This in-depth tutorial video demonstrates the process of how to create an event online. ThunderTix offers custom beneficial options for every venue. If you have any other questions, please check out our How To Guides and our Support Forum. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter (X), or read our blog.
Topics Covered:
- [0:19] - Event Basics
- [4:14] - Virtual Events Options
- [4:33] - Advanced Date Display Options
- [4:43] - Pre-Sale Announcement
- [5:51] - Post-Sale Announcement
- [7:30] - Event Restricted Users
- [7:56] - Advanced Ticket Options
- [8:36] - Waiting List
- [9:52] - Shipping and Fee Options
- [10:40] - Email Options
- [12:42] - Marketing Options
- [13:50] - Other Options
Create an Event Video Transcription:
Hello, and welcome. Today, I am going to show you how to create an event in ThunderTix. Before we get started, you should know that you can create as many practice events as you want before creating your real event. And don't worry because you can delete, or hide, any of your practice events. Ok, let's begin.
Click on the "Events" tab. Let's click on "Create event." To get started, create a name for your event. This is the name that will appear on the listing, tickets, and order confirmation, so let's choose a good one. I'm going to name mine "The Drowsy Chaperone." You also have the option to attach a seating chart to your event here. If you want to know more about that, be sure to watch our separate video on "Reserved Seating."
Today's event will be General Admission, and we're going to set the capacity to 575. Below that, we will input the date or dates of the event. Clicking here will open a calendar. Click on your desired date. Then move to the time field and use the dropdown to choose your time. Choose AM or PM, and then make sure to click "apply" in order to save your entry. Your event may have more than one date, or have multiple times. Does it repeat at the same time daily or weekly? Select that here. If you have multiple event showings, you can add those times by clicking here and repeating the previous steps. I'm going to make my performances repeat every Friday and Saturday for four weeks, with a Sunday matinee performance, as well.
Ok, here is where we create ticket types, such as Adult, Child, Military, or VIP. You can name your tickets anything you want, and set the price here, as follows. If your tickets are taxable, check this box here. You can set your sales tax rate from your Account Settings, and we cover that and other account details in another video, as well. You also have the option to include a "Pay What You Can" ticket. Further details are covered in the "Managing Tickets Video."
You may elect to waive fees for any order on the checkout page. There are a couple scenarios in which you may want to check "waive fees" when creating a ticket. Imagine an event where tickets are $50 for Adults, $45 for Seniors, and $0 for Children. If you're charging a fee of $1.50 per ticket, it makes sense that you may not want fees to be assessed on the children tickets. Similarly, a venue might have ticket types of members and non-members, where members have the added benefit of never having to pay ticket fees. "Waive fees" ensures that the ticket buyer purchasing tickets from home isn't charged any fees on any tickets where "waive fees" is enabled.
Then, you have the option of displaying a description that customers will see beneath each ticket name. This helps customers fully understand the type of ticket they're purchasing. For example, when patrons see an option for "Military," you could include a description that reads "must show a valid military ID upon arrival."
Here, we set the limit of the number of this ticket type sold. For example, if you offer a VIP ticket, you may only offer a maximum of 20 VIP tickets before that option is sold out. But, in most cases, this should be left blank. We cover the remaining options in more detail in our "Managing Tickets Video."
We should create a description for our event, providing details designed to entice customers to purchase. Include all the important details in here. Next, let's add at least one eye-catching picture that appears with the event description. If you add multiple images, we'll create a slideshow of all images automatically. Lastly, you'll want to look over your event address, since this is the address your patrons will see in their confirmation email and on the tickets. Click "change" and edit, if needed.
At this point, we've entered all of the required fields to build our event and we can choose to "Finish" and save the event. Please note that this "Finish" button will only appear once all required fields have been entered. There are plenty more advanced options at your disposal, and while they are all optional, they cover the fine-grain details you might need to make your event a success. We are going to cover them now.
