There’s no doubt promoters are a critical component to making the night a success. They’re charged with bringing the right people in on a consistent basis, building relationships with customers to keep them coming back, and marketing your major events. But too many venues are giving promoters too much operational responsibility, which actually hurts your night’s results instead of enhancing them.
The biggest mistake we see venues make when it comes to their promoters is giving them access to the club’s general inbox to communicate with guests. This is an issue for a number of reasons, such as:
• They have their own interest in mind and not your venue’s as a whole. This damages your reputation and brand image.
• They may not pass information on to management that should be passed on. This is when tables get double-booked, reservations are uncounted for, and guests aren’t given the experience they expect.
• They don’t know who your high-profile guests are or how to communicate with them in your brand voice, again damaging your reputation and brand image.
• They may offer other services that benefit them personally, rather than upselling customers on specials your venue is running. This decreases your profit opportunities and hinders customer loyalty.
Instead, venues should loop promoters in with their overall business by training them on operations, informing them of business goals, and providing them with the right tools – such as an integrated platform with a way to track referrals.
There are systems available that give all staff members – including promoters – a personal login to handle guest management and point of sale. Through this type of system, promoters can add guests to the guestlist, create a VIP reservation, or even sell a ticket to your event. It’s an easy solution for your promoters to sell in real-time and generate instant sales for your club without having them access your general club’s inbox and operational processes.
What’s more is this system has tracking measures in place to help you truly understand how well you promoters are working for you, tying an individual customer’s attendance to a promoter’s work. The system tracks the referrer of an individual customer, VIP reservation, or guestlist party, making it easier to identify who’s bringing in the most traffic. Once these customers are in the club, the technology can continue to track spending habits, such as product type and amount. This makes it easier for you to identify not only who’s bringing in the most traffic, but also who’s bringing in the best traffic.
Information about specific customers is clutch in understanding what is and isn’t working at your club. Information that ties back to each one of your promoters is even more valuable. This gives you more insight on which promoters are brining in the most customers, the best customers, and even the most money. All of this allocates you to make better, more logical business decisions while still keeping your brand intact.
Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottes.com.
