Experiences Bring Stories To Life at ProVenue Exchange

Tickets.com hosted its annual ProVenue Exchange conference this year in Charleston, South Carolina from June 11 – 13, 2018.

PVEX18 invited technologists, ticketing professionals, thought leaders, and marketing experts to explore the patron experience comprehensively, beyond the logistics of ad campaigns, venue operations, sales numbers, and CRM.

“Experiences Bring Stories to Life,” the conference’s theme, is an irresistible perspective. It emerges naturally when you blend cutting edge technology, the Tickets.com vision, and open dialogue—a powerful message for the Tickets.com community and for the ‘experience’ industry at large.

Honored PVEX18 attendees included the World Racing Group, Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, Buffalo Sabres, colleges and universities, major attractions such as Medieval Times, numerous Performing Arts clients such as Wolf Trap, The Bushnell and more.

PVEX18 guests checked into the Charleston Marriott for three days of immersion in the Tickets.com vision, a family-like environment of collaboration and open dialogue about industry successes and challenges.

Joe Choti, President and CEO of Tickets.com, stated during his Keynote address:

“It is this vision, Experiences Bring Stories to Life, that drives our brand, our technological solutions, and our services. If we achieve our goal, we will help you build stories and create remarkable experiences.”

Elaborating on this year’s theme, Joe Choti inspired the audience with examples of how storytelling is impactful in the experience industry, followed by a challenge:

“It is our responsibility together to be the catalyst that generates life-changing stories through a journey of unforgettable experiences and unprecedented value.”

The three-day conference presented insightful industry discussions, hands-on technology training, presentations on the most cutting-edge technology in live events, delicious southern-style cuisine, and evening social events where the genuine southern hospitality shined through.

For more details  about this year’s ProVenue Exchange, please visit our PVEX18 Recap Site or contact marketing@tickets.com.

 

Venues Choose Tickets.com Technology

Tickets.com continues to welcome new and renewing clients in 2018. World Racing Group, several Minor League Baseball clubs and other unique live event venues, such as rodeos and virtual experiences, have recently upgraded to the Tickets.com ProVenue® platform.

By partnering with Tickets.com, venues gain access to box office solutions, patron-facing technology, insightful reports and analytics, and outstanding support from the team.

MyTickets™ is one of many features that venues identify as a reason for choosing to work with Tickets.com. A patron-facing tool for managing ticket inventory and account details, MyTickets puts the power directly in the patron’s hands, reducing the demand on box office staff to fulfill a variety of ticket requests. Patrons can independently renew ticket packages as well as forward, resell, purchase, and donate tickets all within their MyTickets account.

For venues, MyTickets is also a powerful tool for communicating discounts and promotions to targeted audiences, advertised to patrons directly in a “My Offers” area of their account details.

Also proving popular throughout the industry is Alfred, the new mobile ‘concierge’ technology from Tickets.com. Launched in 2017, Alfred was the first solution in the market to provide Apple® Wallet users with the ‘touchless’ convenience of Near Field Communication (NFC) —for venue entry, for example.

Jackson Hole Rodeo, Augusta GreenJackets and the Vancouver Canadians are just some of the new Tickets.com venues using Alfred to enhance their patron experience and streamline their operations.

Midway through 2018, Tickets.com has renewed or upgraded over 15 existing clients, including theaters, universities and fairgrounds; and through the remainder of the year and beyond, the allure of world-class technology and support promises to keep pace.

Tickets.com also remains committed to developing solutions that challenge industry norms and gives venues the tools they need to take their patron experiences to the next level. Tickets.com is in the business of creating unforgettable experiences and we strive to help each and every one of our clients to do the same.

Want to learn more about Tickets.com technology and services? Please contact sales@tickets.com.

T.Cares Kicks Off 2018

As part of the T.Cares program, Tickets.com worked with trusted partners to create a series of experiences at Major and Minor League Baseball games. Tickets.com was able to provide over 30 experiences for families and individuals from the nonprofit organizations, Vet Tix and Art Feeds, throughout Spring Training and the regular season.

