Archive for February, 2007
Patron Edge leap frogs forward
The suppliers spend their lives playing catch-up, matching what the others offer, trying to leap-frog forward whenever they can. Comparing systems can be a close run thing at the top of the tree, and among the often hundreds of developments and innovations released periodically, only a few may apply in each segment of the market for systems. Patron Edge has stolen a march though, by basing their leap frog forward in version 3.22 on a quality of design and execution, while offering key developments of value to quite a few sectors.
Arts centres, multiplex venues, museums and galleries will see new functionality which will make a considerable difference, including ‘timed entry’ and a much sharper front-end for general admission ticketing. There is more support too for memberships and customer relationship management to join-up the thinking, especially online, and extra tools to help the back end.
Given the interest in websites and Internet ticketing, the standard Patron Edge Internet ticketing engine, now version 3.25, offers an elegant clean interface and all the key functionality, to deliver an optimised ticket purchase experience.
Best example is their latest, the English National Opera at the Coliseum in London. Intriguingly this doubled online ticket sales on go-live, achieving over 38 per cent by volume and over 50 per cent by value. The variety of user-friendly approaches to What’s On and the ‘select a seat’ and ‘view from area’ functionality helps this by closing sales.
Patron Edge became known from a very early stage as a system which would prevent ‘orphaned’ single seats being left online, while still allowing the customer to choose seats themselves, though this could sometimes be problematic as an auditorium started to reach full capacity. Now, as well as manually disabling the block on single seats, users can set pre-defined rules for when this will occur. These can be either as a fixed time before the performance or, more significantly, once the auditorium reaches a certain percentage of its overall capacity. Automating such rules makes the management of online sales very much easier – it is already possible, for instance, to automatically withdraw certain price types and discounts either on a timed basis or when a pre-set number of tickets have been sold at a particular discount. These tools become very important at high proportions of online sales.
With web activity and online sales now critical for most venues, Patron Edge Online now makes it possible to report, at an individual visitor level, on web entry and exit points, pages viewed, time on each page, and bookings made.
Delivered by Blackbaud, there is an assumption that the system will simply link to The Raiser’s Edge for fundraising and development, so Blackbaud might not like me saying that The Patron Edge seems a match inside the system for other ticketing systems in the functionality for handling memberships, donations, fundraising and other development campaigns without any interface to another product. It has the customer relationship management tools to provide the one-stop view of transactions to operators, and the fields to manage and track the campaigns.
In terms of expediting use of the system across an organisation Patron Edge now offers a Tasks and Actions option, which enables a specific task to be associated with an individual user. That task is displayed as soon as the user logs on. Useful as a simple management tool to coordinate the work within a department, it also helps marketing and development by prompting actions to a specific contact or group of contacts. Each task can be given a deadline and can be marked as ‘complete’ when relevant, in much the same way as tasks and follow ups are managed within Outlook.
Significant enhancements have been made to Memberships especially to support loyalty programmes. As well as triggering an immediate change to the standard ticket price if the customer is identified as a valid member eligible for a discount, it is now possible to control the number of discounts available to the member. Discounts can be based on overall take-up for all performances or for a specific event; a pre-determined number of discounted tickets can be made available either for an individual event or across all performances, with different levels of benefit available to different types of membership. And, if a membership is purchased within a transaction, the membership discount can automatically be applied to all tickets in the basket.
The Query Builder in the CRM module is enhanced so gift aid and donation levels can now be incorporated into extractions. Data protection status enables the easy segmentation of contacts so records can be shared with visiting companies and producers. Copying Databox, the system can now limit the resulting number of records arising from a query to a pre-set number and randomise the selection so control groups can be set up easily.
All that means The Patron Edge is a more than serious match to any of its competitors, and the team at Blackbaud are busy building on their lead by reinforcing the back office to ensure effective installation, commissioning and support. It remains true, that no matter how much users like the front end, delivering the support clinches the sale for most users. Blackbaud say they are signing up two new customers a month, with latest signings being English National Opera, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shrewsbury Music Hall.
