2014 is just around the corner, but there is still time before baby New Year arrives! New Year's Eve Events still have time to plan! If you are managing a New Year's Eve event here's why you should use ticketing software...
New Year's Eve 2013
Be it a community gathering, a fun year-end business function or a proper for-profit party, any New Year’s Eve events can benefit from the use of a ticketing software. Selling tickets online can help get more guests to commit to your event and allow you to communicate with all your guests easily. Organizing and managing a New Year’s Eve event can have some unique challenges, the first being that there are so many NYE parties. Fortunately, that happens to be one of the problems ticketing software can solve! :D
In addition to the glut of competing events all happening at the same time - which can dilute your ticket sales - there are other challenges. Like how to communicate to ticket holders if any event information changes at the last minute, or finding event underwriters to lower overhead costs. Let’s tackle these one at a time...
Alphabet Soup - NYE RSVP, 1:M & B2B
"Répondez s'il vous plaît" or R.S.V.P. was originally a casual French etiquette that began in the late 18th century. Later, author Emily Post adopted the practice and changed its meaning to be much more stringent. Post advised anyone receiving an R.S.V.P. invitation to reply promptly, and not doing so was, in her words, "inexcusably rude."
New Year’s Eve is one of the most densely packed days of the year for events, making modern online R.S.V.P. a mandatory practice for event managers. The trick is to get guests to commit to the New Year’s Eve event as early as possible, and then follow-up periodically with email reminders of the attendee's commitment. The periodic reminders are especially critical for free or pay-at-the-door events since no monetary commitment has been made, and thus a no-show more likely.
Of course, NYE events that sell event tickets online enjoy a much higher commitment from attendees, but the same periodic email reminders are still a good practice. Whether free or paid, events using ticketing software for R.S.V.P. will be able to collect contact email addresses as part of the R.S.V.P. confirmation. The (required) confirmation email address entered during the reservation process is stored in the ticketing software and then exported to popular contact management software like MailChimp.
With the R.S.V.P. locked-in, the first event manager problem is solved, but what about communicating with guests just hours before the event? A previous post looked at the need to communicate one-to-many (aka "1:M") when everyone is en route or already at the event. If the R.S.V.P confirmation process required a contact phone number, there is a new tool called Gather that lets you communicate to your ticket buyers by text message (SMS).
For example, if you’re hosting an event and you just learned that your speaker is stuck in traffic, or that the caterer is a no-show, you can’t send an urgent email to your attendees and expect that they’ll be checking their inboxes. Email’s fast, but it’s just not NOW. That’s why we created Gather. It’s “MailChimp for SMS.”
New Year’s Eve can be fraught with not only traffic jams but bad weather as well. Should there be a drastic change in the NYE party location or start time, event managers can use a tool like Gather to let everyone know even at the very last minute (If the event is pay-at-the-door, last minute one-to-many communications can save a New Year's Eve event financial ruin!).
And speaking of finances, the production costs of a New Year's Eve event can be recuperated through event underwriters and advertising. Big rock concerts are well known for using event underwriting, but the practice is actually applicable to any sized event. One need not rename New Year’s Eve their event the way rock concert do ("Coca-Cola presents...") in order to attract underwriters and advertisers.
After establishing a business-to-business (B2B) agreement, it is just a matter of bringing the sponsor to the attention of attendees in a tasteful way. A wide array of options are available, from banner advertising inside the venue, to printing the name of the underwriter on the tickets. Event managers can spread the overhead costs across many underwriters and advertisers, or let just one company foot the bill for all productions costs.
ThunderTix Event Ticketing Software
R.S.V.P., 1:M and B2B all have one thing in common - ticketing software. There's too much at stake for your big New Year's Eve event to let last minute no-shows or inclement weather become a factor.
ThunderTix ticketing software can help make your NYE event more profitable with our branded PDF ticket technology. You can add the names of your event underwriters to the branded PDF tickets in return for their financial contribution to production costs.
In a hurry to implement ticketing software right away to lock in as many New Year's Eve guest as possible? Contact us at your convenience and get started today.
Image source: Wiki Commons