Hello,
We are looking at different ways to sell digital live stream content this season, and since TNEW's gated digital content feature has been moved to release in late August, I am wondering if any Tessitura users out there can share what they are doing now to sell gated content, particularly if you are using Tessitura/ TNEW for the sales path, and connecting to a third party stream from there somehow? What I am currently envisioning is selling on Tessitura/ TNEW, and then emailing a link to ticket buyers close to the time of a performance. Of course there are easy ways to break through the gate with this method, for example if we use VIMEO, where the password or direct link could be shared with non-buyers. While I'm not incredibly concerned about the dishonesty of our ticket holders forwarding their direct links along to other people, I'd love to know others' experiences and approaches have been with this. Or, maybe there is something simple that I am missing which would allow me to make the streaming more secure.
For Tessitura staff - We are looking to begin selling gated content before the TNEW release, but the actual performances may take place after the release, and so in addition to any third party workarounds that Tessitura users can provide, would we be able to take a performance sold before the release and convert it to a gated digital performance?
I have been searching the community forums and have not found a recent discussion on how people are selling gated content currently, and so if there is already one in progress that I missed, I'd love to be linked to it.
Thanks for your help, and I hope everyone is staying healthy out there!
Andrew
Hi everyone, this is a fantastic thread and so helpful - thank you!
Now that the TNEW Gated Content is out on LIVE - has anyone given any thought to how Guest Checkout plays into all this? I would assume that anyone with a Guest Checkout account cannot access the content because they don't have a login. Are you planning on turning Guest Checkout off in the standard purchase path (we still need it for One Page Giving) while selling Digital Content?
Similarly, if you have major donors/Board members who should receive access to a specific piece of content (it's Nutcracker for us), can we processed comp tickets on their accounts to grant them access? Does anyone have VIPs who just never use TNEW and don't know their logins? Trying to think through if it would be easier to try and get them setup to access the content via TNEW or if we should just keep a separate list of VIPs who should get the content via a direct link to the content provider.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Lily
Hi Lily,
Regarding donors/ board member access -- we are doing something similar, and having a pre-show donor lounge before live streams (first one in late September). On the back end, we have been using an order import based on a list to import an extra performance on accounts of those eligible to attend, and for our pre-show communications, we'll be sending the specific digital content page for that special imported performance, instead of the performance they actually bought. The page will basically mirror the normal digital content page, but with the addition of a Zoom link to the lounge. Comps work on digital content just like paid, booked via TNEW or Tessitura. We currently aren't planning on using the digital content listing page, but if you do you'd want to make sure that the labeling of each performance (the donor lounge and the actual performance) made sense.
In terms of identifying those who do not have logins, I got some help on this in the past by dumping some code in to a list. This forum may help you to identify those who do not have a login (we manually created logins for those who didn't, I'm sure there is a way to instead code that in SQL but haven't done it):
https://community.tessituranetwork.com/tessitura_software_forums/f/tessitura_web-9/16038/searching-for-constituents-with-emails-but-without-online-logins
I don't believe guest checkout works well with digital content, but curious to know if others have tried it. We don't use guest check out, aside from one-page giving.
Thanks!
We've had to turn it off.
Our understanding is that Guest Checkout cannot be used for gated content for the reason you mention, so we are turning it off.
We are figuring out the access for comps (and even for those buying tickets), but I think we're going to make sure their TNEW accounts are all set up long in advance if they don't already have one or can't remember their login info. We'll be sending out a ton of communication around this, and our Ticket Office will be trained in walking those who need the additional help through the process.
And for those of you following our decision-making around digital content, we have landed on TNEW gated and Vimeo. We are getting it set up now as our tickets go on sale next Tuesday.
It has been a while since I looked at the messaging options on that page. Is there a way to put a message with the Guest Checkout option that says something to the effect of "You will not be able to use Guest Checkout for digital content"?
Hi Lynn -- great to know that it sounds like we will have a very similar setup with both TNEW and VIMEO. I'd love to stay connected as we continue digital sales and have the actual performances, to share any lessons learned.
We are looking at Vimeo as one of our options as well. I'm curious, are you going with the Enterprise option?
The problem is that there is no way (of which I'm aware) to prevent guest checkout by product. It's either on or off. So if it's on, then messaging or no people are going to buy access with Guest Checkout, and then will be unable to access it.
Sure, but then when they call and complain, you can say "you must have not read the warning; we are now going to have to convert your account from a guest account to a normal patron account, and you will have to set a login password" or something to that effect. Messaging of that sort that says "blame's on you here". Of course, that is not the greatest solution, but at least it would be something.
I was thinking about this problem today. You can now restrict sales by country by performance type. It will force the guest to log in before they can add that performance to their cart (so that it can validate their country of residence), thereby avoiding the situation wherein a restricted show is purchased using guest checkout. I haven't tested this yet though!
It's a little easier on us as for the time being streaming is all we're going to be offering.
My biggest concern with our streaming series is that we are hosting "premiers" for everything (i.e. a realtime stream that you log into and watch simultaneously with other viewers), and for some shows only that, no later access via video-on-demand. I'm confident that we will get a rush of customer technical issues right at "curtain time". An ounce of control there is always worth a pound of messaging, but we'll be doing tons of messaging as well. The hardest part generally is going to be forcing everyone who buys tickets (i.e. over the phone) to create an account and remember the password, and to get people to sign in early so that they can figure things out in plenty of time to watch the event.
Ooh! But unfortunately, we're currently not restricting by country: apparently we have no contractual issues on that count.
Also, it would be nice if you could, coversely, restrict by country. If we had some kind of tax or contract issue with one or two countries we could exclude them, vs trying to put in 200 country codes in that field.
Yes, we're going with Enterprise.
definitely, Andrew.
Hi Lily (and others who have brought up issues with guest checkout and digital content), We recognize the lack of control of offering guest checkout as an option at the product level is not ideal... especially in light of things like mobile tickets and digital content requiring an account in order to access. Our intention is to provide that layer of control to TNEW. We don't have specific timing on that right now but we have definitely appreciated the comments and feedback in this thread alone regarding this gap in functionality. Hazel's idea of using the country restriction logic to force registration / log in is a good one but Gawain, I get your point that unless you are restricting digital content sales to specific countries, the feature right now isn't set up to easily to do the opposite - exclude a small number of countries from the list. Our initial research and discussions with members suggested that the primary use case would be to limit sales to a small set of countries - especially at first as members sorted out how best to manage digital services taxes. We will be monitoring how the feature is being used now that it has been officially released, and Paul and I would appreciate continuing to hear from all of you as to what is working and what is not working so well. The questions and suggestions shared here in this thread have been really great to see, and we hope to hear more from you as you move forward with your digital strategies.