From the Executive Corner
By Dave Butler, Ticketmaster, Irvine

Welcome to the community Insights newsletter. As a community, we are undertaking several exciting initiatives and programs that are positively impacting your business. I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the accomplishments that you, the community, accomplished over the last quarter.

It's playoff time for Major League Baseball and the Philadelphia Phillies have earned the right to participate in the post season. We wish them the best of luck in the National League Championship Series play. What’s more, the Phillies broke a community record this year, selling over 800,000 tickets online. Congratulations to the Phillies for their accomplishments both on and off the field!

On the heels of an extremely successful football renewals program, college football season is now in full swing. This year, over 80 schools participated in the Go Green program to help save money, labor and the environment by reducing paper-based applications. The cumulative results exceeded a 50% online adoption rate, the highest in the program’s history. Congratulations to all involved on your tremendous success!

One of the benefits of being a member of the larger Ticketmaster community is the ability to tap into new marketing and distribution channels. To date, Ticketmaster Irvine clients have sold more than 36,000 tickets, representing $1.5 million dollars of ticket inventory from event listings on Ticketmaster.com. Theatre Under The Stars, for example, sold over $55,000 in ticket revenue from event listings on Ticketmaster.com during the month of August. We are extremely excited about these results and the future opportunities presented to the community. These and other programs help you to reach further and sell more.

We are extremely pleased to announce that The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh recently upgraded to the latest release of tGen v6.84.  This upgrade enables the Carnegie Museums to leverage membership entitlement tracking, online membership sales, member admission scanning, and more. All four venues including The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The Carnegie Science Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum are now able to offer this new functionality to their most valuable patrons. 

Lastly, on behalf of all of us, we want to thank you for participating in our annual customer survey. Your input helps us stay focused on initiatives that align with the demands of your business. The results will be presented at PACnet 09. We look forward to seeing you all there.

Sincerely,

Dave

Making Your Single Ticket Sales Easy
By James Kim, Ticketmaster, Irvine

Whether you’re selling single tickets for a live performance, football or basketball, they all need an optimum sales channel. As you’re planning your single ticket sales strategy, below are a few tips to make the sales process as easy as possible for you and your customers.

Sell Online Prior to Phones and Windows

• Reduce box office burden by taking advantage of your 24-7 online box office before selling through phones and windows
• Go on sale after your box office closes (e.g., on a Friday, “midnight madness” sale, etc.)
• Modify your after-hours and on-hold box office phone messages encouraging online ticket sales. Mention that the online box office provides the same best available seat access as phones and windows

Example: BYU’s men’s basketball single online promotion

Leverage Internet Presales and Promotions

Reward your preferred customers (season ticket holders, donors, alumni, sponsors and frequent buyers, etc.). Use presales, promotions or iProfiles to provide them the opportunity to buy tickets online before the general public

Example: DCPA utilized presales in the past to maximize their sales opportunity

Use Online Best Practices to Sell More Tickets

• Use clickable maps and view-from-seats to ensure the best online buying experience
• Include clear and effective delivery method instructions
• Entice customers to select print-at-home delivery by offering an online incentive (e.g., free print-at-home delivery vs. $5 for mail delivery). Combining online ticket sales with print-at-home delivery will make the sales process seamless and simple for you and your customers.

Example: University of Oregon used midnight online promotion to effectively sell their football single game tickets

Need ideas for your upcoming single event sales? Contact your Client Partner to create a comprehensive strategy.

Winning Box-Office Strategies
By Ellen Suwanski, Ticketmaster, Irvine

What if you could sell your single tickets without ever taking a customer service call or walk up order?

Sound too good to be true? Listen to what Jason Harris, the University of Oregon Assistant Ticket Director, had to say about promoting online single game tickets for football.

"We implemented a strategy that our client partner encouraged us to use," Harris said. "We started the onsale at midnight on a Friday and within hours we’d sold over 3,700 tickets. We’re very pleased with the results. When we came in Monday morning, the money was in the bank and we had no customer service complaints. What could be better?"

Oregon sold 4,440 tickets online over one weekend for its football singles public onsale that started on July 18th.

