Boosting Your Event Organization During The COVID-19 Crisis

We want to extend our thoughts to all who have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. We know how difficult this pandemic has been on all of us. As your ticketing provider, we believe that even in this time of crisis, there are still ways to help lessen the effects this situation may have had on your operations. Here are 7 ideas that may help you.

Drive Donations

In a time of crisis, when sales are down, asking your community for support is one of the greatest factors to staying afloat. This is the perfect time to strengthen your donation campaigns. To do so, try these actions.

Create a specific campaign for the COVID-19 crisis with a message stating your organization’s story and needs during this time.
Embed a donation plugin directly on your homepage for people to see your campaign.
Share this donation campaign on social media and in emails to your patrons to increase awareness.

Offer Gift Cards

In a time like this when events have been postponed or canceled, promoting or offering gift cards is a great option compared to refunding tickets. Offer your gift cards to patrons or anyone on your email list to give your sales a boost during this time. Check out these benefits.

A digital gift card is just as good as cash.
Gift cards never expire.
Send a gift card to a friend.
Sell gift cards at a discounted rate but with a higher value.

Sell Flex Passes

Flex Pass Subscriptions include a fixed amount of tickets set up by the promoter. It can be configured to include or exclude certain event types, dates, and tickets with the ability to restrict by price range or section name. If you’re a theatre or another industry, and your season is being pushed out due to the pandemic, selling Flex Passes may be beneficial. Any balance on a Flex Pass can be transferred over to a new season. Selling these at a discounted rate could also help boost sales during this time.

Better Refund Options

Don’t lose money on tickets that have already been purchased when a patron asks for a refund. Review these following options.

Refund back to a gift card that can be used for tickets, merchandise, and more.
Refund towards a donation and in return receive a receipt for tax benefits.
Refund to account credit which can be used in the box office for future transactions.

Live Stream Your Events

Live streaming is a great option and VBO Tickets can help sell your tickets for it. By selling an event online, you may put a URL to your live stream on the order confirmation page and email. Here are a couple of live stream options.

Youtube.com offers private live-streaming with email invite-only.
Livestream.com owned by Vimeo offers a unique URL that can be shared with your patrons.

Easily Postpone Events

To postpone an event, VBO Tickets offers functionality to transfer all of your event information over. Simply change the dates on your existing event and the system will automatically update event messages and other date-related elements. Also, tickets will automatically change their event sale date.

Sell Merchandise

With VBO Tickets you have the option to sell merchandise in conjunction with donations and tickets. You can promote your merchandise on your website or within your checkout process on VBO Tickets by setting up event messages that provide a link to your store.

At VBO Tickets, we are doing our part to fight the spread of COVID-19 and keep our team healthy. All of our employees have been working effectively from home. We have been utilizing this time to work on projects we have not gotten to and feature requests you have been waiting on. During this time, our support team is ready to assist you with any questions you have.