Early bird offers are special discounted rates, promotions or other types of incentives you can use to encourage customers to book early. Time-sensitive early birds, discounts, tiered-priced releases and limited availability offers are a great way to generate interest and create buzz around an event.
There are two popular ways to set up early bird offers on Ticketsolve, automatic discount or through ticket allocations.
These can be set to expire on a certain date and can be used on multiple events/shows by adding a tag to a show/event. You would remove the tag from the show/event manually in order to stop the discount.
This is a more dynamic approach where an early bird offer begins and ends on a specific date and a different Allocation automatically starts after the end date. This can be programmed in advance to run automatically.
Create an automatic discount
An early bird discount can be automatically applied to the customer's tickets online or at the box office by setting up a discount that applies to tickets once they are added to the cart.
Add a tag to your show(s)
First, you need to apply a tag to all the show(s)/event(s) which will have the early bird offer. For example, you could use the tag 'earlybird'. In the example below, we will be creating an early bird discount for multiple shows and using a show tag. You could also use event tags to select only certain events within a show(s).
Create a new discount
Go to Manage > Discounts
1. Click Add New + (top left panel) to add a new discount.
2. Fill in the fields including:
- Name
- Description (optional)
- Start date and End date can be used to set when a discount will be available from and when it will end.
Start date of 1 July and an End date of 31 July:
- The discount will be in effect from 00:01 on 1 July and end at 00:01 on 31 July
If you want the discount to be available throughout 31 July:
- The Start date would be 1 July but the End date would be need to be 1 August.
If you have a standard early bird that you use for all shows/events you might consider not adding a start or end dates, otherwise these discounts will not work after the date you specified.
- Priority number (optional). Priority numbers are not required, but if you have multiple discounts available, it is helpful to use priority. 99 is the highest (showing at the top) and 1 is the lowest (showing at the bottom). Note: A line item in the cart can only have one discount at a time.
- Tags. If you use subdomain tags make sure to also tag the discount with the relevant subdomain otherwise the discount will not work. This is required for both Box Office and Online.
3. Set the Active discount? to on (blue).
4. Click Save New in the bottom right corner.
Create the Rules
Once you have created your discount, you need to create the rules for the discount. The rules are in a "When customer" (does/selects/chooses etc) . . . "Customer gets" (% discount,/X amount off, etc.) format, giving you a lot of options to construct your discounts.
Set the "When customer..." rule
1. Click on the Rules tab.
2. Click the + Add New in the When customer... section to begin configuring the rules.
3. In the Add new rule pop-up box, select Buy at least from dropdown menu.
4. Enter a number. This is how many tickets the customer needs to buy to get the discount.
5. In the Select item type dropdown select tickets for.
6. In the in... dropdown select shows with tag or event with tag (depending on how you tagged the shows/events).
7. Select the tag you added to the shows/events. In this case 'earlybird'.
8. In the Define pricing dropdown select at any price or select a different option depending on your requirements. Note: Other options will require additional information and/or tagging.
9. Click Save.
Set the "Customer gets..." rule
1. Click + Add New in the Customer gets... section to finish configuring the rules.
2. In the Select access type dropdown, select All.
3. In the Select item type dropdown select tickets for.
4. In the in... dropdown select shows with tag or event with tag (depending on how you tagged the shows/events).
5. Select the tag you added to the shows/events. In this case 'earlybird'.
6. In the Define pricing dropdown select at any price or select a different option depending on your requirements. (Other options will require additional information and/or tagging).
7. In the Define discount amount select with percent off or with amount off.
8. Enter the percentage or amount discount you wish to give customers.
9. Select any number of times for the discount limit, as discount and purchase limits only apply when a discount is using unique promotion codes.
10. Click Save.
Ticketsolve Tip
If you have a standard early bird scheme that has the same discount amount applied every time to every show/event, you can simply add and remove the early bird tag to and from the shows/events as needed. This way, you don't have to create early birds discounts for every show/event; you can leave the promotion running for multiple shows, and just remove or add tags as needed. Remember to remove the tags on specific shows/events when the early bird offer ends.
