Tips & Tricks Archives • Tickets.com

Exploration and Reinvention in Memphis with the Museum of Science & History (MoSH)

In 2020 the Museum of Science & History (MoSH) was on the precipice of launching a 5-year strategic plan to reinvigorate the organization. A new Executive Director was in place, plans for a rebrand were being contemplated, and then the pandemic hit. But while live events were put on pause, the team at MoSH dove head-on into research and testing for their long-term strategic vision.

Tickets.com Interviews |

Kevin Thompson, Executive Director, Museum of Science & History
Jeff King, Director of Guest Services, Museum of Science & History

Strategic Vision

Beyond a new look, the strategic focus was to create a more inviting space to increase engagement with patrons and to foster more curiosity in every patron touchpoint. Everything from new content to new communication strategies to new technologies were explored.

The MoSH team even collaborated with the national Metal Museum in Memphis to install a twenty-five-foot statue of a Mosasaur to greet incoming patrons. Part of creating an inviting space comes from making a less intrusive ticketing experience. Jeff King, Director of Guest Services commented, “The less you notice the ticketing experience, the better,” which is in part why moving to digital tickets was so important to MoSH.

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Hickory Crawdads | Migrating to Tickets.com ProVenue Ticketing Platform

The Hickory Crawdads joined Tickets.com in late 2019 and have been maximizing their use of vouchers and reporting functionality from the ProVenue system. Additionally, they have expanded their group sales and offered new fan purchase flow options with FEVO, a Tickets.com certified Registered Developer.

Tickets.com Interview | Kristen Buyner, Director of Ticket Operations, Hickory Crawdads

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Phillies | Always Loyal with Stored Value

PhilliesScript PNG The Philadelphia Phillies in tandem with their concessionaire Aramark have been in the stored value game for over 18 seasons. Working closely with Givex™, a Tickets.com certified solution via the Registered Developer Program, they have taken stored value to a new level.

What is Stored Value?

Stored value is ticket functionality which enables barcoded tickets to have multiple functions, (gate entry, food, beverage, and merchandise redemptions) with the scan of a barcode on a Point of Sale (POS) system.

“The Phillies have been a valued, long-time Givex partner and are using gift cards and Uptix to enhance their fans’ ballpark experiences,” said Debbi Blackburn, Vice President of Business Development at Givex. “Our leading stored-value ticket technology and overall Givex tools provide them with new opportunities to engage with and reward fans for their incredible loyalty,” she added.

Stored value tickets are used every game day at Citizens Bank Park for a slew of programs including, Designated Driver Program, fan appreciation gifts, group outings, club-designated premium areas, customer service issues, and more.

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Medieval Times | Royal Re-Opening with Strong Communication

Tickets.com sat down with Kristen Schascheck, Vice President of Sales at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament (Medieval Times) to discuss how this unique attraction faced the many challenges re-opening castles across North America.

Medieval Times is North America’s most popular dinner attraction featuring heroic knights on spirited horses displaying astounding athletic feats and thrilling swordplay along with a four-course feast fit for royalty. With ten North American locations (Florida, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Arizona, and Ontario, Canada), the pandemic posed a wide range of new regulations and safety protocols. Changes to the Castles included items like seating arrangements, entrance modifications, distancing and cleanliness protocols, personal protective equipment, and adjustments to food and beverage service.

Kristen Schascheck said about the changes her team has gone through, “Our internal motto is ‘be like water.’ We have learned to flow with whatever challenges and changes come our way!”

Tickets.com Interview | Kristen Schascheck, Vice President of Sales at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament

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Tampa Bay Rays | The Walk Up Game

Going into the 2021 season, the Tampa Bay Rays explored all kinds of new technologies to help them collect more directional data, identify more of their fans, and improve the overall ticketing experience.

Tickets.com sat down with Jimmy Reed, Manager, Strategy & Analytics at the Tampa Bay Rays to discuss the 2021 season and what they learned while welcoming back their fans into the stands.

The Walk-Up Game

A portion of sales for the Rays come from game day ticket purchases at the box office, known as walk-ups. While in the past walk-up sales were done in-person, in 2021, the Rays made modifications to adopt mobile-only ticket sales. On game day, fans looking to purchase tickets were met with QR-code signage which when scanned, took them through the MyProVenue^™ ticket purchase flow and then to ticket delivery within the MLB Ballpark™ app.

