Proven Strategies to Skyrocket Your Ticket Sales with TicketSpice
At TicketSpice, we love to see sell-out events, record revenue, and attendees who leave raving about their experience. If you’re an event organizer, chances are you love to see it too.
That’s why we created a comprehensive document with 20 secrets behind the highest-performing pages. But we've got you if you don’t have time to download and read through the whole PDF.
This article covers the key components that separate a decent event ticketing page from a high-converting, revenue-boosting, sell-out success story.
Let’s dive in.
1. Offer Upsells on Your Ticketing Page
When attendees are on your ticketing page, they’re already pulling out their credit cards. Why not give them the option to add an exclusive VIP experience, a meal package, or a backstage pass with a simple click?
The stats tell us that 15% of attendees will say yes when offered an upsell. Preselling add-ons can boost revenue (small add-ons add up fast), shorten the lines, and lead to happier attendees. Instead of waiting in line for an hour to pick up a themed sweatshirt at the haunt, attendees can arrive stoked in their swag.
🔑The bottom line is if you’re not offering upsells, you’re leaving money on the table.
2. Increase the Ticketing Fee
Every penny counts when you’re trying to host a profitable event. Passing on the ticketing fees to your customers is one action that can tip the scale and make the difference between a profitable event and an event that doesn’t exist next year.
If you’re worried about how attendees will react to an added fee, remember that costs are rising everywhere, and your event shouldn’t be the exception. If people can stomach a 20% increase in their morning coffee, they can handle a reasonable 5-6% bump in your ticket prices.
⭐Customer Spotlight: One TicketSpice customer grossed over one million a year by the ticket markup alone!
3. Enable Optional Donations
People want to support causes they care about. Give attendees an easy way to donate by adding an optional donation field on your ticket page; you might be surprised by their generosity!
💰Pro tip: Increase donation enrollment to 80% by setting a preselected default donation amount. Ticket purchasers can always opt out by selecting $0.
4. Turn Attendees Into Marketers
When it comes to events, few people want to attend alone, and nobody wants to pay full price. Why not launch a referral or ambassador program so you can reward attendees for bringing friends? Here are a few ways it can work:
🔑 Let ticket purchasers earn 5-10% by sharing your event on social media.
🔑 Offer a partial refund for each referral or give a discount to both the new and existing attendees.
🔑 Try a classic BOGO, so attendees can bring a friend for free.
Attendees are already excited about your event. Reward them for spreading the word, and reap the benefits of increased exposure.
5. Offer Purchase Protection
Without purchase protection, attendees worry about the unexpected, and event organizers worry about losing money from refunds and no-shows. With Purchase Protection, attendees don’t have to hesitate at checkout.
Attendees pay a small fee upfront, and then if something comes up—be it illness, work conflicts, or a family emergency, they’ll receive a refund through purchase protection. Attendees have more peace of mind, and you’ll see more conversions.
6. Create Urgency with Time-Sensitive Deals
Procrastination is human nature, but there are ways to motivate people to act. Use a countdown clock that ticks down the seconds to a price increase or display the ever-dwindling number of tickets. A little scarcity goes a long way in getting people to take action quickly!
7. Design a Page That Builds Trust
Sure, maybe someone on staff watched a graphic design tutorial once and offered to cobble together an event website, but you may want to pass. Your event page design matters—a lot. According to the stats, 50% of consumers consider the design and professional look before entering their credit card for an online purchase.
A polished, branded ticketing page reassures buyers and boosts conversions. TicketSpice is simple enough for you to make a professional and branded ticketing page without needing to be a graphic designer.
8. Speed Up Checkout
If your page loads slowly, or takes a long time to fill out, you’re losing sales—fast.
⏳ More than half of buyers will leave if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
⏳For every extra page, conversions decrease by 10% shouldn’t slow down your sales.
At TicketSpice, we optimize for speed by providing a single page, no account, checkout process. You can sell out in minutes, not days or weeks, and keep track of it all with the analytics dashboard.
9. Prioritize Mobile
With more than 60% of ticket sales taking place on mobile devices, prioritizing the mobile view is critical. Here are four ways TicketSpice helps ensure your customers enjoy an easy mobile ticketing experience:
➡️ Set up a mobile responsive ticket sale page.
➡️ Offer ticket reservations.
➡️ Deliver tickets via text message.
➡️ Provide mobile tickets and scanning.
Implement these tips so attendees can easily navigate through your event with their small screens.
10. Use Social Proof to Drive More Sales
When it comes to your event, peer pressure can be a good thing. Showcase recent ticket sales and website visitors in a small pop-up on your page. Social proof creates excitement, and urgency, reminding ticket purchasers that tickets are limited. FOMO is real, and the more people see others signing up, the faster they’ll act.