The T.Cares program seeks to support local community efforts by partnering with various nonprofit organizations to provide remarkable experiences for those facing hardships or obstacles in their lives. To date in 2018, we have already provided over 100 live event experiences for families and individuals.

Vet Tix provides tickets to events which reduce stress, strengthen family bonds, build life-long memories and encourage service members and veterans to stay engaged with local communities and American life. Vet Tix and Tickets.com have worked together since the launch of T.Cares. Vet Tix will be featured as one of the 2018 Keynote Speakers at the Tickets.com annual conference, ProVenue Exchange.

Art Feeds provides therapeutic art and creative education programs that feed children’s creativity for an inspired future. Art Feeds began in one classroom with one child—a little boy who wasn’t being fed at home and who was not only lethargic and struggling with academics but also had incredibly low self-esteem. As he began doing art lessons, he showed tremendous progress through expression; art was feeding him in a way that was just as essential as food.

Meg Bourne, Founder & CEO of Art Feeds, quotes “Art Feeds is so grateful for a free night of baseball to share with our volunteers and partners. As an organization that operates with hundreds of volunteer hours per year, we wouldn’t exist without the time and energy our volunteers dedicate to our programs. Having the ability to give our volunteers a fun night out with each other is such a gift. Thank you, Tickets.com, for this generous donation to allow us to honor the volunteers that help us accomplish our mission every day.”

From baseball games and rock concerts to Disney® On Ice and Medieval Times®, T.Cares is dedicated to providing broad variety experiences to all of those who need a break from their daily lives and enjoy the excitement of live event experiences.

If your venue or organization is interested in becoming part of T.Cares, please contact marketing@tickets.com

San Francisco Giants Launch With Alfred

The San Francisco Giants introduced support for Near Field Communication (NFC) access to AT&T Park, through a first-of-its-kind integration with Alfred – Tickets.com’s latest advancement in access control. This innovative technology allows fans that have their tickets delivered to Apple® Wallet simply and securely tap on their iPhone or Apple Watch to use mobile ticketing entry at the ballpark.

The multi-purpose system also continues to support scanning traditional bar-coded tickets.  While the deployment specifically represented a step forward in the fan experience for mobile accessibility this season, future developments with Tickets.com will focus on the complete Digital Ticketing process, including fan service and ticket purchase right at the point of entry for a frictionless customer experience.

International case study: The Riley Center & MyProVenue™

Located in the heart of historic downtown Meridian and opened in 2006, the Mississippi State University (MSU) Riley Center offers cultural, artistic and educational experiences unlike any other venue in the region. The facility includes a fully restored 1889 grand opera house with approximately 950 seats, a 200 seat studio theatre and 30,000 square feet of meeting space. The venue is distinctly unique and hosts a variety of events, conferences, and concerts. In 2008, the Center even hosted John McCain’s announcement for the presidency.

Derron Radcliff, Box Office Manager, talks about the Center’s role in the community: “We host between 40 to 50 performances and events each year and attract more than 60,000 visitors. They all return because the Riley Center is a special place for social interaction, enjoying the arts, engaging in lifelong learning and stimulating community growth and development.”

The Riley Center has been a customer of Tickets.com® since its opening in 2006 and recently upgraded to the ProVenue® ticketing system to improve sales and marketing operations, while also improving the patron experience.

“We have been able to improve our online presence and sales as a result of the new system. With the integrated tools including MyProVenue™ and Access Control, we have been able to better plan for other performances based on audience reaction and participation,” says Radcliff.

“The improved online platform is more user-friendly, and its features have been extremely well received by our staff and our customers,” Radcliff added.

“Thanks to MyProVenue, we can now do things we weren’t previously able to,” says Radcliff.