“We’ve been mobile-only the whole year, we’ve had the ability for fans to scan a QR code to buy tickets through the MyProVenue^™ purchase flow, but we really wanted to see if we could take it to that next step to make the experience even quicker.”

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Erie County Fair | The Best of Summer with Digital Tickets

Hamburg, NY Tickets.com and Erie County Agricultural Society made history at the 181^st Erie County Fair (Fair) in Western New York in the summer of 2021. For the first time ever, the ‘Best 12 Days of Summer’ admission tickets were sold exclusively online through MyProVenue™, the Tickets.com web application for digital tickets.

Under the cloud of the pandemic, the Fair had a compressed timeline for planning, marketing, and selling tickets to their GUSTO Grandstand events as well as fair admissions. Events and operations were pulled together in just over 80 days once state and county officials provided final approval and guidelines when normally the planning process would be a year in the making. That’s 285 days less, for those of you doing the math.

The 2021 Fair Experience

Though the team knew the Fair would not look the same, it would remain true to the values and traditions that are reminiscent of the annual event. The team was anxious to provide families with the opportunity to create memories in person, get back to tradition, where patrons could immerse themselves in a world of ‘Summertopia’ with the traditional crazy foods, cute animals, top-notch competition, spinning rides, and just plain fun entertainment.

The adjustments started with online-only ticket sales while in previous years patrons could make purchases in retail locations. Ticket inventory was adjusted and re-adjusted for events at the Fair Grandstand, the aisle walkways were widened and vendors were limited to increase social distance, and the Fair also offered free parking to limit contact touchpoints. With staffing shortages, the 2021 Fair was very different.

Get the full story to learn more about this pivotal summer.

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Wolf Trap Celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2021 with New Technology

2021 marked the 50th anniversary for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts (Wolf Trap) and a sorely missed return to live events at the venue.

Wolf Trap is a unique venue in many ways. For one, it is part of a nonprofit organization nestled inside of a National Park. Secondly, performances at Wolf Trap cover the full spectrum of music and performing arts genres, and lastly, the venue operates three different stages for these events. The Filene Center is an outdoor venue that can seat 7,000 patrons, while the outdoor Children’s Theater-in-the-Woods can seat about 800, and The Barns indoor venue is the smallest and can seat 382.

Bernard S. Berry III, Senior Director Ticket Services Wolf Trap, spoke on how grateful the Wolf Trap team is for the support the venue receives from its patrons,

“The community responded any way they could, supporting anything that we put out, whether it be streaming or fundraisers… They (patrons) were going to make sure that Wolf Trap lasted through the pandemic. Everything from the members saying to just ‘hold on to my tickets’ and making donations until we figured out what was going on, to the public saying ‘nope, we trust you’. And when your spirits are low, as you are canceling shows, to be buoyed by the fact that the public not only would like to see you around, wants you to be around, needs you to be around, I don’t even know what to say about it other than, thank you.”

Tickets.com Interview | Bernard S. Berry III, Senior Director Ticket Services Wolf Trap

In 2021 when Wolf Trap re-opened its doors to the community, the box office team to worked closely with Tickets.com to temporarily create modified seating plans in the ProVenue® ticketing platform and leaned in on digital, “…we adapted our ticket selling methods,”

The Wolf Trap team made key strategic changes including:

Leaning in on digital
Becoming a Tickets.com Certified Registered Developer and creating a home-grown custom solution.

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Jackson Hole Rodeo: There is No I in Team

For over 125 years the Wilson family has strived to keep western heritage alive at the Jackson Hole Rodeo. Founded in the 1890s, Jackson Hole Rodeo is a family-run destination for events in the Wyoming area. The rodeo hosts a variety of events from bull riding, horse riding, roping, barrel racing, and more.

The Rodeo began utilizing Tickets.com’s ProVenue^® back-office ticketing platform in 2018 and selling online tickets through MyProVenue™ at the same time. Additionally, the Rodeo utilizes Alfred^®, the proprietary all-in-one access control solution for ticket validation from Tickets.com running on Zebra^® handheld devices.

