MZA TUG,
At the Minnesota Zoo, we're preparing to re-open our gates and use measures like timed admission to maintain social distancing. We'll be doing all ticketing -- including member ticketing -- online only, with a few exceptions that will be handled by phone. We'll have limited capacity throughout the day, and shortened hours so we're hoping to maximize revenue. The problem that we're facing is we have a number of existing offers for discounts/comp tickets that were promised prior to closing for the pandemic, and we want to honor those as much as possible, without giving away our space. There are some offers that we can delay ("Unfortunately, we cannot honor Offer X at this time..."), but there are some key agreements that we need to honor.
Has anyone experienced anything similar? How are you honoring your existing offers/promos/comp tickets in as intuitive a manner as possible?
Any insight is appreciated. Thank you!
Michael Dorsey
CRM Administrator - Minnesota Zoo
Hi!
We've built duplicate daily admission performances for the comp and discount programs to limit their capacity and make them a separate link (production) on our (custom) website. So for example, the Military and teacher comps have 10 seats every hour, and I've held 10 seats in the main event. If you're tnew you could probably handle this with allocations if you don't mind the prices appearing for the general public. We didn't want ours that visible.
They're not fun to maintain but they get the job done.
We've drastically reduced our current promotions list, but there are some that we are still honoring. We ended up going with a combination of Allocations + Modes of Sale to allocate a certain percentage of tickets for members, and a certain percentage for comp General Admission purchases. We then use Appeals + Promo Codes / phrases (through web_source_no system table) to shift the customer to the required Mode of Sale.
You also could put all the tickets in one Allocation, and use Pricing Rules to adjust prices as necessary.
All our tickets are pre-purchased through our website (through TNEW), so we have a number of different places (emails, a page on our website, etc.) to indicate to those folks how to redeem those comp tickets. Naturally, there is some confusion regarding purchase path, and some will put the promo code in after selecting the tickets, which won't work. Overall, however, the TNEW functionality (with some modifications through the Admin suite for TNEW 7) is working.
Hi Michael,
There are a few instances we are thinking of using a promo code or embedded promo code link. Since the partner org with the offer has an email list or a place they can post that link. That way when they click the link, the promo will be in there and the offer will be enabled on TNEW. For other more complicated offers and discounts, we are just telling customers they need to call to make a reservation.