Example: Oregon’s Singles PACMail

The Midnight Madness sales strategy is simple. When business hours end on Friday, go home and leave it up to your Internet sales channel to deliver around-the-clock results.  Many universities successfully implement this strategy by leveraging the following marketing tactics:

1. Communicate to your fan base through a targeted email.
2. Put tickets on sale after office hours on Friday so fans will buy online.
3. Allow print-at-home capability, saving you time and printing costs.
4. Charge a smaller fee for online purchasing, an incentive for fans who won't have to pay -- and sweat out waiting -- for mail delivery or will call.
5. Package low-demand games with high demand games to increase sales.

The University of South Carolina applied sensible strategies to their single game efforts. They were able to increase attendance for low demand games by leveraging hot ticket games. By pairing the two types together in mini packs, it increased sales for higher inventory tickets.

Example: South Carolina’s Singles and Mini Pack PACMail

Many other universities have their own fresh take on promoting single game football tickets, and they achieve their goals for the season by tapping into new ways to increase online ticket sales. We invite you to continue sharing your success by participating in an open discussion within the Community Forums.

PACnet 09 Community Conference
By Craig Ricks, Ticketmaster, Irvine

Each year PACnet brings together hundreds of venues and business partners to inspire ideas and network for professional and personal growth. This year’s PACnet holds exciting tracks and content that will help you and your organization to:

• Share best practices with your peers
• Discover new trends and tools within the industry
• Reach further and sell more with new marketing programs
• Learn about product enhancements, Archtics, and our future vision
• Reconnect with friends and network with colleagues

Since PACnet 08, our community has continued to evolve as a member of the larger Ticketmaster family. Many of you have realized the benefits of new marketing opportunities to help you sell more.  During PACnet 09 you will hear these success stories, understand new tools available to you, and hear about our future vision.

New Tracks & Product Previews

By popular demand, we continue to offer tracks by market and function to allow you and your peers to discuss the topics most relevant to your business. Additionally, this year we will be adding an Archtics track to give you a preview of the Archtics product suite. Archtics is the foundation for the future, unified reserved seat ticketing platform. By attending PACnet, you will gain a preview of Archtics and learn more about the future platform that will offer a better solution than either product by itself offers today. You will also learn more about programs that take full advantage of the marketing and distribution power of Ticketmaster.

Sessions and Categories

We enhanced a few of your favorite aspects of PACnet to allow you to learn from your peers and internal experts while maintaining an intimate sense of community. In support of your feedback from last year, we continue to emphasized real-world success stories from industry colleagues in multiple formats including:

• Best Practices and Strategy Sessions
  Learn how innovators in the ticketing industry are leveraging smart tools and technology to build lifelong relationships with customers.
• Peer-to-Peer Learning
  Your peers face similar opportunities and challenges every day. Take part in our panel discussions and discover what others are doing to deepen customer relationships, grow revenues and impact their bottom line.
• Networking Events
  Meeting professionals in the entertainment industry couldn't be easier and is the perfect opportunity to enhance your career. Numerous casual events are planned for you to build new relationships - and strengthen existing ones.
• Activities and Entertainment
  In addition to the comprehensive daily sessions, PACnet offers an array of activities including the HACnet golf outing, the Hero’s Awards Luncheon and PACfest.

Be sure that you register for PACnet 09 to share success stories, inspire ideas and network. We look forward to seeing you on February 22nd at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa!

National College Football Promotion
By Craig Ricks, Ticketmaster, Irvine

In September, Ticketmaster launched a national college football promotion on Ticketmaster.com. This program features a football splash page with teams from across the country that is promoted nationally through website advertising. Customers seeking to purchase tickets are sent directly to each university’s eVenue site, delivering new customers and driving single ticket sales. After just two weeks of launching the program, the national promotion drew over 50,000 visits to the college football splash page.

To complement this program, many universities have listed home games on Ticketmaster.com, allowing customers to easily find their events during a search. The results of this initiative have been impressive. On average, 2-3% of participating university’s single, online ticket sales came directly through Ticketmaster.com.

What’s more, many clients have experienced a greater percentage of total online sales through the Ticketmaster.com channel.  The University of Miami, for example, sold 18% of their total online ticket sales through listings on Ticketmaster.com during the month of August.

