Hello!
For Virtual Performances (not Classes/Camps) we are still playing around with what the magic recipe might be to see strong sales. We are curious what other organizations have done/are doing, or what shifts you have made that resulted in strong or at least, decent sales. Questions that have come up for us, that we would love to hear answers from organizations who are going strong with this are:
Any advice or tips or tricks you can pass on, we would love to hear!
Hello! We have done two streamed shows with more planned for the future. We are using the Tessitura enabled digital content product. We had Gloria Steinem in November and last Friday we had a new original play by actor Jaston Williams. Jaston Williams is the creator of Tuna Christmas which is very popular here in Texas. We have a relationship with the artist and he filmed the play on our stage earlier in the fall. Our programming department reached out to other Texas venues and we built out direct links they could send to their database. So folks would still purchase and stream through our website. The patron base for this show was older and so the communication on how to stream was super necessary. However, they ultimately still needed to call our box office and have us walk them through it. It was an undertaking and took a huge group effort, but we saw great sales and incredible patron response. We found that a lot of these folks haven't been able to see anything for a year, so this opportunity was something they really looked forward to.
So great to hear this Tess- thank you for your response and the info!
Hi Tess, I'm curious if you experienced high volume traffic for your virtual events so far and if so how you managed that. Happy to take that offline if need be.
Hi Wes, for our first event in November traffic was less than what we wanted, but still okay. For the Jaston Williams show, we had very high traffic. On the day of the actual stream, we sold over 200 tickets. The day of sales meant we were dealing with a lot of patrons who didn't get our pre-show communication on how to stream. We sent another email about how to stream an hour prior to the stream beginning. A lot of our patrons who were new to streaming assumed they would get a direct link as soon as they purchased, so when they didn't they would call and we would walk them through it. I recommend having your phones well staffed. Our box office staff is smaller right now, but we had staff from other departments who are Tessitura and TNEW proficient helping. We couldn't have done it without them. Please feel free to email me directly if you would like.