We are currently selling digital performances. When patrons purchase a digital performance they currently need to log into Tnew and navigate to their account to watch. With the holidays around the corner we have had many patrons who would like to gift digital performances. There is currently no way to purchase a streaming performance as a gift on Tnew. If you purchase a performance it goes into the account you are logged in as. If patrons call in we have been ordering the performances under the recipients account, but sometimes our patrons do not know the recipients street address or email required to create and account, therefore we are losing out on business.
Has anyone else experienced this? What are some ways we can make it easier for our patrons to gift digital performances? I am curious to know how other organizations have handled this.
Thank You!
We are in the same boat. We are on TNEW.
We have two solutions for this:
1) A specific digital gift certificate that can be loaded up with the value of the performance. The patron purchases it, gifts it to their loved ones, and they can use it to redeem into a digital performance under their own account. We are generally telling patrons if they want to purchase ten (10) and under to do it this way. We just launched this online because our Box Office has been inundated with requests. It's clunky though because given the variable nature of a gift certificate value, patrons can't purchase more than one at a time. We have messaging and buttons in the Cart that will push them back to the gift certificate page should they need to purchase multiples. We also don't have an elegant way to distribute the gift certificates. Right now the patron just gets a list and its up to them to manage the numbers. Fine for one or two, but could get unwieldy.
2) For patrons who want to purchase more than 10 or for companies who would like to purchase digital performances in bulk, we have asked them to call into our Box Office. Our Box Office staff will transact into a specific group sales dummy performance so that they can select the number of tickets that the patron/organization requires. This also allows us to do some sales reporting (digital gift certificates can be tricksy to report on) Then we create a unique pricing rule for each patron/company with unique promo code that is embedded in a specific link. The pricing rule flips the standard price type to a comp for the quantity that they have purchased. This link (with directions) are sent to the patron to distribute. Their customer can then redeem online and create their own account/order. No muss, no fuss. There is a small risk of the link being shared on social media, but we have monitoring in place so we can let the patron know should it get out of hand. But overall, people seem to be behaving themselves.
The pricing rule is a super manual process in terms of setup, but it does the job. And it is very, very easy for our patrons.
Kristine
Kristine,
Thank you for your insight. I will share this information with my Marketing team. Many thanks!
We have setup essentially the same process as Kristine, and are also on TNEW. I agree that the gift certificate process is clunky for people wanting more than a couple of tickets, and the pricing rules take quite a bit of setup! But it was the best solution we could find for the moment. I am anticipating that we may have a lot of unredeemed gift certificates when our holiday program ends, and will have to decide how to handle any return requests.