Group Sales & online access

Erin,

We have the same issue here. We are experimenting with a new consignment program. Essentially we sell tickets and invoice the group or group leader. We print the tickets and give them to the group leader. The Group leader then can hand out the tickets and collect payment. A few days prior to the performance, the group leader can hand in the unused tickets and pay for the ones sold. 

Christian

Oooh - interesting. I have more questions!
Have you actually beta-tested this, or is it still theoretical?
What if the actual sales dip below the level for a particular discount percentage?
Has this helped your relationships w/leaders?

Along the same lines, is anybody processing group orders online?  I'd like to learn more about this.

Erin, We have already implimented this and it is working well. In the museum world we have large special exhibits that require timed admissions in 15 min intervals. Imagine trying to have a group pick the exact 15 minute time slot they want to come months in advance. The consignment process works well. The group receives the tickets and is able to return what they don't use or sell to individuals in their group.  In our case, we create a dummy performance and issue tickets at the group rate. Later, the individual people in the group can call in or show up in person to exchange the dummy ticket for a timed ticket. We have found that alot of corporations are taking advantage of the program. They want to be abel to offer Percs to their employees at little risk to themselves. We have increased corporate participation by 20% after implimenting this program.

Christian

When I worked at Arsht Center in Miami, we used to use a combination of promo codes and allocations to provide block seating and special pricing to groups who wanted their individual members to order online.  We would give the promo code to the group leader and monitor sales.  The biggest downside was that there was quite a bit of setup involved, and we created a separate mode of sale for every group if we had multiple groups for a single performance.

I believe there's some information about how we did it in a presentation I gave at the conference in 2007 - I'm happy to post the ppt if anyone's interested.

I would be interested in your Power Point.  Also, when using allocations for web sales is there any programming that has to be done to the site (ie. coding)?

Hi Heather,

I've uploaded my slides to my profile.  The full presentation can also be found on TASK/Footprints in the 2007 User Conference materials for the Online Discounts session.

I don't believe we did any custom programming in Miami to accommodate promo codes and offers, but I would suggest testing it on your own site to make sure you're set up for it.

Best,

Mara

Thank you so much Mara!

Thanks so much - this is just great Mara!

I have been working with Group reservations online quite successfully but recently encountered a glitch that I need some help with. I provided the group discount online for 50+ people but less than 50 ended up taking advantage of the offer. Because the discounted price type was set up with the promo code on the back end the group ended up getting a much steeper discount than they were truly eligible for. Does anyone have a contract in place or recommendations on how to avoid this?

Megan Johnston
Director of Group Services
McCarter Theatre
609-258-6526

Hi Megan and everyone,

I'm just stumbling onto this discussion as well.  In reference to your online ordering problem, unfortunately, I don't know what to tell you.  I actually changed our group policies a couple of years ago to allow for greater discounts when people pay early, that way the size of the group doesn't matter and I don't have to worry about their group being too small for the discount they're blocked in at.

Otherwise, when group members want to pay separately, I have very lo-tech ways of dealing with that, just because we're still working off of a VERY basic API.  We had our web developer create a secure web server for us, and a template page-building tool that I can use to create customized payment pages.  If I have a group that wants to pay online, I create a landing page with a unique URL for them and have them place their reservations that way.  On the back end, this information is not automatically entered into Tess.  I have to go retrieve the order and then enter it manually.  I'll have a block of seats on hold for the group and siphen them off to individual accounts that I also associate with the group, when I get orders.  I do the same thing when people are turning in individual order forms or calling me on their own to pay for their tickets.

It's not the perfect way of doing things, but given my medium-size volume, it works.

-Annette Grieshaber

Group Sales Manager

San Diego Symphony

(619) 236-5403

Hi all:

We just launched a new Group Sales website at the Yale Rep that allows customers to create an online group and invite friends to join. All group members have access to discount tickets.

When a customer creates an online group, we have created some custom coding to generate a promo code for the group. When the group leader invites friends to join the group, the friends log in with the promo code (we provide a group-specific link that auto-populates the promo code so the users don't have to type it in).  Each group member is responsible for purchasing his or her own tickets.  We are using Add This to provide easy links for the group leader to share the group using Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

There are a few limitations:

1. We are seating the orders as they come in, so the group isn't necessarily seated together.

2. We are providing a group discount based on the promo code. We have a custom report that allows the ticketing staff to monitor the group activity so that if they don't meet their group minimum, we can contact them to upsell to the regular single ticket price.

Although the site is up and running, we really haven't announced it to the public yet, so it's not getting enough traffic for me to have any solid customer feedback.  But we our marketing team is happy with it.

Hi Mara,

You say in your post "if they don't meet their group minimum, we can contact them to upsell to the regular single ticket price." Can you please elaborate on how you do this? Do you make the group leader responsible for the $ difference between the discounted price and the full price because the group didn't meet the minimum to qualify for the group discount? Do they actually pay?

Do you ever require that the group leader pay for the remaining tickets in order to reach the minimum required regardless if anyone will use them (if that ends up being less than the upsell amount)? Or hold the group leader's credit card number as a guarantee if the group doesn't meet the minimum? 

We're trying to figure out what (if any) insurance or penalty we can impose if we we grant a group discount via a shared source code and then the group doesn't come through with the numbers.

If anyone else has any experience with this to share, please chime in! Thanks.

Lilaia Kairis
New 42nd Street/New Victory Theater
lkairis@new42.org 646-223-3009