You don't need to giveaway your attendees data to third-party events hosting platforms - own them by having your own branded registration platform; with Ashley Cline of TicketSocket

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we're going to Huntingdon Beach, California. We're going to talk with Ashley Klein. Ashley, welcome to the show.

Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me.

Look, we're going to talk about tickets and Ticket Socket is the company you're working with. And we're going to talk about how entrepreneurs can build an event where they own the attendees as opposed to giving them all away to some ticket platforms. Ashley, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Ashley, if an entrepreneur is organizing an event, and I know that Ticket Socket works with big events like the Spartan Races, which we all know, and the National Basketball association, for example, what considerations should they have between using a platform, for example, like Eventbrite, where there are already a lot of people and we're guaranteed to get customers, and ticketsocket, which is a white label platform, take us through the decisions that we need to go and make sure.

So I'd say one of the most important things that any company or event organizer should really take into consideration is your data and more importantly, your customer data, and who owns that and who has rights to use it. And given, you know, things that we went through with COVID which we can touch on some case studies there a little later, but you know, where the world is going, customer data is so important to have and to understand.

Just remind us then when you say during COVID what happened? Specifically during COVID that means owning your own data is so important.

Sure. So what we saw during COVID of course, no matter where you are, there's a good chance that events were canceled and shut down. And this was obviously a really tough time for the industry and for everyone. And so what happened was companies that put on events struggled because if they were not using a ticketing platform that allowed them to own their brand, money and data, they were at the mercy of the ticketing company selling their tickets. And where this became problematic is one with money. A lot of these other ticketing companies hold onto your money and pay you out. Sometimes they pay you out throughout the sales cycle. After a couple weeks or a lot of times, they'll hold onto the revenue until an event is over. And if that was the case for you and your event was canceled, that meant your ticketing company was holding all of your funds, which left you really no room to figure out how to pivot your company and make it through this very turmoil period, essentially. And then one step further, not having control of your customer data meant you were in full control of communication with your customers and you weren't able to really do the proper customer service and PR needed to kind of make it through this rough period actually.

So it sounds like, you know, it was a virus on another level for people's businesses as well if they got an events business. So you mentioned a white label for those of us that are not familiar with how that works and think that the only solution for selling tickets is something like Eventbrite for example. How does Ticket Socket solve that problem?

Sure, great question. So a lot of our clients that come to us understand or are starting to understand the importance of their brand equity and what that means. If you're working with ticketsocket, we don't consider ourselves a ticketing company. We consider ourselves a software company, a powerful platform that you can use to sell tickets. And when someone uses our platform, there's so many pieces in the journey that you control and customize, starting with the most simple, your domain name. So instead of, you know, selling tickets on third party ticketing site, your tickets can be sold on tickets, your domain name, com. So your domain name stays in the picture, your logo appears all throughout your color scheme, exactly what you want to say, communicate to a customer throughout that checkout flow is all controlled by you. And Ticket Socket completely disappears. No one knows who ticketsocket is. You know, we don't put our branding on our client's software.

Okay, so that's wonderful. So really control. Now why do entrepreneurs, business owners, events like Spartan work with Ticket Socket instead of going on to Eventbrite? Because if they've got the two options you talked about, the branding and so on. But surely if someone puts their event on Eventbrite, they can upgrade and promote their event. But also they get all the audience, don't they on one of these big ticketing platforms. So how do you help people to overcome that? Can you give us some techniques that a business owner can deploy? Ashley?

Sure. So that can definitely be a benefit of going to a third party company, third party ticketing site like there is a little bit of a built in audience. Now the downfall of that is that built in audience is getting marketed several other events that essentially compete with you. Even if it's not the same event, you're competing for someone's time. My role at Ticket Socket essentially is to strategize with our clients on how they can grow their own data of customers, both customers, but also prospects, people who are interested in attending an event but have not yet. And that is where I really help make a shift with some of our clients who are maybe Spending a hundred percent of their marketing dollars in acquiring a customer. And acquiring a customer through a Facebook ad or emailing or sms, that can get pretty costly. And you're stuck in a cycle of spending more money to meet a sales goal to get the people to your event that you're looking to get in the door. And so what I do is help them build a list of people who are interested in their event but haven't bought tickets yet. And if you kind of flip that script where you're spending your marketing dollars buying leads, which can be pennies compared to acquiring a customer, we can then really nurture those leads into making a purchase and nurturing them through emails, SMS retargeting, utilizing that list to create what we call lookalike audiences on Facebook and Google. So that can be a much more cost effective way to market your event and grow your customer base.

Okay, so there's integrations, it sounds like with the ticket registration with Omnichannel Marketing. Is that right, Ashley?

