New Year’s Eve can be stressful, especially when you’re hosting a big event. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine it’s hours before you open and your mind is at ease because you have thousands of dollars in pre-sold tickets and you’ve already paid for your event — the rest is pure profit. This could be your reality, and it’s easier than you think.
Follow these steps to incentive your guests and earn more pre-sale revenue for your NYE event.
1. Set the price and use a yielding strategy
Encourage people to pre-purchase their tickets by creating supply and demand. Showing them your price will increase as the event gets closer creates demand for the few supply of early bird tickets. This is your yielding strategy. It’s all about dollars per square foot. You can set your tickets to increase price by the week, day or even hour leading up to your event. You can also set your tickets to increase by quantity after x amount of tickets are sold. Take this example (for easy math, let’s assume your have 100 tickets to sell):
• Tickets are released and priced at $50
• Once 25 tickets are sold (one-fourth of your venue), raise the price to $75
• Once 50 tickets are sold (half your venue), raise the price to $100
• Once 75 tickets are sold (three-fourths of your venue), raise the price to $125
• Once 90 tickets are sold, raise the price to $150
You can do this with any dollar increment, you can do this with any amount of tickets, and you can do this at any time interval. However you do it, it’s going to earn you more dollars per square foot per person, and it’s going to encourage people to buy early and have time to share their plans with others. After all, the majority of people attend NYE events based on where their friends are going.
2. Hit the sales and marketing ground hard
Marketing and sales go hand-in-hand. While your sales team is out there making transactions, make sure your marketing team is working alongside them with spreading the word. Use a multi-channel strategy to sell your tickets, such as one that consists of online, mobile, and in-person sales. Turn your promoters into mobile box offices by selling tickets to customers directly from their device. Leverage your third-party partnerships to expand your audience reach. Engage through social and make it easy for guests to share their purchase with their friends on their own social channels. All the channels working together at once is what drives awareness, buzz, and sales.
3. Strategize your lines the night-of
Using a big of strategy in your lines physically shows your guests why they should pre-purchase their tickets. Create a different line for a different type of customer, such as a line for your pre-sale customer and a line for customers paying at the door. This is allows your staff handling pre-sale checkin to only focus on that task and increase line speed. On the other hand, it allows you staff selling tickets at the door to only handle that task, aiding in long waits for door sales.
This not only sets your event up for greater success next year, but could also incentivize your guests to buy tickets while standing in line (for an even greater price, as discussed in your yielding strategy). The more organized your lines are, the faster your speed of night will be, the happier your customers will be, and the faster they’re through your door to spend money on drinks.
Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.
