Arts & culture ticketing and box office technology
Important considerations when choosing your ticketing system
Guide
Ticket sales is about payments
Are you using a third party ticketing platform or an in-house solution for your arts and culture venues and events? The pros and cons for each are many, however for arts & culture organisations there are essential aspects that need to be looked at first and foremost: Ticket sales is about payments. If payments are easier, quicker and more available — you will sell more. For non-profits and culture organisations it is therefore vital to utilise a platform that allows this.
Pre-sell more
A ticket buyer should be able to buy their venue membership and give donations in the same purchase process as their ticket, as well as food, drinks and merchandise and anything else that can be pre-sold and available for collection on-site.
Sell more during the intervals
Do not limit the number of tills by hardware — today you can utilise an unlimited number of hand held card readers to reduce queues and take more payments. These card readers are also much faster in processing payments than the traditional card machines.
Analyse your audience to customise pre-sales
Look for card readers that are compatible with regular smartphones that scans the tickets and register the sale to each consumer. You can therefore generate full sales data for each customer and analyse what people in stalls purchase during the interval, versus people sitting in upper circle — use this data to know which products to offer as advance sales online; perhaps as a bundle or as a complement to the ticket purchase.
Cutting out the middleman
The more suppliers are being used for sales, the more it costs. Arts & culture organisations should therefore look at using one single complete sales tool for not only the ticket sales online, but also the sales at the door and also food and drink sales on-site.
Integration means more opportunities
A ticketing solution should not work in silo, but need to integrate all marketing and fundraising data in order to understand the customer journey, including how to convert browsers into buyers and utilise user data with results to improve customer relationship management.
Avoid long-term contracts
When choosing ticketing provider, be careful not to get stuck in a long term contract with fixed fees as there are often hidden ones. And you would not want to invest thousands of pounds and be locked for a whole year when the ticketing technology space is developing so quickly and getting both cheaper and with more advanced features. It’s easy to find a provider that offers both online and offline sales services that require close to no hardware (and even offer it for free) and only charge you a small percentage per transaction, no hidden fees and without any contracts.
Explore TicketCo
The ultimate sales tool for arts & culture events
Theatre Venues
Streamlining ticketing, seating plans, memberships, gift cards and box office operations.
Shows and Gigs
Maximising sales and giving your audience a great customer journey that they will love.
Touring Shows
The tools you need to manage multiple events and venues without any extra effort.
Attractions
Helping you scale ticket sales and reduce costs for attraction venues.
Full HD pay-per-view live streaming and video on demand
Monetise your digital content
The live streaming and video on demand platform for the event industry where you can monetise your digital content and do up-selling. Safeguard a smooth shopper journey.
Get in touch
Experience TicketCo today
Get inspired
How we help our clients succeed
Five ways to market your digital theatre production
Physical and digital theatre should be viewed as two separate entities to market by organisers. They host different customers with different demands at different prices in separate environments. Marketing digital theatre can of course align with your physical customer...
Five UK theatre companies that went global via live streaming
UK theatre’s ability to engage with audiences on a global scale has never been more prevalent. Around the world, theatregoers are enjoying new plays and musicals from the comfort of their homes via HD quality pay-per-view live streaming and on-demand. Online...
The Umbrella Rooms seamlessly live streamed interactive show to 70 countries
Photo: Pamela Raith Photography | Production: 2020 West End. Mischief Movie Night © 2009 Mischief Worldwide Ltd. Imagine hosting 190,000 people on your live stream show without any hitches. That was the dream The Umbrella Rooms enjoyed for the global online broadcast...
Five ways to market your digital theatre production
Physical and digital theatre should be viewed as two separate entities to market by organisers. They host different customers with different demands at different prices in separate environments. Marketing digital theatre can of course align with your physical customer...
Five UK theatre companies that went global via live streaming
UK theatre’s ability to engage with audiences on a global scale has never been more prevalent. Around the world, theatregoers are enjoying new plays and musicals from the comfort of their homes via HD quality pay-per-view live streaming and on-demand. Online...
The Umbrella Rooms seamlessly live streamed interactive show to 70 countries
Photo: Pamela Raith Photography | Production: 2020 West End. Mischief Movie Night © 2009 Mischief Worldwide Ltd. Imagine hosting 190,000 people on your live stream show without any hitches. That was the dream The Umbrella Rooms enjoyed for the global online broadcast...