Radcliff continued, “Tickets@Home and Ticket Forwarding are particular favourites with our audiences and a remarkable improvement on our previous system. Our patrons can now forward tickets onto their friends and no longer have to wait in line to pick them up.”

The team at the Riley Center can now implement targeted marketing strategies aided by the comprehensive patron information available through ProVenue, and the complete data capture from Access Control. Radcliff states, “The best feature for us is Access Control. I love having the ability to record an accurate head count after each performance. This, combined with ProVenue’s other features, means we can be more effective with our communications.”

Radcliff mentions not only ProVenue as a reason that the Riley Center has remained a loyal Tickets.com client, but also the team that supports it: “My experience has been great all round. I personally have never had reason to call support, but I know that they go out of their way to solve any issue or problem. The Tickets.com team truly excels in supporting its clients.”

For more information about The MSU Riley Center, visit http://www.msurileycenter.com/

Customer Case Study: Harlequin Theatre

The Harlequin Theatre and Cinema is a multi-purpose arts venue in Redhill, Surrey, UK, with an auditorium that can be adapted from a 494-seat venue to a 600+ standing capacity space. Alongside is a bijou 100-seat cinema, screening the latest films and event cinema presentations.

The venue is open all year round and with such a variety of performances, it has become a treasured asset within the community.

“We have around 70,000 customers attend events each year, with the total estimated footfall to be double this with many more who visit to use the venue’s facilities,” explains Ian Orrick, Front of House Manager.

“We host around 150-200 live events – including a run of over 40 pantomime performances during December – plus over 1000 cinema screenings each year and building on this, in 2018 we’re embarking on bringing theatre to outside spaces as we focus on engaging the local community even further.”

As a longstanding client, The Harlequin Theatre made the decision to migrate to the ProVenue® ticketing platform to help the venue be more competitive in the ever-expanding digital marketplace.

“We have built up a great relationship over a number of years with the Tickets.com team, whose customer service and market awareness has always been impeccable, and so we had no hesitation in moving to ProVenue®”, says Ian.

“The system’s responsive design allows us to compete more effectively across digital platforms by making us more accessible to online bookers using tablet or mobile, and the interface is also clearer and slicker than anything we’ve used previously.”

As Tickets.com®’s most advanced platform, ProVenue® has been developed with the venue and its patrons at the forefront. It is a fully integrated ticketing solution that allows clients to capture, access and own consumer data, enabling them to build a picture of the buying habits and preferences of their patrons. With the help of the advanced reporting tools, venues can then design and implement targeted marketing campaigns to sell tickets effectively.

In addition to the enhanced digital capabilities provided by ProVenue®, the team at the Harlequin Theatre cite batch printing amongst their favourite features: “The printing feature has meant that our organisation of tickets – and the time spent printing them – has greatly improved, meaning that we are able to better use our time elsewhere.

“As well as batch printing, ProVenue®’s user-friendly interface allows event administration and ticket selling to work in tandem, and with it being a web-based programme we can now work from any computer in the venue”, confirms Ian.

And, with the impending introduction of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, the Harlequin Theatre continues to be encouraged by the work of the team at Tickets.com®: “Tickets.com® are a great company to have a relationship with and as we move towards GDPR in May, it is reassuring to know that we have such a great team and product to work with.

“During the initial transfer to ProVenue® they were attentive, informative and ultimately very patient. Subsequently, they are always happy to help with queries we have and communication regarding any upcoming upgrades is always punctual and easy to understand.”

For more information about the Harlequin Theatre, visit www.harlequintheatre.co.uk.

Save up to £200 on printers with Tickets.com and Boca

Tickets.com is offering all customers an exclusive discount on ticket printers from Boca, the inventors of the thermal ticket printer.

