Category Archives: Marketing

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

5 Marketing Tips to Get Better Engagement

I see it all the time: venues spending their money on mass marketing efforts, blasting vague messages to a broad range of people who may or may not be their customers. All because they don’t know who their customers are, what their objectives are, or how to use the tools that are readily available to them. Fortunately, it’s a simple problem to fix and doesn’t require a lot of upfront capital to get on track.

Follow these 5 tips to get a better handle on your marketing and get the biggest bang for your buck.

1. Know Your Audience

Before you start any type of marketing, you first need to know who your audience is. Customers are the number one component of a successful venue. Without customers, you don’t have a business. Discover who your customers are, what their idea of a good party is, the music they like to hear, the alcohol they like to drink, and the experience they expect. This information dictates your entire marketing strategy, including your promotions.

The best way to collect this information is through a system that tracks every guest who walks through your door, like Vēmos. This data aggregates in a central analytics system which allows you to understand what nights/promotions /events drive people through the door, which channels bring the most traffic to your website and your venue, and how much on average people are spending. That’s valuable data that helps you put resources behind the things that are working and stop the things that aren’t.

2. Segment Your Audience with Personal Messages

When you track every guest who walks through your door, you’re able to use that information to target specific customer groups. Want to target females who have a birthday this week? You can do that. How about anyone who attended your last EDM concert? You can do that, too. Just make sure your system has a CRM component that collects all of this information. Then, use filters to group like-minded guests together, such as age range, spending habits, nights they come out, etc. From there, send messages that speak directly to that segmented audience to appear more personal and get a higher engagement rate.

3. Run Targeted Social Media Ads

There are billions of monthly active users across social media networks. In fact, on Facebook alone there are 1.49 billion monthly active users. That’s a lot of people you can capture by sending the right message to the right people. Facebook’s advertising algorithms have changed and improved tenfold since its inception. Now, you’re able to create custom audiences and save them in your ads account for later use. As we discussed in the marketing segmentation section above, you’re able to use these specific segments to target different audiences for different promotions. You can also run multiple promotions at the same time, targeting different audiences and capturing a return for your different promotions at once.

4. Text Your Customers

Studies show that 98% of text messages get opened, and the average CTR on text is 36%. It’s one of the best channels to get a response, and one of the best to speak directly to your customers. Use your segments to send personalized text messages, or send a mass text about a promotion you have going on. You can even get as granular as texting individuals — nothing says exclusive like offering someone a personal promotion and greeting them by their name. That’s what makes people feel special, and that’s what makes them more loyal.

5. Use Tracking Links to Understand Results

The best way to know if your marketing efforts are working is to track it. Assign specific links to each channel and staff member to truly understand your results. Then, use those links on your various channels (i.e. a different link for Facebook, Twitter, third-party media, digital ads, etc). Also make sure your staff is using their personal link when they promote your event so they get credit. The results will inform you of what you should and shouldn’t be spending your time and money on. Is a certain promotion bringing in a ton of people? Keep doing it! Is a certain message not providing results? Fix it. That’s the true power of data. When you have absolute clarity around your efforts, you can do even more to increase your success. Without data, you’re simply just guessing.


Contact us to get started with your free trial of Vēmos to track your results and get higher returns.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

3 Steps to Build Loyalty and Strengthen Your Guests’ Experience

Millennials have indicated rude staff and impersonalization as reasons for not frequenting nightclubs (along with several others). And I don’t blame them. While nearly every other industry has shifted its focus on providing one-on-one personalized service, nightclubs have fallen behind. And when people are used to being treated like an individual, it’s hard to go somewhere where they’re treated like a number.

This concept of treating each guest as an individual is a huge opportunity for every venue. Nearly everyone has an estimate of how many guests walked through their door on a given night. What they don’t know is who walked through their door. They get people in, serve them, and let them walk away without knowing anything about them.

Follow these three steps to shift your focus back to your customers to give them the experience they want.