Yes. And so that's kind of where Ticket Socket got its name. It's really a plug and play type system. We have an open API so people can utilize that to create custom integrations. And we have a marketplace on the back end of our software where you can kind of choose your different tools to plug in and connect to. So of course I work more on the marketing side. So those are my favorite tools to talk about. One being a CRM like ActiveCampaign. You could also do this with a klaviyo or a HubSpot or even a Mailchimp and essentially something like ActiveCampaign. We can connect your account to your Ticket Socket account and then really leverage that for increasing your sales and conversion. So we can do things like trigger automated abandoned cart sequences, something much more elaborate and branded than what you could do with the standard ticketing system. And even taking it a step further, once someone has purchased, we send all of that customer data back to your CRM and then how can we upsell them on maybe the things that they didn't buy yet or create cross sell them on another event that you have coming up. So we really leverage those integrations to assure that you are getting as many sales as possible without having to increase your media spend dollars.

Actually that makes a lot of sense that you integrated with people's existing platforms for CRM or for billings. What about billings? And let's just talk briefly then about payments. Because if it's a paid for event and you're taking money up front, is this multi Currency. Is this US only? Just tell us a little bit about fulfillment.

Yeah, great question. So when we were talking earlier about the COVID situation and ticketing companies holding onto events funds, so that's where we really vary. What we do is we give you this platform and we connect it to your payment processor of choice. That could be a stripe, it could be a square. It's really up to you. And if you don't have one, we match you with the one that would give you the best rates. And what happens is when a customer buys a ticket, instead of us processing the money, holding onto it and paying you out when we see fit, what happens is when a customer buys, the money immediately goes into your bank account, not ours. And on the back end, what we do is split off our fee and that goes into our bank account. Your money goes into your bank account. So there's never us holding funds or invoicing you or anything of the such. And for a lot of our clients who are international and do events, you know, not just in the US or UK or Canada, what happens is we can process in over 200 different currencies. So no matter what country you're in, we have a payment processing partner that is, you know, the most reputable brand within your country that we can connect your site to so that you're processing that country's revenue.

Okay, that's really, really helpful. So really sort of a multi currency and presumably multilingual content management system as well. Actually, let's just move on to the deployment at event. Let's assume it's not a virtual event with online registrations. One of the challenges if you're organizing an event is when all those people turn up. Do you want to take us through point of entry and integration? Is it mobile? Do you have to have handheld scanners? Do people have to print out a ticket?

Yeah, that's a great question. And so a lot of it depends on your event and what you choose to do. So Ticket Socket has a component where, of course, we process online sales. We also have a box office component because a lot of our clients do both where they have a box office and then they also have online sales. And so our software can essentially integrate with whatever system you choose to use. You know, some of our clients prefer square, some of our clients prefer clover, Some of our clients prefer zebra scanners. Some of our clients prefer to use their mobile app. There's an app that we have that you can download onto any phone or iPad that will scan the tickets. And the tickets can be done Again, however you please. We do mobile tickets that can get emailed to you and we also connect with a pretty popular printing mechanism called boca. So if you do a bokeh ticket, you probably know what it is, but it's kind of more of those sentimental value long rectangular tickets, if you're familiar. So a lot of our circus clients still use those or time ticketing museums. So it can print off a barcode on those as well and they'll all scan. So it's really up to you and what's going to streamline your business. And we provide that kind of consulting service too. Okay, how are we going to make this point of entry as seamless as possible for you? Controlled traffic, that sort of thing?

Actually, I love all of the flexible integrations. Having run an events business myself for a number of years in Singapore, you can really see how it's revolutionized now with the Internet. You've mentioned a couple of times about fees. How affordable is ticketsocket? Because you've explained a really end to end omnichannel marketing on site registrations. But is it affordable for the aspiring entrepreneur, the unnoticed entrepreneur who's building an event?

I would say absolutely yes. I think we're all familiar with maybe purchasing some concert tickets and the kind of outrageous fees that we see at checkout for some of those. And it is nothing like that. We give you a standard pricing based on your ticket value. Just speaking candidly here, can't hold me to these rates, but pretty typically it could be, you know, maybe three, three and a half percent of your ticket is what we would charge. And then the cool thing is you own on the back end how those fees are set up. So if you also need to charge maybe a city venue fee or an insurance fee, or you actually maybe want to take our three and a half percent and raise it to 5% and charge your client 5% ticketing fee, then you can make an additional revenue stream off of the fees. So we give you our lowest base price that we can and then what you want to pass on to the customer is up to you.