Usually priced at £1,100.00 + VAT, you can save up to £200.00 on Boca printers purchased until 12th April 2018*:

One unit: £985.00 + VAT (per unit)
Two units: £945.00 + VAT (per unit)
Three or more units: £900.00 + VAT (per unit)

(Prices available in euros for customers in Ireland – please contact the team for more information)

This offer is exclusively available on the Lemur 3.25″ reversible adjustable 200 DPI Boca Ticket Printer and the Lemur 2 – 4″ adjustable 200 DPI Boca Ticket Printer.

Click here for full product specifications

For more information or to place your order, contact the Tickets.com team:

E: uksales@tickets.com
T: +44 (0) 1908 232404
* Carriage costs apply

Creating A Cohesive User Experience For Your Ticket Purchase Flow

This month, we’re highlighting the importance of creating a smooth and seamless transition between your website and the ticket purchase portion of your website. We strive to provide a natural extension to your website’s current look and feel because optimizing your patron experience means maximizing your revenue.

ProVenueOnline™ is our robust ticketing platform that allows your patron to not only purchase a ticket online but also allows you to provide more complex features to your patrons, such as selecting seats from an interactive venue map, renewing a season package, and forwarding tickets to friends.

MyProVenue™ is our next generation, responsive web application that works on any web-enabled device from your patron’s mobile phone to their desktop computer.

Both Tickets.com products are customizable to match the look and branding of your venue. Our products are constantly evolving, so continue to check back with your client representative for updates and newly customizable options.

Branding

When your patron enters the ticket purchase portion of your website, we want them to be fully aware that they are buying a ticket from your venue and no one else. One of the most important tips is to ensure that your logo is the same on all of your webpages. Space on MyProVenue may be an issue, so we suggest using modifications or just icon imagery as a shorthand for your logo.

Colors

Take a look at your current website and note the header, background and text colors you use. We can easily match your colors in ProVenueOnline and MyProVenue to create a tight, cohesive look. A common mistake is using too many colors, which could work against a clean design. We suggest using a main color paired with a more neutral color such as grey, black or white. MyProVenue header backgrounds in neutral colors help your logo stand out.  We’re happy to assist you with your color scheme. Contact your client representative for more information.

Imagery

Photos of your venue or events make a powerful impression. We ’re happy to use them for background images or banner images on the ticket purchase portion of your website.

Photos can help your patrons easily identify an event or venue of interest and streamline the decision to purchase. Similarly, if your main venue website uses ads for events, we can place them throughout ProVenueOnline for cross-sell potential. (Keep an eye out for this functionality coming soon to MyProVenue as well.) And while we’re on this topic, be sure to have images picked out for all your events. If you do not have an image that is specific to an event, using a generic or multi-purpose image is a great alternative.

‘View from Section’ Images

Both ProVenueOnline and MyProVenue allow you to include ‘view from section’ images for your patrons. We encourage you to use this capability as these images provide your patrons with an excellent tool for finding the right seats and provide you with a great way to show off your venue.

Upgrade Your Patron Experience

We’re consistently updating our ProVenueOnline and MyProVenue styles to improve your patron’s experience when buying tickets or managing their ticket inventory. Speak with your client rep to learn more about the benefits of updating your CSS for the latest styles.

Tickets.com client case study – The Theatre Chipping Norton

Testimonial: Adrian Terry (Box Office Manager)

The Theatre Chipping Norton is a small venue making big noises since its inception in 1975. The Oxfordshire-based theatre turned arthouse cinema, gallery and concert hall sees over 53,000 visitors per year as a result of its unique and enterprising offering of performances, festivals and workshops. With around 1200 events and workshops in 2017, it is easy to see why they are often the cause of much acclaim in the local community.

The Theatre Chipping Norton started working with Tickets.com in 1994, as Adrian Terry, box office manager, recalls: “We first engaged with Tickets.com over 20 years ago to further our digital and CRM capabilities and help us to better understand our patrons; this has been instrumental in implementing effective CRM campaigns to keep our visitors coming back.”

During this time, the theatre has migrated across from ProVenueDatabox® and ProVenueOnline® to ProVenue®, Tickets.com’s most advanced ticketing platform.