In this example we walked through creating an early bird discount for multiple shows or events. To create a discount for a single show or event, follow the same steps above but instead of tagging shows/events and selecting shows with tag or event with tag in the discount rules, just select the specific show or event. Remember to send an End date on the discount when you want the early bird offer on this show/event to finish.
Use Ticket Allocations to create early bird offers
In Ticketsolve, you can create an early bird offer on any existing Ticket Allocation, or create a new one. The advantage of using allocations for your early birds is:
- You can report on exactly how many early bird tickets are sold, as opposed to full price tickets that have been discounted.
- For customers booking online, early bird ticket prices are clearly presented as an option during the seat/ticket selection process, rather than shown as a discount in the cart section after tickets are added to their cart.
Create your Early Bird Ticket Allocation
1. Create a Pricing scheme with prices for your early bird offer.
2. Go to Manage > Show > Run > Event.
3. In the Master Allocations list (left column), click the ticket zone you need.
4. In the Ticket Allocations list (left column), click Add New + (upper left column) to create a new 'Early Bird" allocation
If you want to brush up on creating and managing Ticket Allocations, read our guide!
5. Add in the details for the allocation. Be sure to name your allocation appropriately, e.g., 'Early Bird Offer' etc.
6. Set the Size to the number of tickets that will part of the early bird offer. This is important if you only want so many ticket to be available at the early bird discounted price. It is best to leave the Min size at zero, this way if any tickets are left in the early bird allocation they will become available generally when the early bird offer ends.
7. Remember to leave the Assigned and Exclusive? toggles off if you have a seated event. With the toggles off, all seats are available to select at the early bird price, and at the end of the early bird offer, if there are any tickets remaining in the allocation, they will be available for sale in other allocations.
8. Set the Effective From and Effective To dates for when the early bird ticket allocation will be available for sale at the Box Office and online.
Effective From Date of 1 July and an End date of 31 July:
- The discount will be in effect from 00:01 on 1 July and end at 00:01 on 31 July
If you want the discount to be available throughout 31 July:
- The Effective From Date would be 1 July but the Effective To Date would be need to be 1 August.
If your Early Bird allocation is going on sale from as soon as the event goes live, there is no need to set an Effective From Date.
9. Set the Allocation level to Public if the offer will be generally available.
10. Select the Pricing scheme you created earlier that holds the early bird pricing.
When happy, Add or Update Ticket Allocation to save your changes.
Set the Effective From Date on your Full Price Ticket Allocation
You now need to set the Effective From Date on your Full Price Ticket Allocation so that it kicks in for sale as soon as the Effective to date on the Early Bird allocation hits, so that your tickets automatically switch over from the Early Bird price to the Full Price.
For example:
Early Bird offer runs 1st July until 1st August, and then tickets switch to Full Price.
Your Early Bird Ticket Allocation dates should be set at:
Effective from: 1st July (however there is no need to set an Effective from date here if your Early Bird tickets are available from the time the event goes on sale).
Effective To: 1st August (00:01 on 1st August).
Your Full Price Ticket Allocation dates should be set at:
Effective From: 1st August (00:01 on 1st August).
There is no need to set an Effective to date here if you want these tickets to remain on sale until the event date.
Online, customers will be presented with the early bird offer as an allocation alongside any other allocations you have available for sale.
Tips for your early bird offers
1. Be as generous as you can with your early bird discounting in order to make it an attractive offer.
2. Create a sense of urgency and make sure you promote the early bird price expiry date properly and stick to it. If you give people too much time to take advantage of a discounted price, there is no sense of urgency, so they won’t take action. Don't be tempted to extend an early bird discount!
3. Create a membership offer. You could offer early bird tickets to members only, which could drive sales in membership packages.
4. Try tiered pricing and releases. You can create a simple tiered offer using allocations, for example, you can create a variety of banded allocations, each with a different pricing schemes and each with specific effective to and from dates. This way, each allocation would be released and be on sale between specific dates and with specific prices (and if applicable) discounts for buying early. The goal of this approach is to incentivise early purchases, create a sense of urgency and can help manage ticket demand - especially useful for high-demand onsales - and can help you gauge interest and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
Combining strategies, such as early bird offers, banded pricing allocations, special discounts for specific groups , etc., is a great way encourage early booking and reach a wider audience.
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