Take a look at the online ticketing engine: www.eno.org
For system sales enquiries contact Rachael Easton: rachael.easton@blackbaud.co.uk or phone 0207 921 9600. Blackbaud www.blackbaud.co.uk
Pre-registration challenges
Glastonbury Festival joined those organisations determined to stamp out re-selling and ticket touts by requiring potential purchasers for this year’s festival to pre-register before 28 February 07. They must supply a photograph to prove their identity, which will appear on the ticket. One clear advantage is that families or a small group of friends planning to attend together in June will be able to purchase up to four tickets in one transaction, if all members have registered. The downside some commentators have identified, is that it will be harder for those wanting to assemble tickets to re-sell for corporate hospitality purposes.
Pre-registration opened on 1st February, and, though it is not first-come-first-served when tickets go on sale on 1st April 07, the registration website quickly crashed under the weight of traffic, soon put right.
Pre-registration is increasingly being argued for Internet ticketing, so that purchasers set up an account and log-in to buy tickets. The strongest argument is that this means more people complete their transactions. Some managers think this may also weed out those who use it as an ‘availability checker’, but that may also be a useful service which helps make sales. And for people with special needs, registration and recognition means they get privileged access to assistive technologies or booking wheelchair and companion spaces.
There also appears to be an increasing interest in the use of promotional codes, since they give off-line distribution techniques the chance to give people privileged access to offers online, in the way links from e-marketing campaigns easily lead to micro-sites with special deals. And in the same way, help track the source of responses.
Not all systems offer this with equal felicity. When are people asked to log-in on the website and do they need to have started Internet ticketing to do so? Can friends or members or subscribers log-in and then only see prices and deals specific to them? Do promotional codes only work when clicked into that event or do they automatically link straight from the code? Are wheelchair spaces available for booking online?
As the web converges with ticketing more and more, becoming central to ticketing and not just an additional channel, systems and their suppliers need to address these fundamental issues of design and usability.
Patron Edge leap frogs forward
The suppliers spend their lives playing catch-up, matching what the others offer, trying to leap-frog forward whenever they can. Comparing systems can be a close run thing at the top of the tree, and among the often hundreds of developments and innovations released periodically, only a few may apply in each segment of the market for systems. Patron Edge has stolen a march though, by basing their leap frog forward in version 3.22 on a quality of design and execution, while offering key developments of value to quite a few sectors.Arts centres, multiplex venues, museums and galleries will see new functionality which will make a considerable difference, including ‘timed entry’ and a much sharper front-end for general admission ticketing. There is more support too for memberships and customer relationship management to join-up the thinking, especially online, and extra tools to help the back end.
Given the interest in websites and Internet ticketing, the standard Patron Edge Internet ticketing engine, now version 3.25, offers an elegant clean interface and all the key functionality, to deliver an optimised ticket purchase experience.
Best example is their latest, the English National Opera at the Coliseum in London. Intriguingly this doubled online ticket sales on go-live, achieving over 38 per cent by volume and over 50 per cent by value. The variety of user-friendly approaches to What’s On and the ‘select a seat’ and ‘view from area’ functionality helps this by closing sales.
Patron Edge became known from a very early stage as a system which would prevent ‘orphaned’ single seats being left online, while still allowing the customer to choose seats themselves, though this could sometimes be problematic as an auditorium started to reach full capacity. Now, as well as manually disabling the block on single seats, users can set pre-defined rules for when this will occur. These can be either as a fixed time before the performance or, more significantly, once the auditorium reaches a certain percentage of its overall capacity. Automating such rules makes the management of online sales very much easier – it is already possible, for instance, to automatically withdraw certain price types and discounts either on a timed basis or when a pre-set number of tickets have been sold at a particular discount. These tools become very important at high proportions of online sales.
With web activity and online sales now critical for most venues, Patron Edge Online now makes it possible to report, at an individual visitor level, on web entry and exit points, pages viewed, time on each page, and bookings made.
Delivered by Blackbaud, there is an assumption that the system will simply link to The Raiser’s Edge for fundraising and development, so Blackbaud might not like me saying that The Patron Edge seems a match inside the system for other ticketing systems in the functionality for handling memberships, donations, fundraising and other development campaigns without any interface to another product. It has the customer relationship management tools to provide the one-stop view of transactions to operators, and the fields to manage and track the campaigns.