Here you can use the toggle button to set your event to "Virtual." Over on the right, we see the "Virtual Event Delivery Options." You can choose either one of these. "Other" is for every other type of streaming media service outside of Zoom webinars, including YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Next, let's click the "Advanced Date Display Options." Here, you can choose an activation date for your event. This is the date and time that tickets will be available for public sale. The pre-sale announcement is designed to show the event as an upcoming show on your website, prior to tickets going on sale. This announcement is hidden by default, and will appear any time the activation date is set to sometime in the future. This announcement will be displayed instead of our event description that we made earlier, and is our opportunity to let people know about the event and when tickets will be available for purchase. I'm going to use the same event description in the pre-sale announcement by copying and pasting it here, and adding a line saying when tickets go on sale. Then, we'll choose when our pre-sale announcement should be activated for the public.
The password protected pre-sale enables you to sell tickets as a pre-sale to a select group of customers. Enter a password that you would provide to your pre-sale or member list here.
Next is the event expiration. By default, the event will come offline at midnight, CST, on the final day of the event. I'm going to set the event to expire on January 28th at 4pm, one hour into the final performance time.
Below that, is the post-sale announcement. This is applicable for events that have just one date. This keeps the event displaying on your website with a message when your event is no longer available for sale. It's helpful when tickets aren't available online, but may still be purchased at the box office. This is where we could set a date to remove the "Buy Tickets" button and show a custom message. Since my event has multiple performances, it doesn't make sense for me to use a post-sale announcement, since I can set a custom message per performance in my Account Settings.
Once the event is sold, we'll automatically indicate that to your customers by displaying the words "Sold Out" in place of the "Buy Tickets" button. If you want to change the "Sold Out" message, click here. This is utilized in the case you held tickets back from your online inventory to sell tickets at the door. Event dates and times are automatically displayed on each ticket, the website, and in the email receipt. Now, we have an option to replace the actual event date with your own text. But that really only applies for festivals that sell multi-day events or for creating the sale of something that isn't an actual event, like flex passes. We cover multi-day festival event creation in our Support Forum.
Below, choose how the public can access your event. Options are Public, Semi-Private, and Private. The important difference is that Semi-Private events are not shown in your full events list, and can only be accessed with a unique link, or through separately embedding them on your website. Private events are only accessible to administrators that are logged in to your box office portal.
In this section, if you need to assign users only to specific events, they will show up in this list. This is a great way to provide event access when an organization is renting your space. Event restricted users are provided access to their own ticket sales and reports any time, without seeing your own in-house events. You can select which event restricted users can access this event here.
Let's move on to "Advanced Ticket Options." First, let's look at ticket availability. Here, we can set a maximum number of tickets than can be purchased per order. ThunderTix allows ticket buyers to purchase up to 300 tickets for Reserved Seating and General Admission events. We recommend you set a much lower limit here. I'm going to set mine to 8. Here, you have the option of telling customers when your ticket inventory is getting low, generating a sense of urgency to act fast. Enter the inventory threshold when you want customers to start seeing how many tickets are remaining, and we'll display a message such as "Only 17 tickets!"
For sold out events, we offer a waiting list option. If you set this to zero or any other number, the waiting list option will be displayed when that many tickets remain, allowing your customers to enter their contact information and the number of tickets they wish to purchase, so you can let them know if tickets become available. This is especially useful if your event is Reserved Seating and there are just a few seats left, but they are all single seats. The waiting list would be perfect to notify potential customers if two seats together become available. However, if you leave this blank, the waiting list option will not be displayed. We'll set ours to the standard option of zero.
To the right, you have the option of requiring or requesting a customer name per ticket. For standard events, we automatically collect the name of the person purchasing the tickets, but not a separate name for each guest. The second choice is to optionally request a name per ticket. Now, the last option is only recommended if your event is a camp, a conference, or something similar that requires an attendee name per ticket.
Next, you can customize the "Buy Tickets" button. The default wording is "Buy Tickets," but here you can change that for classes or camps to something more appropriate like "Register" or "Enroll Now."
