If your chorus is still selling most of your tickets offline, you may have wondered if moving to an online ticketing solution is right for you.
While I personally think online ticketing solutions are a good fit for most choruses, they might not be necessary for all choruses.
If you're not sure if your chorus needs an online solution, ask yourself these questions:
Are you spending loads of time managing your box office?
Think about how much time it takes you to manage your box office offline. How much time is spent taking orders over the phone, in-person, or via email? How much time is spent entering that data somewhere (such as a spreadsheet)? How much time is spent designing, printing, and mailing tickets? How much time is spent running your will call lists, organizing tickets at the door, selling tickets at the door, and checking people in to the concert? How much time is spent gathering ticket buyer data and creating reports for the board?
If you add up all this time, how much time are you spending managing your box office?
If you find yourself spending what you would consider "too much time" managing the box office, it's time to look for online ticketing solutions.
Are you wanting to grow your audience and sell more tickets?
If your organization finds itself in a position where it needs to sell more tickets, then online ticketing solutions can help.
Online ticketing solutions make it easier for audiences to buy tickets, eliminating any barriers to the buying process. They help you understand who your audience is and where they found out about the concert, both necessary data points in promoting future performances successfully. They help potential new buyers find you on the web, opening up your concerts to people who may not know about you yet. And finally, they allow you to experiment with different marketing campaigns through the use of discount codes and tracking links, which can help you find out how to properly price and sell your tickets.
If you need to sell more tickets, you may want to invest in an online ticketing solution.
Are your ticket buyers frustrated with the current ticket buying process or experiencing long wait times at the door?
Choruses that want to sell more tickets must make it as easy as possible to purchase tickets. Today's consumer is used to making online purchases and, indeed, wants that buying option available to them. Having to always speak to someone directly in order to buy a ticket is a barrier. So, if you're only selling tickets offline, you may be missing out on potential buyers who didn't want to reach out to you directly to buy.
Another common frustration of ticket buyers is waiting in long lines. If your chorus only sells tickets at the door or if your audience has to wait in a long line to pick up their tickets at will call, they will get frustrated and this will negatively affect their experience with your organization.
If you have long lines at the door, your ticket buyers complain often, or you fear you are missing out on potential buyers online, start to look for an online ticketing solution.
Are you looking to better communicate with and engage your audience?
If you manually track ticket orders, it can be challenging to properly store your ticket buyers' contact information and use that information to communicate with them. With online ticketing solutions, your audience's contact data is automatically stored in the system and is sometimes also integrated with a tool that can communicate directly with your ticket buyers - such as an email marketing tool.
Communicating with your audience is a vital step in not only keeping them informed, but also finding new ways to engage them.
If you're struggling to communicate with your ticket buyers, check out online ticketing solutions.
Tori Cook is the former Director of Sales & Marketing at Chorus Connection, an active board member of the Greater Boston Choral Consortium, and a soprano with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. In a past life, she was the Music Director of the Harborlight Show Chorus and President of Chorus pro-Musica. When not making music, she daydreams about adopting a golden retriever puppy and scuba diving to exotic locations around the world.