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!