10 Reasons Your School Should Be Using Online Ticketing

10 Reasons Your School Should Be Using Online Ticketing

Let’s be honest, cash sales and paper tickets are becoming more and more obsolete with each passing year. Most Americans don’t carry cash on a regular basis and the amount they do carry decreases with each generation. In fact, 1 in 3 Americans would have to go to an ATM to make even a $20 purchase. 

You might be seeing this change firsthand among the students, families, and alumni attending your college's or high school's events. What does this mean for your school?

To put it bluntly, online ticketing is something that you need to be using. Your guests no longer have cash readily available to spend, and selling tickets online means everyone can easily purchase them. Not only does offering online ticketing cater more to your guests’ needs, it can also make your life a whole lot easier (if you choose the right platform).

Even so, you may need to convince a department head, principal, or even a superintendent that online ticketing will have a positive impact on your school. And they probably have questions like "who's going to manage this new technology?" or "how much is that going to cost?"

To help you make the case for online ticketing at your school, here are the 10 most compelling reasons to bring your events into the digital age.

1. Get Your Money Sooner

One of the greatest benefits of online ticketing is you don’t have to wait until the day of the event to receive your ticket funds. Your guests will be able to purchase tickets whenever they want and plan their day in advance. Not to mention you won’t have to spend hours counting your cash sales and hoping the numbers add up.

2. Sell Season Passes

Why limit yourself to only selling tickets for one game at a time? Offering your guests season passes could be a game changer for your events. That begs the question, what is a season pass?

A season pass, or season tickets, grants the passholder access to every home game your team plays during the regular season. You could also include playoff and championship games, or offer those games as optional add-ons.

There’s a lot of great benefits to selling season passes, chief among them being convenience for your guests and cash inflow for you. You’ll have more usable funds up front than if you sold tickets for each game separately. Not to mention your guests (students, parents, alumni, etc.) won’t have to worry about purchasing tickets each time they want to attend a home game.

3. Eliminate Cash Handling

Since you’ll be selling tickets through an online platform there won’t be any need to handle cash which eliminates a lot of hassle and stress on your part. So many things can go wrong with cash sales - improper counting, misplaced funds, wrong change, etc.

Not only does it decrease your workload, but by cutting down or fully eliminating cash sales, your event will be much more Covid safe and it’s one more step in the right direction when it comes to health precautions. Cash carries a lot of germs and can cause those handling it to experience some exposure to sickness. When you switch your ticket sales to a digital option, you’ll be greatly reducing this exposure.

4. More Convenient

Let’s be honest, most people don’t carry cash on a regular basis. We live in a digital world and it’s becoming increasingly rare for guests to carry a ton of cash (or any) in their wallets. That’s why offering an online ticket purchasing option seems like a no brainer. 

Making it as easy as possible for you guests to support you will make them far more likely to show up and support you. If they can attend your event or buy merchandise, or whatever it may be, at the touch of a button then chances are greater that they’ll do so.

Online ticketing also allows for contactless payment and entry for your guests. As you continue to navigate health precautions, online ticketing could provide one more way to reduce contact points.

5. Accurate Guest Total

One incredibly frustrating thing about the events industry is when your guest total doesn't meet expectations and you either have a surplus or deficit of resources. The benefit to selling tickets online in advance is, you'll have a more accurate guest total which allows you to plan accordingly. Not only that, online ticketing also provides you with an easier way to keep your event at a certain capacity since you can easily manage your available capacity and limit the number of tickets sold.

6. Upsells

By allowing your guests to purchase their tickets online, you’re afforded the opportunity to upsell guests and offer things like t-shirts, concessions, upgraded seats, donating to the booster club, etc. Even if guests bring cash to an event for ticket purchases, they aren’t likely to bring a ton of extra cash with them to be used for other purchases at the event. When purchasing their tickets online, however, you could give them the option for additional purchases they can pick up at the event and their wallets are already out.

7. Immediate Ticket Purchase

Your guests will be able to immediately purchase tickets the moment they think about it or see signage that reminds them. This can increase the number of guests who attend your event and other purchases they make since they won’t have to remember to purchase tickets prior to the event or to bring cash with them.

This offers two key benefits: immediate cash inflow for your organization and an increase in those funds. Since you're allowing guests to make additional purchases you're likely to see an increase in sales. Not only that, but because they'll be able to buy tickets on the spot, they can make sure to get tickets before they're all sold out.

8. Easier Advertising

Put up posters around campus or your community with QR codes to draw in more guests and make it easy for on-the-spot purchases. You can replace or add posters and signs anywhere you want to advertise and your guests will be able to scan the code and purchase tickets immediately. You could also post the link on your organization's social media pages and website to draw in more sales that way. 

By selling your tickets online, you're now able to advertise your event easier since your guests will be able to purchase their tickets and add it to their calendar right away.

If you're looking for printables to use for posters or signs, check out our collection of ready-made graphics. 

9. Avoid long lines or bottleneck areas

Accelerate the entry process and maximize efficiency. Guests will no longer have to wait in line for long periods of time to purchase tickets for your event and many of them will likely purchase tickets prior to the event. For those who don't, you can set up more posters and signs at the entrance to your event for ticket purchases to be made at the event. 

The only line you'll have to worry about with online ticket sales is the line to scan the tickets and show guests to their seats if necessary. Otherwise, you should see shorter lines and quicker moving ones at that.

10. Take back your time

Since you'll no longer have to spend hours counting cash sales or dealing with discrepancies, you'll be afforded more time to spend setting up your event or just taking a well deserved night off. Not to mention the fact that your guests will no longer need to stop by your office or school to purchase tickets.

At Passage, we are all about offering our clients with concierge support services which means we take care of you every step of the way. From setting up your event page for you and assisting with any changes or updates to fielding incoming support issues from your guests. This allows you to 

Don’t worry about increased costs because if you use Passage, you can push those service costs onto the ticket purchaser which means you won’t have to increase your precious budget to upgrade your ticketing.