In terms of expediting use of the system across an organisation Patron Edge now offers a Tasks and Actions option, which enables a specific task to be associated with an individual user. That task is displayed as soon as the user logs on. Useful as a simple management tool to coordinate the work within a department, it also helps marketing and development by prompting actions to a specific contact or group of contacts. Each task can be given a deadline and can be marked as ‘complete’ when relevant, in much the same way as tasks and follow ups are managed within Outlook.
Significant enhancements have been made to Memberships especially to support loyalty programmes. As well as triggering an immediate change to the standard ticket price if the customer is identified as a valid member eligible for a discount, it is now possible to control the number of discounts available to the member. Discounts can be based on overall take-up for all performances or for a specific event; a pre-determined number of discounted tickets can be made available either for an individual event or across all performances, with different levels of benefit available to different types of membership. And, if a membership is purchased within a transaction, the membership discount can automatically be applied to all tickets in the basket.
The Query Builder in the CRM module is enhanced so gift aid and donation levels can now be incorporated into extractions. Data protection status enables the easy segmentation of contacts so records can be shared with visiting companies and producers. Copying Databox, the system can now limit the resulting number of records arising from a query to a pre-set number and randomise the selection so control groups can be set up easily.
All that means The Patron Edge is a more than serious match to any of its competitors, and the team at Blackbaud are busy building on their lead by reinforcing the back office to ensure effective installation, commissioning and support. It remains true, that no matter how much users like the front end, delivering the support clinches the sale for most users. Blackbaud say they are signing up two new customers a month, with latest signings being English National Opera, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shrewsbury Music Hall.
Take a look at the online ticketing engine: www.eno.org
For system sales enquiries contact Rachael Easton: rachael.easton@blackbaud.co.uk or phone 0207 921 9600. Blackbaud www.blackbaud.co.uk
Tessitura goes remote
Now with over 190 small, medium and large arts organisations using Tessitura in the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK, the Tessitura Network have launched RAMP, a Remote Access Managed Plan that brings Tessitura Software to the desktops of license holders via an Internet connection. The plan bundles server hardware, database administration services, backups and other vital services.
It is not clear whether this innovation is yet available in the UK but it offers the promising option to users of either the traditional approach of operating their own servers and networks or utilising the RAMP model which delivers Tessitura Software to both PC’s and Macs over an Internet connection.
Either way they get the full Tessitura one stop shop solution and the usual web interface that enables heavily customisable integrated websites offering real-time sales, contributions and other vital functions with no internet fees and no restrictions on website design.
Tessitura joins ENTA from GalatheaSTS in offering an ASP model which greatly eases the hosting and system management responsibilities of venues.
Contact Jack Rubin at Tessitura for more about RAMP: jrubin@tessiturasoftware.com www.tessiturasoftware.com For ENTA: www.galatheasts.com/solutions.aspx
Touring Broadway Study Reveals Younger Audiences and Increasing Role of Electronic Media in Advertising and Ticket Purchasing
New York, February 7, 2007) Every second year, The League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc. (www.LiveBroadway.com) undertakes a new chapter in its longitudinal tracking study of the audiences at nationally touring Broadway productions. “The Audience for Touring Broadway” is compiled to assist producers of Broadway tours by providing an in-depth profile of the changing habits and composition of their audiences. In the 2005-06 season, 17.1 million tickets were sold to Broadway series at over 200 theatres across North America.
“One of the key goals of the League is to proactively collect and analyze data and trends that pertain to our audiences and how their theatergoing habits change over time,” commented Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director, The League of American Theatres and Producers. “We also hope to stress the importance of national Broadway tours not only in local markets, but also to the Broadway industry overall in terms of revenue, visibility and audience development. These reports are key tools for our members, our partners, the media, scholars, and anyone interested in the characteristics of the audience for this vibrant national entertainment medium.”
Among the report’s most significant findings are the changing balance of age groups, and the increasing role of electronic media in advertising and ticket purchasing.
The average age of the touring Broadway audiences for the 2005-2006 season was 46, five years younger than the 2003-04 season. Moreover, the percentage of attendees under age 18 grew from 3% to 5% in the past two seasons, while the attendance of seniors (audience members 65 or older) was 12.3% — the lowest level since the 1991 season, and a decrease of 7.7% in age from the previous recording.
