
In 2018, the emphasis was on collecting customer information. As we look into 2019, there’ll be a shift in focus. It’s not just about the user data you collect, but how you use that data to gain a competitive advantage. Maybe you’re a startup that has now gathered a sizable amount of data on customer behaviour, but you’re in the dark about what it all means for your business. Perhaps you’re a large scale business that deals in high sales volume and you’re struggling to manage your huge quantity of data in an effective and productive way. In-depth analysis of the data you collect is vital for overarching business strategy as it helps you identify risks, areas of weakness and crucial opportunities. You could start by connecting your ticketing portal directly to Google Analytics to learn more about how your audience uses your website. Onebox’s powerful data solutions can help you turn a pile of numbers into actionable business intelligence, so you can make decisions that place your customers’ needs first and head into the new year with confidence.
Identify Areas for Automation
According to Eventbrite statistics, on average, event organisers utilise around 11-16 different tools in order to bring their events to life. That can mean endless inputting of data, transferring information and a waste of time and resources. As you look towards 2019, it’s crucial to identify processes which don’t need to be done manually and can be taken care of by automated ticketing services. Communications with customers, sales figures reporting, updates to event data across platforms and channels are all areas that have automation potential. By automating granular, time-consuming processes, you can devote your energy, resources and creativity elsewhere: towards engaging event marketing campaigns and organising an event to remember.
Conclusion
As we head into 2019, events organisers and cultural hubs face tough competition. It can seem like the digital marketing landscape is always changing, and it might feel like it’s more difficult than ever to access customers and convert interest into concrete sales. If you’re looking to sell more tickets in 2019, remember that you’re not on your own and help is at hand. Onebox’s innovative ticketing distribution system can help you boost sales in the year to come. Our all-in-one solution empowers you to deliver enhanced mobile performance, leverage analytics to your advantage and manage multi-channel sales to help you navigate the future of ecommerce.
Montse Cañizares is the Content Manager at Onebox, the first global ticket distribution system for the entertainment industry that accelerates the profitability of online and offline ticket sales channels. To reach out, you can connect on Linkedin or Twitter or follow their blog.
Author: Adam Parry
Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.
