Sell More Tickets In A Single Month: Your Week 4 Plan

In this fourth segment of a four part series, we explore how to audit your event marketing in order to identify what's working and what isn't, and then double down on the aspects of your ticket selling strategy that are yielding results while jettisoning the tactics that aren't.

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Guest post by Sophia Vaccaro of EventbriteYou don’t need to stare at a screen for hours a day to sell more tickets to your event. To help you reach your goals, we’ve put together a series of posts with the tips and tricks you need to upgrade your marketing — in just 15 minutes a day. This is the fourth post of the series. Check out the first, second, and third posts if you haven’t already!The best way to make event marketing seem less daunting is to identify what is really working for your event and double down on those efforts, leaving the ones that don’t serve you behind. This week, we’ll focus on A/B testing, segmenting, and targeting. Don’t worry — you have advanced tools at your disposal, so no guesswork is necessary. Get ready to trim the fat in our final week of 15 minute marketing tasks!Click To Tweet

Day 1: A/B test your paid ads

Successful A/B testing uses trackable, controlled differences to determine which element of an ad is making the difference on your click-through rate (CTR). For example, test two versions of the same ad where every element is identical except the call to action (CTA). Little things can have a huge impact. In fact, color changes or word choices in your CTA can really boost your CTR!15-minute task: If you set up ToneDen for social ads last week, it will automatically A/B test your ads as it runs. If not, choose one of your ads to A/B test manually. Start by reading this detailed post by Hootsuite.

Day 2: A/B test your email

A/B tests can and should be used for email, too. According to Alex Kelly, frontend developer at Mailchimp, “the best way to know what will resonate with your audience is to test.” So leave no stone unturned!15-minute task: Explore A/B testing options within your email marketing platform and set up a test for your next email campaign. “Try sending one email that’s long with lots of images and a second one that’s short with fewer images,” Kelly advises.

Day 3: Segment and target your email lists

You can improve engagement and sales by targeting your sends for specific audiences. For instance, you could send people who’ve registered for your beer festival in the past a targeted email offering them a discount to your upcoming wine festival. 15-minute task: Sort through your email lists and create a few categories. You can use those listed below, or come up with ones that work better for you.For example, you can categorize your email list by:

People who have attended your events in the past
People who have signed up for your newsletter but never attended an event
People who have attended multiple events or purchased VIP tickets

Day 4: Audit your website’s user experience

Is your website accidentally confusing potential attendees? Find out with heat mapping. Heat mapping gives a visual representation of where people click the most on your site, and how far down the page they tend to scroll. These color-coded maps show you what areas of your site are most interesting to your visitors, and which they tend to ignore. This way, you have an easy way to uncover problems with your site that may have gone unnoticed.15-minute task: Use a free trial of a tool like Crazy Egg to heatmap your website and probe for issues. Make a plan to fix any you find.

Day 5: Increase ticket prices

Raising your ticket price now might sound counterintuitive, but when lower ticket prices have an expiration date, it creates a sense of urgency for those on the fence.Of course you want to give fans and followers plenty of notice that they’re running out of time, so pick a date in the future when prices will go up, and make sure you get the word out on every channel.15-minute task: Read Your Questions Answered: How to Price Your Event for more insights into how you should price the next phase of your ticket sales. Take a step back and celebrate Congrats! With a month of 15-minute marketing tasks behind you, you should have a great foundation for your event marketing. Now, you can turn your full attention to designing the experience itself. Want to revisit the advice from the last three weeks of these posts plus learn some extra tips? Check out the full ebook.Sophia Vaccaro: Bay Area native, snake enthusiast, and live music lover Sophia writes fantasy books for young adults and blogs for Eventbrite. So far there has not been much crossover, but only time will tell.