King Mountain, the weather is a major component of outdoor sports and rodeo activities. The Rodeo typically operates events seasonally from June – August. The rest of the year the Wilson family and staff work to maintain the Rodeo facility, plus manage the care and feeding of the animals on site. “Our facility is not like a regular store, we can’t just close shop in August when the fans leave,” said Brandon Wilson, Partner at the Jackson Hole Rodeo.

So how did the Rodeo swing it in 2020 and 2021?

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CrowdConnect Email Opens on Mobile Devices

Email Marketing: Opens by Device

Did you know that roughly 85% of email subscribers use smart phones to access email? And roughly 70% of mobile users delete badly formatted messages in under three seconds?

Time is short. Consider simple ways you can learn about your subscribers to improve your ticket sales on mobile.

Opens by Device

Opens by device is a quick report to understand whether your subscribers are opening emails on a mobile device or on a desktop. If you host a variety of events at your venue, this can also be a helpful tool to identifying which events are more likely to be opened on a mobile or desktop.

5 Quick Creative Considerations for Marketing Events on Mobile

Short subject lines. Longer subject lines may not display on a mobile device.
Keep images to under 600-pixel width. Some mobile devices can’t handle responsive designs.
Use a large font. A small screen makes fonts smaller, consider using a 14-pixel font to make it easier on the eyes.
Create a simple call to action. A button is an easy way to identify where a patron should click where as an image does not have that same effect.
Use a single-column templates. Multiple columns may condense and be hard to navigate on a small device.

CrowdConnect the Tickets.com official email marketing platform makes it easy to look at Open by device metrics.

If you are a current client interested in learning more about the Open by device reports within CrowdConnect, read on from our Knowledge Base.

Interested in CrowdConnect the Tickets.com official email marketing platform powered by WhatCounts? Learn More.

CrowdConnect Email Marketing: Stop Sending to SPAM and Junk

Email Marketing: SPAM-less

Are your emails falling into SPAM traps? Event messages getting missed by potential patrons? Consider these tips to improve your message deliverability.

What is a SPAM Trap?

A SPAM trap is how an Internet Service Provider (ISP) protects subscribers from getting unwanted and unsolicited mail from ever reaching an inbox. If caught in the trap, your IP address and your ‘from domain’ will be blocked.

How does it affect my event marketing?

When your domain and IP address get blocked, your marketing messages don’t reach your subscribers’ inboxes, your deliverability rates sink, and restoring your venue’s reputation can becoming a large undertaking.

Here are some tips to keep your messages out of SPAM and junk mail:

Who Gets Your Messages…?

Make sure you create a permission-based subscriber list and continue to focus on those who engage with your messages. The Open Rate and Click Rates are key indicators in this area.

Content is King!

Create content that is relevant, engaging to your subscribers and keep testing to optimize your performance. Read more about A/B testing.
Using a wide array of styles, colors, and font sizes (especially larger then 12pt) can be a formatting no-no and easily make your subscribers think your email is SPAM. So, stick to a simple palate.

Subject Lines Matter!

Besides creating an incentive to read an email, subject lines can encourage subscribers to mark your messages as SPAM. Consider the following when creating your subject lines:

Using ALL CAPS can appear as if you are shouting. Make sure whatever you capitalize actually needs it – when in doubt – skip the CAPS.
Multiple exclamation points don’t necessarily create a sense of drama, they can come across as false enthusiasm. Instead consider focusing your subject line on relevant, thought-provoking copy.
Just like multiple exclamation points, using too many Emojis can affect your deliverability. Consider what Emoji is relevant, and how many, if any, are necessary for your target audience. Read more about using Emojis.
Special characters like “$” and “#” can also trigger your subscribers to think your email is SPAM. So, if you don’t need them, leave them out.
There are a lot of words that SCREAM SPAM and can quickly get you blacklisted. Make sure to avoid using words/phrases like: “Free”, “Best Price”, “No Obligation”, “Discount”, “Will not Believe Your Eyes”, “Why Pay More”, “This isn’t Spam”, “This Won’t Last”. Instead try focusing on subjects with personalization, such as “Hi [Name], do you want to go to a concert?” Check out this list of SPAM trigger words.

Interested in CrowdConnect the Tickets.com official email marketing platform powered by WhatCounts? Learn More.