Okay, yeah. So it makes it really affordable. Do you have for example, case study that you can explain how someone's taken ticket socket and made an event happen that may not have even been commercially viable if they'd gone to for example, one of the big ticketing websites that take, I think quite a high percentage, don't they, of your ticket sales?

They do take a high percentage and that can really hinder conversions at checkout. For sure, you'll see a lot of people add things to their cart just to get to the very end, especially when it comes to buying tickets at events. And they'll take a look and be like, wow, those are the fees and they'll bail. And so we have seen clients come to us and see dramatically increased conversions at checkout, and they're able to, you know, make more money on their bottom line revenue, essentially because people feel more comfortable purchasing tickets when the fees are not so extremely high.

Ashley, you are responsible for the marketing and helping your clients build attendance to their events. Can we just turn our minds then? What would be two or three strategies that you recommend, if you like, consistently, that work to business owners on helping them to get more registrations?

Sure, Great question. So the first thing I like to do is sit down, strategize how many tickets do they need to sell? And what I'll do is build a strategic digital marketing plan for them. And that usually includes components of, you know, Facebook ads, maybe Google Ads, search engine optimization, email, sms, social media content. And what we do is I find out, okay, what are you planning on spending on Facebook ads? Let's say it's $10,000, just for example. Sometimes clients spend a lot less, sometimes clients spend a lot more. But for sake of numbers, let's go with 10,000. And most of the time, what event customers I see do will take that $10,000. They will run Facebook ads to acquire a sale, driving people to checkout to buy a ticket. That can get pretty costly to acquire a customer. So I don't consider that the best way to spend that $10,000. And if that's all you have, I guarantee you you will not reach your sales goals. And so what I do is a learning curve for clients, especially if you're newer to event and don't have a database yet of past customers. As I say, okay, let's take 50 to 70% of that $10,000. And before we ever go on sale, let's run ads generating leads, meaning let's get someone's name, phone number, and email who has said, you know what? This event looks pretty interesting to me. I want to join, I want to know more. I want to be on the VIP list, whatever that looks like. And what we do is we grow the database. And these leads cost pennies compared to what it costs to acquire a customer because the ask is so much smaller. You're only asking for their name, email, phone number. And once we have that information, we create a sequence of emails, text messages, and retargeting Ads that are communicating to them. This is the day we go on sale. You do not want to miss this and here's why. And we really create kind of a big deal on opening night and really create what we call fomo, that fear of missing out. Like you do not want to miss the day and time we go on sale because that first hour is crucial. And then we'll do that kind of lead generation campaign for maybe three to four weeks before we go on sale and then we'll go on sale. And as I mentioned, this can be pretty scary for a lot of customers who've never shifted their dollars this way. And what we find is within that first hour of going on sale, we have such a strong opening night, which allows everyone to relax a little bit during that sales cycle, which can be very stressful for events because a lot of times, okay, we've secured enough money to make sure our venue fees are paid or you know, other big costs that we're going to incur before the event actually happens. So it's a great way to generate a lot of buzz and audience very quickly and then, you know, use the rest of that money to acquire customers while we continue to nurture that email and text number list to drive sales throughout.

Interesting. Actually you just quickly you've mentioned text messaging. How important is it to integrate text messaging or SMS as we call it here with email?

So important. I would not want to do a marketing execute a marketing strategy without it. It's something that I've started implementing with my clients, I'd say the last 18 months or so and it makes such a dramatic difference. A lot of my clients leveraging text messaging marketing in the right way are seeing 70 to 80% of their sales are coming from text messaging. Now that doesn't mean Facebook ads and email is not important because it is. It's still all a necessary evil. And honestly, it's all three of those working together properly that helps one channel convert. Kind of like you know, Facebook and email and Google Ads are giving the assist while SMS is executing the sale. But still very important but extremely lucrative these days with event marketing.

Great. Yeah. And the cost per SMS is actually quite competitive too, isn't it? It's quite a low cost channel, yes.

My preferred partner that I work with is called Attentive and It's usually about $0.02 or less per text message you send.

Wow, that's fantastic. We'll put a link to Attentive in the show notes. I've also been using one called Click Send and there's another one called Twilio, of course, which is one of the big ones. Yeah. Ashley, thank you. You know, this is such a huge subject, and I really appreciate you introducing how an entrepreneur can use a white label ticketing platform to own their own clients, own their own events and own their own revenue. Ashley Klein joining me from Ticket Socket in Huntington Beach, California, thank you so much.

Yes, thank you, Jim. Thanks, everybody.

So you've been listening to Ashley Klein and myself, Jim James, on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur show today. And as always, I'll put all the details in the show notes. And if you can, please do share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur that you know would find this of interest. Until we meet again, I do encourage you to keep on communicating.