Since ProVenue® was first implemented in 2017, the Theatre Chipping Norton has benefited from MyProVenue™, the web application built on responsive web design to facilitate online ticket sales and patron self-service features.

In addition, the venue also uses CrowdConnect, Tickets.com’s cloud-based email marketing platform with advanced data capture functionality to further support patron engagement.

Like many Tickets.com customers, Adrian has experienced first-hand just how Tickets.com’s technology can support a smaller venue and achieve impressive results: “First and foremost we have a much greater understanding of our client base, which has led to an increase in ticket and sundry sales online through segmented and refined campaigns.

“As a venue we are unique, yet our move to ProVenue has futureproofed our booking tools and established a premium customer service platform that we hope will successfully launch our new seating campaign and the Chipping Norton Comedy Festival, as well as promote the upcoming literary festival.”

For more information about The Theatre Chipping Norton, visit www.chippingnortontheatre.com.

TICKETS.COM BEST OF 2017

“Creativity breeds value and experience. These words encompassed our message for 2017. Our world is changing; technology is changing, the way we work is changing but most importantly how we, where we, and when we engage our patrons is changing. I challenged my team to embrace creativity and innovation, and together we are transforming this industry. For Tickets.com, 2017 was an extraordinary year. We’d like to share with you some of our greatest highlights.” – Joe Choti, Tickets.com CEO & President

Alfred – Tickets.com Native Access Control Solution with NFC Enabled Tickets via Apple Wallet

Tickets.com became the first technology company to bring the convenience of Near Field Communication (NFC) via Apple Wallet to the ticketing market with the debut of its innovative new platform, Alfred Access Control. Near Field Communication support for event entry is just the beginning of Alfred Access Control. This one-of-a-kind platform was built to both leverage present technologies and adapt and evolve to the future of live event technology.

The Official Ticketing Provider of Minor League Baseball

We were thrilled to sign a long-term partnership with Minor League Baseball® (MiLB™), the governing body for all 160 affiliated professional baseball teams, making Tickets.com the organization’s first-ever Official Ticketing Provider. Tickets.com is committed to the Minor Leagues™ by providing fans with a great customer experience, powered by Tickets.com’s ProVenue® platform technology on the devices fans use most.

Bettering Our World Through the T.Cares Program

Since its launch in 2016, the T.Cares initiative has created over 150 experiences for families, individuals, and communities facing various obstacles.  From providing VIP experiences for families at MLB games to getting our hands dirty in the UK volunteering at a local community garden, Tickets.com team members have stepped up as social impact leaders in 2017.  Tickets.com couldn’t be prouder of our accomplishments so far and we are confident that our movement towards creating a better world has only just begun.

Registered Developer Program Membership Growth

The Tickets.com Registered Developer Program allows for clients and third parties to develop their own applications utilizing Tickets.com data services. The program grew significantly over the course of 2017 with a 41% growth in membership. Each one of our Registered Developers can bring tremendous value to venues and their patrons’ experience.

ProVenue Exchange 2017

ProVenue Exchange 2017 was held at the Vinoy Renaissance Resort in St. Petersburg, Florida from June 11-14. The Tickets.com vision for the 6th annual conference focused on transforming the way we experience networking, technology, client services and live events. Derek Argobright, Chief Technology Officer at Tickets.com, highlighted that to meet the demands of the widely influential millennial audience, the ticketing industry must transform itself, bringing the digital age and self-service not just to the online purchase experience but to the Box Office.

Significant Client Growth

From multiple league-wide deals to independent venues, Tickets.com experienced tremendous growth in the number of clients using Tickets.com technology. We were honored to add each venue and organization to the Tickets.com Family, and we look forward to additional signings coming up in 2018.

Our accomplishments of 2017 are going to be the foundation of an exciting and successful 2018. Tickets.com is committed to disrupting and revolutionizing the live events industry through innovative technology, and we are excited for what this New Year will bring.

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