“We moved to Dolphin Stadium this year for our home football games. The Dolphins are a Ticketmaster client, so we knew that many fans previously visited Ticketmaster.com to purchase tickets to Dolphin Stadium. We were very excited to learn that 18% of our total online sales for August came through Ticketmaster.com. It demonstrates Ticketmaster’s wide reach in the Miami market and helps us to sell ticket inventory online, “ said Stacey Bunting, Assistant AD for Ticket Operations, University of Miami.

In an effort to add value to their individual listings, several university clients included links to season ticket sales, mini packs, and their Ticket Marketplace sites. Boston College, for example, included a link to their Ticket Marketplace site to allow fans to purchase directly from season ticket holders. Venues also included videos and other venue information to enhance the purchasing experience. Oregon State University, for example, featured a promotional video on their Ticketmaster page to fuel fan’s passion for Oregon State football.

Benefits of Google Analytics
By Brandon O'Connor, Ticketmaster, Irvine

Have you ever wondered how users are behaving on your website? How they found your site or what causes them to abandon purchases? Well you are not alone. To find answers to the puzzling questions surrounding buyer tendencies, leading venues are utilizing the strength of Google Analytics to analyze and determine the impact of buyer behavior on their internet sales.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is free marketing software that paints a picture of how customers are behaving on your website. It involves placing a few lines of JavaScript code on your site to “track” their browsing patterns. You can gain useful information such as: How long the average customer spends on the website, the value of your average order, abandonment rates and much more.

How can this information help my business?

By having a firsthand look into user behavior, you can begin to make educated adjustments to your website that will increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction. The best part is you have tangible evidence that your changes are making an impact!

How do I implement Google Analytics for my website?

Implementing Google Analytics is easily completed in 3 steps:

1. Visit www.google.com/analytics and follow the simple instructions to set up your account
2. Copy the JavaScript code provided and send it to your web developer to have it applied to your home site.
3. Forward the code to your eCommerce Operations Specialist to have it added to eVenue

Once the code has been added to your website(s), it typically takes about 24-48 hours for the code to be verified and for data to begin to populate in the Google Analytics interface. From there, you have all the tools of Google Analytics at your disposal!

Who do I contact with questions about the software?

For questions on installing Google Analytics and verifying data, please contact your eCommerce Operations Specialist. For answers to any other questions, such as advanced functionality and troubleshooting, please visit Google’s support pages.

Early Adoption of 6.91 Enhancements Bring Additional Marketing Opportunities to Clients
By Mike Becker, Ticketmaster, Irvine

Arena operations director David Jones is not having a good day.  Presales of the latest ‘tween band – The Wicked Witches – start in less than ½ hour. Just 24 hours ago things were going smoothly: the event was set up in the system and tested; 2,500 seats were allocated for presale; and the promoter had emailed the fan club with the promo code. Then yesterday afternoon it happened: the marketing department had been monitoring Facebook as well as chat sites and started seeing the promo code posted all over the Internet.  With 15 minutes to go before the presale start time, there are 20,000 people online. 

Meanwhile 40 grocery store partners are calling because crowds have lined up to buy tickets at their local outlets in person –to be told it’s an online-only presale. The Piggly-Wiggly in the next town has had to call the police and the local radio station is taking live calls from the same angry fans that are now blocking the entrance to the grocery store. 

By the time the day ends, the venue is being hammered in the press because few fan club members were able to get presale tickets and instead are buying on secondary sites for over $1,000 per ticket.

Fast forward to Spring 2009: the same venue has a major act coming to town but this time operations are running smoothly: the presale has just finished and David Jones is running a report to show the promoter that 90% of the tickets were sold to the same fan club customers that the promoter emailed.  20% of the presales were handled through the grocery outlets.  The promoter has added a second show and isn’t overly concerned that they haven’t yet sold out; they know they can work with David’s team to create a special promotional offer to get a ½ price child’s ticket with the purchase of at least two adult tickets.

The difference?  In the second scenario the arena is using the new capabilities of tRes, eVenue, and WBST v6.91 to help manage the fan experience as well as to more effectively market the seat inventory.