11. Get Found on Google
Google is on a mission to index every website on the planet. Here’s how you can maximize your SEO and get a better ranking on your ticketing page.
🔎 Utilize the title tags and description of your ticketing page to add SEO keywords
🔎 Include your city, event name, and the words “buy tickets” in your metadata.
🔎 Remember, the easier it is to find you, the more tickets you’ll sell.
🔎 Use the TicketSpice feature, Google’s Event Discovery. It will list your event in Google anytime someone searches for events near them, all at no cost to you.
12. Reward Repeat Attendees
It’s easier and less expensive to retain an attendee than win over a new one. Here are three ways you can incentivize past attendees to return:
➡️ Exclusive coupon codes - Give past attendees a chance to return at a discounted rate by offering them an exclusive coupon code.
➡️ Season passes - For recurring events and attractions, consider offering a season pass ticket that allows attendees to return again and again. Whether you run a zoo, a museum, or a U-pick berry farm, entice your attendees to become regulars by rewarding them with a deal.
➡️ Memberships - Consider using a membership model, where attendees pay a recurring fee but then are rewarded for their loyalty with special ‘members-only’ pricing and perks.
13. Use Paid Ads to Reach the Right People
“If you build it, they will come” is a movie line—not a marketing strategy. In the real world, event pros are utilizing Facebook and Google Ads to promote their event locally to targeted audiences who meet certain interests.
TicketSpice also has sophisticated tools that work directly with Facebook to track conversions accurately so you can make data-driven decisions knowing your ROI.
14. Automate What You Can
The most successful ticket events are using automation to connect their TicketSpice account to their favorite services and apps. Automating your admin work, in particular, will save you time, money, and effort.
Connect your TicketSpice account to Zapier, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, and more to sync data automatically, reduce manual entry errors, and streamline your workflow.
Pro tip: Use the TicketSpice email drip campaign feature to automate a series of emails.
15. Use Graphics to Build Hype
The most successful ticketing pages let their audiences know when deals are happening and when promotions are expiring. They also generate hype around the attractions and experiences.
Use event graphics to make announcements, highlight low-inventory, or promote a flash sale. Not up for the headache of designing these yourself? No problem. The TicketSpice ad designer provides done-for-you graphics that you can customize and export within your TicketSpice account.
16. Leverage Demand-Based Pricing
The most profitable events take advantage of TicketSpice's dynamic pricing options. Here are four ways you can use demand pricing to increase your revenue and manage crowds.
➡️ Offer a lower price for the first 100 tickets.
➡️ Increase the prices for the last 100 tickets or day of tickets to encourage early commitment.
➡️ Heavily discount the least popular days or times of day.
➡️ Increase prices for the most popular days, such as Halloween night at the Haunt.
All of these rules can be set up using Actions in your TicketSpice account.
17. Let Attendees Buy Tickets via Text
No one likes waiting in line. With the text messaging feature, attendees can text a number and get an instant link to buy their ticket—before they even show up. You can simply display signs with the text-for-tickets phone number or QR codes for attendees to scan and purchase their tickets onsite.
18. Don’t Close the Doors Too Soon
Procrastinators, last-minute buyers, and people who wake up with an urge to attend your event on the day always exist. Don’t shut them out!
Some event organizers will close online sales because they need to export and sync ticket sales data to scanners ahead of their event. With TicketSpice, however, you can keep sales running all day long on the day of your event. New orders will arrive on your ticket scanners within about 90 seconds of purchase.
The bottom line is, if tickets are still available, keep sales open.
19. Maximize Sponsorship Opportunities
Utilizing sponsors for your event can offset some major event expenses. In addition to improving the event experience, the sponsorship dollars you rake in will be 100% pure profit, but to acquire sponsors you need to provide value.
Here are ways you can add value to your sponsor
➡️ Include the sponsor logo on the digital and printed tickets.
➡️ Include sponsors on the ticketing page header graphics and on the confirmation page.
➡️ When ticket purchasers complete a ticket purchase, provide a link to the sponsor’s page with a special offer.
➡️ Email your attendees with an email mentioning and thanking sponsors. You can include discount codes and incentives for attendees to patronize sponsors.
20. Sell Tickets for Next Year Now
As your event wraps up, catch your attendees at the height of their excitement and pre-sell for next year. Simply clone your ticketing page from this year with next year’s dates. Entice attendees to commit to next year by offering a one-time-only discount.
Offering an exclusive deal to attendees while they’re still buzzing from an amazing experience gives you a cash infusion and a jump start for next year.
Final Takeaways
Alas, if you take these 20 secrets and implement them on your ticketing page, your ticket sales will soar. You can download the full PDF here. If you have any questions about these strategies or how you can apply them, feel free to reach out to our support team.
We’re here to help you have your best event yet!
— The TicketSpice Team