These subtle changes in audience age composition were also evident in advertising and ticket purchasing habits. While television commercials remained the most effective form of advertising across all age groups, Internet ads surpassed local newspaper ads in effectiveness amongst theatregoers ages 34 and under. Local newspaper ads remained the most influential among older audiences. Younger audiences were more easily influenced by advertising, although the overall effectiveness of advertising has decreased in the past few seasons.
When deciding what show to see, similar trends in preferred sources were discovered, with younger audiences choosing to consult the web, and older theatregoers referring more frequently to their daily paper. Overall, however, respondents consulted the Internet for theatre information – a 14% increase from the 2003-2004 season. Fifty-four % consulted their local paper – a 12% decrease from the previous report, though still a strong influence.
Emphasizing the growing influence of the Internet, the sales of tickets online surpassed the sale of tickets by telephone in every age group except the 65-and-older demographic.
The base of touring Broadway relies largely upon season subscriptions. However, in 2005-2006, only one-third of respondents were season subscribers, the lowest fraction in eight years, and a 17% drop from the previous report. Since the average subscriber sees 9 shows per year, as compared to the average of 4 shows for single-ticket buyers, this substantial drop in subscribers could account for the decrease in overall ticket sales over the previous season.
The average touring Broadway theatregoer was female, wealthy, and well educated. Seventy-three % of the audience was female and, continuing recent trends, 62% of audience members reported that the decision to purchase tickets was made by a woman.
The vast majority of theatregoers were Caucasian, and minorities were underrepresented in comparison to the general population, despite an increase in the number of non-Caucasian audience members since the previous report. The level of education of national theatregoers remained high, with 69% of the audience holding a college degree, and 28% holding a graduate degree. Average income was also high in comparison to the general population – 38% of respondents reported annual household income of more than $100,000 compared to 15% of Americans overall.
While the average theatregoer attended six shows in the past year, the small group of people who attended 15 or more shows comprised less than 6% of the audience. However, they accounted for 23% of all tickets sold. The effect of touring Broadway on New York theatre was also evident, as 22% of national theatregoers also attended a Broadway show in New York City.
For more info Printed versions of the reports are available for purchase. To order copies, go to: www.livebroadway.com/orderform.html.
Ticketmaster Teams Up With iTunes
Ticketmaster Teams Up With iTunes to Bring Live and Recorded Music Closer Together Than Ever
Ticketmaster to Offer Free Music on iTunes with Every Concert Ticket Purchased Online
West Hollywood, CA – February 6, 2007 – Ticketmaster, the world’s leading ticketing company and an operating business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), announced today it is working with iTunes (www.itunes.com) to offer music fans a free song on iTunes with every concert ticket purchased on Ticketmaster.com. Additionally, music fans who pre-order select digital albums on iTunes, can buy that artists’ concert tickets on Ticketmaster.com before they go on sale to the general public. Last year, iTunes users who pre-ordered new albums from Bob Dylan and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on iTunes.com had the first chance to purchase tickets on Ticketmaster.com, helping both albums to debut at number one on the Billboard charts.
“By providing direct links to iTunes, the world’s most popular online music and video store, we’re giving iTunes and Ticketmaster customers the opportunity to buy concert tickets, and explore and purchase great music,” said Sean Moriarty, president and CEO of Ticketmaster. “We’re thrilled to be working with iTunes to offer concert-goers even more ways to connect with their favorite artists.”
“Our exclusive digital album pre-orders have been extremely popular with iTunes customers,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We’re thrilled to be teaming up with Ticketmaster again to give music fans free music and the ability to buy concert tickets on Ticketmaster.com before they go on sale to the general public.”
Timed with the kick-off of this year’s summer concert season, every consumer who purchases a concert ticket on Ticketmaster.com will receive free music from iTunes. Ticketmaster will reward summer concert ticket buyers with a complimentary song of their choice on iTunes, and every concert ticket buyer will be offered a digital sampler featuring a selection of music from touring artists.
Additionally, Ticketmaster and iTunes have teamed to create the ultimate gift for the ultimate music fan. Beginning later this year, consumers will be able to purchase a Ticketmaster + iTunes gift card pack redeemable for credit on Ticketmaster.com and the iTunes Store respectively. Music fans will be able to purchase $50 gift card packs at all Target stores nationwide.
