Buy one give one ticket

Hi Nicole, 

Hmmm... there are a few ways to go about this and without knowing all of the specifics, my instinct is to recommend a "dummy voucher" performance that will hold the inventory for the "donated" tickets, so you know how many you've sold. So essentially a patron is buying 1 ticket for 2 performances - their actual ticket and then a donated ticket. Then when redeeming, you can exchange a ticket out of the voucher performance into the actual performance the donated ticket is for. Unfortunately, I can't speak for TNEW, as we have a custom site in Pittsburgh, but I would imagine through pricing rule messaging you could send patrons down a purchase path for the "voucher" performance to purchase the add-on seat. I'd also recommend consulting with your finance department as to how the money should be held. 

Another option that just came to me - maybe the donated ticket is sold as a gift certificate? Internally you have a list of all of the donation gift certificates that you can use to redeem as well? 

Best, 

Katina 

Hi Nicole, I would look at using different price type for the donated ticket with messaging that would prompt them to go back and add it on.... I wonder if you could even add it as an add on option for TNEW.... though not sure if it would work for the same performance. Then you could set up a dashboard with everyone who has purchased a donated ticket and when people call in to use one you'll have your list of who bought them readily available and could move the ticket to their account. Bit manually, but I think it'll have to be in this case. 

Could you do something like the person buys two tickets and you set the recipient of one of the tickets to an account you set up for the free tickets and then pull from that pool?

Hi Nicole, I asked a few team member here who do a lot of pricing rules and we also have TNEW. You might be able to do a pricing rule to support this. however, they strongly suggested using the Addon functionality if your organization has that plug-in for the version your on. We're on v16. 

"Yeah, if it’s an optional add-on then probably have to do it with a messaging rule that just links back to the performance with an embedded promo/price type for the donated seats. I don’t think a BOGO or other actual pricing rule will work."

I would also suggest doing it as an "Add On" so that anyone purchasing a ticket will get the "add on" event message.  Then sell the ticket to a "Donated Ticket" event which is just a dummy event.  This way you can track how many donated tickets you have purchased and can, as Katina suggested, exchange that donated ticket for a ticket to the actual show it is being redeemed for.  Just need to be careful how that ticket is "transferred" to the new owner, and you wouldn't be able to do the transferring/redemption through TNEW I believe in this scenario.

The benefit of an Add On page is that you can really call out and customize the messaging a bit more.  Also creating a dummy event could have the benefit of allowing you to list it as a stand alone event where folks could just donate towards this imitative without having to buy a ticket to another show.

We are on V16 and just did an "add-on" thing on TNEW for the first time and found it to be successful.  I am not familiar with this process for V15 though if you are on that platform.

Hi Nicole Weber. Are you on V15 or 16?

V15

OK. If you don't have the add on plug in, I think that Ashley Voorhees's suggestion is pretty sound

You can use a message only pricing rule. Message Type would be TNEW Cart. In the message body of the rule , you can use HTML to compose a nice little pretty message asking them to add on, and include a link, or a nice button. If they go through, you can direct them to a page that would sell them a dummy perf like folks have suggested. This is likely the cleanest. 

Make sure that the only apply rule once per order is checked though, or I believe they will be served the message over and over again each time they get to cart. 

Hi, Nicole! I've been ruminating on this one. You have some great ideas already :) 

My thought train led me to think of it from a fund perspective. Are you using checkout donations? If not, that would be another option. You can suggest a $20 add-on donation, and adjust the text to describe what it's for. It would be quick and easy for customers to add it on to their order, without a second transaction. 

If you're already using the add-on donation at checkout, you can use a pricing rule or embedded message to link them to a contribution page at checkout, where they can make a donation towards the fund in a second transaction. 

Doing it either way would require back-end reconciliation. I would probably use a special, zero-dollar price type with a source & pricing rule to set limits on redemption (whatever that process may be). But technically you could also set a price, and offset the purchase with some sort of GL transfer payment type - depending on what your Financial setup is like, and what works for your accounting team. 

Any way you choose, definitely explore the entire process in your TEST environment to get your best solution for not only the customer/donor, but your redemption and reconciliation process. 

Let us know what you end up going with, or any findings you have if you experiment! I'd love to hear about what worked for you and what didn't, and why :) 

In case you missed it, Chelsea brought this up in the DBA Community Group last month and there were a few alternative ideas there. 

@KC Rep, Codashti McAllister uses the GC method

I think BOGO / Pay-it-forward could be a good TLCC panel.