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Boost Entries With These 12 Simple Tips!

Here are some top tips to kick start sluggish ticket sales

It has been and will continue to be tough trading for event organisers, consumer confidence is low and entries for many events are down and frustratingly last minute too. 

Right now it's important not to let poor ticket sales get you down because there are plenty of things you can quickly and easily do that will help increase entries short term and make a big difference to your sales long term.

Here are some top tips to kick start sluggish ticket sales

 

Build a brand with a loyal following

Take every opportunity to build your brand, everything online from your logo, your website’s landing page, race pages, entry form, email messages, social media pages and posts contribute to your brand’s identity and perception of your business.

Make sure your brand, logos, fonts, images and colours are the only brand attributes your prospects and customers will encounter from the moment they learn about your event through registration to race day and beyond.

Be merciless, don't send your hard-won prospects to external websites where they may encounter different brands and or events, become confused, distracted or tempted to click-away to enter a competing event. 

See more about brand-building tools.


Use email marketing to deliver powerful personalised selling messages

Email is an outstanding value for money way to communicate directly with your participants.  It’s convenient and allows you to send personalised and relevant marketing message which will be ready and waiting for the recipient in their inbox so they can read it when it suits them.

eventrac's integrated email lets you create professional email marketing messages and there's no need to create and export lists to an expensive third party email service like MailChimp nor get to grips with yet another software program.

See more about inbuilt email marketing


Try referral marketing to reward loyalty and secure new entries

It’s natural for a happy customer to share their enthusiasm for an event that they feel their friends and family will be interested in. We all do that! 

Let eventrac automate that enthusiasm for you. Each and every participant that enters your events gets their own unique referral code.  As your participants start referring their friends, you can send rewards and personalised congratulatory messages to your top performers and motivating messages to encourage non-performers to join in.

See more about referral marketing


Boldly promote refund protection to boost consumer confidence

Boldly promote refund protection benefits to COVID cautious prospects, so they know they can confidently enter an event and they won’t be left out of pocket if the worst happens to them.

More so, offering refund protection will make you money.  You keep any revenue gained from registrations that are later cancelled and you can then resell those cancelled entry slots.  Refund protection is a win-win for you and your customers and you will even generate additional revenue from each refund protection sale.

See more about refund protection


Use automated tiered pricing Calls-To-Action to prompt entries

Research shows 20% of all registrations are within 3 days of a price increase or registration closing  proving that time-based calls to action are a reliable method for prompting sign-ups.

Promote scarcity and FOMO with automated pricing tiers and limited time discount codes combined with personalised email marketing messages and social media posts around the normal peaks, registration opening, a price increase 1-2 months before race day, and the build up to race week to boost entries. 

See more about automated tiered pricing


Try promo / discount codes to drive new participant entries

Promo Codes work well because you’re providing participants with a great incentive to sign-up, which benefits both you and them.  New and existing participants get to sign-up to race with you at a lower price, and you generate instant revenue, increased loyalty and gain new participants, that’s a great win-win.

One of the great things about Promo Codes is that they are trackable so it's easy to see where your business is coming from, which social media platforms or third party listing sites are generating the most traffic or leading to conversions.

See more about promo codes


Increase entries with Bundle, Multi-Buy & Series tickets

With increased competition and rising customer acquisition costs, Bundle, Multi-Buy and Series tickets are an easy way to make your races more financially attractive to customers.

Bundle, Multi Buy and Series Ticket Pricing are different ways to combine several races or race entries into a single item sold at a discounted price.

Bundle Tickets

Race bundle tickets are made up of at least two different races, sometimes more.

Example;  Enter two races for 10% discount or three races for 20% off etc

Multi-Buy or Team Tickets

Multi-buy ticket deals are for groups, teams, charity partners or corporate clients with a number of entrants for the same race.

Example;  One nominated person purchases a batch of five tickets (discounted by say 12.5% each) ahead of entering individual entrant details at a later date.

Series Tickets

Series race tickets are deals for a specified set of races sold as one product. 

Example;  Your Triple Crown is the three most important, difficult or prestigious events in your calendar, a series, available to purchase as one discounted product. 

See more about bundle, multi-buy and series tickets


Sell gift cards to boost race entries all year round

Offering gift cards for your events is a great way to win new customers. Send personalised email marketing messages to inform existing customers they can purchase gift cards.

Get them to introduce their friends and family to your races, by gifting them with a gift card on their birthday or any number of special occasions including:

  • Valentine's Day - 14 February
  • Mothers’ Day - 27 March 
  • Easter Sunday - 17 April
  • Fathers’ Day - 19 June
  • Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas etc

You can also reward your participants with gift cards when they refer their friends to your races.

See more about gift cards


Use third party event listing sites to top up your marketing efforts

A lot of people look for events through event sites, that’s why we have pre-made integrations with some of the industries most popular third party marketing sites, such as:

  • Lets Do This
  • Find A Race
  • runABC

These powerful integrations mean you can benefit from multiple sales channels whilst retaining one easy to use admin system to comprehensively track and manage your entries and control you marketing spend. 

See more about eventrac marketing tools


Get engaged on social media to drive positive brand awareness and entries

Providing quick, honest answers to questions that potential customers have about your events is an excellent way to increase sales, as the more attention you are perceived as paying to potential customers, the more likely people are to want to race with you. 

This simple protocol also results in positive social media interaction among your audience – that’s exactly the kind of brand exposure you need to increase your brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and entries too.


Make event entry quick and easy!

Your website is the place for prospective entrants to explore your brand, interact and enter, so the process for prospects to find and register to race should be as easy as possible:

  • You should make it as easy as possible for visitors to use and navigate your site.
  • Use an entry widget like eventrac's that avoids the need to redirect participants to a third-party site to make their booking!
  • Eliminate any unnecessary fields in your entry forms, do you need that information now, could you collect it later? Focus on getting that entry over the line. 
  • Research suggests that each additional question on your form can negatively impact on the number of people going on to enter.

Finally! Use tracking links to measure your marketing success

If you’ve been persuaded by any of the above please don’t forget to use tracking links to identify which marketing channels are working for you.  Track the effectiveness of specific email marketing messages, social media posts and measure top level third-party marketing sites' performance to identify what's generating the highest entries, so you can make sure you spend your marketing budget where it’s most effective. 


Schedule a brief chat with us to explore using eventrac’s automated entry boosting toolset.

Schedule a chat with us or a demo to find out more about how eventrac’s automated marketing tools and integrated email service can help power up your entries.