One client, an early beta adopter of version 6.91, has found that it will transform the way they interact with fans, venues, sales channels, and promoters by getting creative with the marketing of ticket inventory.  And because the new features were implemented in multiple products, they are able to launch these programs out to multiple sales channels.

So what’s in 6.91 that makes it such a powerful marketing tool? 

1. The concept of eVenue promotion was extended to include Limited Use Passwords.  This allows a venue to import a list of passwords into tRes and associate it with a promotion.  In order to access promotions, users have to enter the promo code and a password.  Passwords can be set to expire after one or many uses; if set for a single use the password becomes invalid after the first person uses it to purchase tickets.  Best yet?  The promo and password features are now in eVenue as well as WBST for multiple channel sales.
   
   
2. Price Type Dependencies (PTDs) create required sales relationships between price types.  So if you’re creating a special discount offer on a child’s ticket, you can require the purchase of an adult, senior, or student ticket to get the child’s half-price ticket.
   
   
3. PTDs become even more powerful as new Order Quantity Rules are in place.  An extension of existing item or item/price level/price type Max quantity rules, the new Minimum and Multiple rules provide more opportunities for creative marketing.  In the PTD example above, you may want to ensure that a minimum of two adult, senior, or student tickets are purchased before the fan receives the discounted child’s ticket.  This combines both PTD (must by adult / senior/ or student to get child ticket) and Order Quantity Rules (must purchase a Minimum of two) in the sales process.  You have the option to also configure this by product sales channel in tRes, eVenue, and WBST.

Another early adopter of the 6.91 product – The Colorado Rockies – very quickly put some of these new features into use.  After going live on the beta version in August, the decision was made to start post-season presale distribution in September.  The Rockies did an internal test of Limited Use Passwords and then created a password-based promo sale with Order Quantity Rules to distribute post-season inventory to season ticket holders and other loyal customers. 

Kevin Fenton, Senior Director of Ticket Sales, Operations, and Service for the Rockies notes, “The new 6.91 features ensured that our best and most loyal customers were able to get seats during 2008 post-season presales.  If we had earned a playoff spot and opened up sales to the general public, 6.91 would have allowed us to provide a single-use password to better meet fan expectations.”

To hear about these and other new 6.91 features, be sure to check out upcoming weekly Learning Center activities, Online Tutorials on the PSO (due out in November), Release Notes, and the “What’s New” section of the 6.91 product documentation.

Learning Center Series
By Jason Evans, Ticketmaster, Irvine

The Learning Center Series (LCS) is dedicated to providing the latest innovative tips, tricks and best practices to optimize your usage of our systems’ features and functionality.  And, best of all, its FREE!  The Learning Center Series is presented every Wednesday at noon Pacific Daylight Time via GoToWebinar.  This allows you to easily join the presentation remotely from your office as well as the ability to participate in the Questions & Answers forum at the end of each session.

We constantly strive to improve the quality of our presentations and content for you, our client.  Your participation and constructive criticism assists us in “raising the bar;” proven by your responses to the LCS survey with such quotes as:

“Combining both visual and audio learning tools, LCS has provided me with a quick and easy way to keep my skills sharp; enhance my knowledge and keep me on top of my fundraising game.”

“The Learning Center Series is a great tool to gain more knowledge about different areas of the ticketing system. I always find a new trick or way of doing something that I didn't think of before; a great resource for both experienced and inexperienced users.”

“The Learning Center Series is the best continued training available at no additional cost.”

Please join us for the 4th Quarter of 2008.  To participate in the upcoming LCS sessions, simply register online via the Community Portal and preview upcoming events.

If you missed any of the previous LCS sessions, you will find them archived on Support Online and the Community Forums, Customer Education message board.

To access the LCS archives, simply follow these steps:

Paciolan Support Online

• Log into Support Online.
• Click the Documentation link. The Documentation Main Page displays.
• Click on Learning Center Series Archive link.

Community Forums

• Log into Community Forums.
• Scroll down and locate the Customer Education message board.
• Click on Learning Center Series link.

Highlighted Archived Sessions:

6.90 Release Sessions

• tFund and 6.90 Enhancements!
• Market Overview – College Athletics
• Market Overview – Pro Sports/Arenas/Distributors
• WBST and 6.90 Enhancements!
• What’s New in Version 6.90!