Top tips for making your event a success in 2022

As we head full steam into 2022 and event preparations ratchet up a notch, we’ve put together a handy guide on some top tips – from marketing campaigns to access control and cashless payments – in order to help make your event a success this year.‍

Pick the right ticketing partner

‍
‍This one may be a little tricky if you’re already on sale, but if you’re not, we recommend picking a ticketing partner that can do more than just ticketing, such as one that also offers marketing, travel packages and access control (like we do at Event Genius). Managing an event is arguably one of the most stressful jobs going, so being able to partner with a single company that can handle all range of operations is a great way of allowing yourself to focus on what you do best – creating unforgettable events. 

‍Nail your marketing campaign

‍With our Festicket website and app being the world’s largest music festival marketplace, marketing is a major part of what we do here at Event Genius. Whether you’re already on sale or yet to launch, there are a few great things you can do to help boost awareness of your event and ultimately increase ticket sales.

One of those is PR and content marketing. These are ideal channels to tell the story of your event beyond typical sales communications and helps existing and potential event-goers feel valued and really buy into your event experience. What’s more, successful PR can work wonders for SEO. Backlinks from high-quality websites will boost your own website’s score and make Google see you as the main authority on your event.

Another is email marketing, ideally taking advantage of automated email campaigns like we offer our partners here at Event Genius. Manually creating and managing a number of email campaigns and segments is a challenge for any team, let alone a team already spinning many plates. We offer our partners the opportunity to activate a variety of automated email campaigns, such as on sale, last chance, upsell, abandon basket and abandon browse. You can find out more about our automated email offering by clicking here.

‍Combining these online channels, and others such as social media and an affiliate network, as well as leveraging offline channels such as pop-up activations, can really help increase awareness and sales for your event. 

Read more:

•  Which marketing channels should you be using for your events?
•  How to activate the perfect pre-awareness campaign to have a sellout ticket onsale
•  How to activate the perfect international marketing strategy for your event or festival
•  How to launch your brand new event or festival‍‍‍‍

‍Offer your fans multiple payment options to increase conversion rates

‍
‍A sure-fire way to increase conversion rates is to offer your customers a variety of payment options. Examples include our payment plans, which allow customers to spread the cost of their booking over a number of months. Not only does this raise conversion rates, but it also boosts average order values too. This is something Spanish festival Primavera Sound took advantage of as they made us their Official Payment Plan Provider in order to help them sellout their 2022 edition in just ten days. 

Another way of encouraging conversions is by allowing buyers to easily split the costs of their bookings with friends, much like our Pay with Friends feature. Group bookings are highly valuable and so making this process as easy and stress-free as possible for consumers is a no-brainer.

Read more:

•  Primavera Sound, BST Hyde Park, Coachella and others use Payment Plan to help increase sales in midst of COVID-19
•  How our flexible payment plan solutions will boost your sales
•  Revolutionise your group bookings & boost conversion rates with Pay with Friends‍‍‍‍

Ensure a seamless access experience for event-goers

‍
‍Accessing an event is like first impressions in the world of live events. This is usually the first physical interaction that ticket-holders will have with your event and often sets the tone. Fortunately there are a number of easy ways to make this experience as swift and efficient as possible.

For a start, ditch paper tickets and go digital. There are a whole host of benefits to making the switch, including faster ingress, allowing event-goers to easily share tickets, saving on postal costs, ensuring you are track and trace compliant, and generally streamlining your whole access system. Moreover, by using digital tickets you can also stay on sale right up until the event, and activate instant syncing with our egAccess access control solution.

A few other ways of improving the experience for event-goers is by setting up multiple access points or selling time-specific entry tickets to reduce queues and audience swell. But arguably most important of all is ensuring your ticket scanners and other tech can handle the demands of your event and location, especially if internet connectivity could be patchy. We’d also recommend using a solution that can integrate with all your ticketing agents, meaning you won’t need to set up separate entry points for each agent. 

Read more:

•  How to create the perfect Access Control experience for your event or festival‍‍‍‍‍

‍Install a COVID-secure cashless payments system and boost spend

‍According to a survey we conducted last year, 70% of event-goers said they’d be more likely to attend an event with a covid-secure cashless and contactless payments system like our award-winning egPay.

We’re already seeing a longlist of events beginning to move towards cashless, and we anticipate this trend to continue. Aside from the obvious benefits in reducing potential spread of COVID-19, a cashless payments system also reduces queuing times, speeds up transactions and has a range of other benefits for promoters, including the ability to generate pre-event revenue, reduce overheads and delve into advanced analytics to better track customer spend. 

Our data also shows that egPay increases customer spend by up to 39% in year two. This is done by streamlining the whole process for customers, but also by letting event organisers easily leverage fan incentives and deals, and offering event-goers the opportunity to purchase credit ahead of the event. We’ve found that customers who pre-purchase credit have a 49% uplift in total spend-per-head compared to fans that spend on site.

Read more:

•  10 reasons why your festival should go cashless in 2022
•  The call for Cashless: 70% of customers more encouraged to attend an event with a COVID-secure cashless system
•  Back to live: Why the move to cashless events is more important than ever‍‍‍

Appreciate the value of good customer service

‍Customer service can be make or break for an event. Done badly it can really tarnish an event’s brand, and so we can’t recommend putting a lot of time and effort into this enough. A good place to start is a list of comprehensive FAQs on your website that cover everything from details about the event to what happens in case the event is cancelled or someone can’t attend anymore. It’s also worth liaising with your ticketing agent so they are also aware and can accurately relay information to any customers that get in touch with them. 

This is a core part of what we do at Event Genius. As well as our customer help-centre, 7-day support and onsite box office management, we also believe customer service extends to event organisers too. We therefore now offer promoters a 24 hour live chat on their Event Genius dashboard, as well as in some instances a dedicated Client Relationship Manager to guide and help them with any questions they may have.

If you’d like to discuss any of the tips in this article or hear how Event Genius can help you effectively and efficiently manage your event while delivering incredible experiences for your fans, get in touch by clicking here. We’d love to hear from you.