Next, click on "Shipping and Fee Options." Here is where ThunderTix gives you complete control over your event's pricing and fees. You can go fee-free, charging only the cost of the ticket, or add fees to offset your own expenses and keep all revenue generated. Give the fee a name like "service fee" and either a dollar or percentage value, charged per ticket or per order. Some of our clients add a small fee to help cover the cost of staffing a box office or to cover credit card costs. Here, you can specify different shipping options and any associated costs. Name each shipping fee based on the options you offer for your event. For some shipping options like "Will Call" or "Postal Mail," you can disable the print-at-home PDF, especially if those options are designated for thermal tickets or souvenir tickets.
All right, now click on "Email Options." Every customer will receive a confirmation email receipt after their purchase. By default, every event will have an electronic PDF ticket generated with a unique barcode per ticket emailed to the person who paid for the order. You can disable the e-ticket if you are handling your actual tickets another way, such as sending by regular mail. You also have the option of including a branded event image, or advertisement, that will appear in each e-ticket here. These images could advertise other upcoming events you're hosting, provide a coupon for future purchases at your venue, or you can utilize the space as part of an event sponsorship package for sponsor ads. Here, if desired, add a short message to appear on the e-ticket, which is a great place to say what time doors open. Once the event is created, you'll have the option to fully customize the PDF ticket by choosing your own ticket background, choosing font sizes and colors, and determining which elements you want included on the event ticket.
Beneath this, we have the option to send email reminders to all attendees just before the event, reminding them about the show, as well as a post-event email and survey. Should we choose either or both of these options, we'll be able to design them once we finish creating our event.
Post-event emails can be enabled for all events within your Account Settings, or individually per event, and will be automatically sent out the morning after each event. Customize your post-event emails to include your own wording, survey, and links to review your business on sites like Google, Yelp, or TripAdvisor. In these boxes, customize the message included at the top and bottom of this event's confirmation email. You might include venue information, parking instructions, or other important details, and it's completely customizable with HTML. At the bottom right, we have the option to customize reservation emails for future payment. You can also click on this link to customize settings related to reservations.
Next, click on Marketing Options. Here, we have the option to select a genre for this event or create a new one. You can associate an event with one or more genres here, which can make searching for customers for marketing purposes, easier. We cover that in our video on Managing Customer Data.
Next, you can attach surveys to collect up to five additional fields during the checkout process. One of the most common surveys has just the single question, "How did you find out about us?" with a dropdown list of choices of all the places you may be advertising to better measure the return on your investment. Once you've created some surveys, you'll be able to choose which you want to include, if any, here. You can find surveys under the Surveys tab on your left menu to customize your survey. You can always edit an event after it's created to add a survey.
MailChimp and Constant Contact are great marketing tools to update your customers about upcoming events. When you connect ThunderTix to your MailChimp or Constant Contact accounts, your email lists will appear here, and we'll automatically subscribe buyers who opt in to your email list at checkout.
And lastly, let's examine Other Options. If you are a non-profit organization or your event is a fundraiser, enable the option that allows patrons to give a donation with their ticket purchase. You can customize the message that appears with the donation option here. If the patron chooses to donate, they can apply the donation directly towards one of the fundraising campaigns that you've already established. This way, your patrons know exactly where their money is going and what efforts they are donating to.
If you have a large number of coupons and you want all of them to be valid for this event, you can make them all valid here. Note that you cannot undo this option once this event has been applied as valid for all coupons.
Next, you have the option to require a coupon per ticket purchased for this event. This is designed for offering a pre-sale for a limited audience like flex pass subscribers or for an invite-only private event. We'll allow a purchase to that event only to those who have a valid code. When the presale ends, you can edit your event to remove this requirement. The next option is to show your attendee list to the public. This is usually only done for events like conferences and registrations, where attendees know each other and want to see who else is attending.
Alright, you have successfully created an event in ThunderTix! If you have any more questions, be sure to take a look at our other tutorial videos and how-to guides. Thank you for watching!