Step 1: Capture

Use a digital system to handle every aspect of your door. That way, you’re able to collect data on every type of customer that walks in your venue. And when you connect this to your point of sale system, you’re able to unearth even more valuable information. This means you have a database of all your guests, including their name, contact info, how many times they’ve been to your venue, whether they’re a VIP/guest list/event/general admission customer, how much money they’ve spent, and what their most popular drink purchases are.

Step 2: Personalize

Now think about that. With this information at your disposal at the palm of your hand, you get to treat every guest like an individual. Everyone loves to be recognized. Everyone. And people naturally spend more when they feel appreciated and recognized. Plus, people are accustomed and willing to providing their information. After all, a study conducted by Accenture discovered that 85% of their participants are willing to provide their information to trusted retailers in exchange for targeted, personalized information. Here are a couple examples to do this well:

  • A customer is a regular guest list customer. They come to your venue and you see in their profile they’ve visited your venue every week for the past month. Upsell that customer to a VIP table and provide a complimentary bottle of champagne as a thank you. This simple gesture is perceived by the guest as a premium, highly personalized level of service. It shows him how much he is valued, and entices him to stay longer, spend more, bring more of his friends, and come back more often. This is how you organically build loyalty.
  • You’re hosting an event. You’ve hosted events in the past and used your digital system to build your database. You segment your customer list into a group of people who attended a similar event in the past that spent more than $200 while at the event. Send that group an exclusive invitation to your event before you release it to the rest of the public. They’ll feel like insiders and will naturally establish a deeper connection with your venue. You can also give your biggest spender a complimentary ticket to the event because you’ll know you’ll make even more once he/she is at the event.

Step 3: Optimize

The personal treatment you’re able to offer will provide your guests with a better experience, making them more loyal and more likely to refer friends to your venue. And now that everything is in one system, you’re able to understand a wholistic picture of who your customers are, which marketing efforts get them through your door, and which types of experiences bring the biggest results. This allows you to stop doing the things that don’t work and optimize the ones that do.


Treating guests like the individuals they are and catering your experience to their needs isn’t hard. All it takes is a system that captures all your information in one place, your staff to use that system so it automatically pulls necessary information on the guests walking through your door, and your ability to execute on providing that exclusive experience. It’s the little things that make the biggest difference to your guests and brings the biggest dollar to you.


Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Get Personal with Your Customers

Your customers are the most important aspect of your venue or event. After all, they’re the reason you’re in business. That’s why it’s crucial you treat your customers with the best possible service — from sending them personal, targeted messages, to greeting them as individuals at your door, to understanding how to cater to their personal habits once they’re there.

This concept of treating each guest as an individual is a huge opportunity for every venue. Nearly everyone has an estimate of how many guests walked through their door on a given night. What they don’t know is who walked through their door. They get people in, serve them, and let them walk away without knowing anything about them.

But if you use a digital system to handle every aspect of your door, you’re able to collect data on every type of customer that walks in your venue. And when you connect this to your point of sale system, you’re able to unearth even more valuable information. This means you have a database of all your guests, including their name, contact info, how many times they’ve been to your venue, whether they’re a VIP/guest list/event/general admission customer, how much money they’ve spent, and what their most popular drink purchases are.

Now think about that. With this information at your disposal at the palm of your hand, you get to treat every guest like an individual. Everyone loves to be recognized. Everyone. And people naturally spend more when they feel appreciated and recognized. Here are a couple examples to do this well:

  • A customer is a regular guest list customer. They come to your venue and you see in their profile they’ve visited your venue every week for the past month. Upsell that customer to a VIP table and provide a complimentary bottle of champagne as a thank you. This simple gesture is perceived by the guest as a premium, highly personalized level of service. It shows him how much he is valued, and entices him to stay longer, spend more, bring more of his friends, and come back more often. This is how you organically build loyalty.
  • You’re hosting an event. You’ve hosted events in the past and used your digital system to build your database. You segment your customer list into a group of people who attended a similar event in the past that spent more than $200 while at the event. Send that group an exclusive invitation to your event before you release it to the rest of the public. They’ll feel like insiders and will naturally establish a deeper connection with your venue. You can also give your biggest spender a complimentary ticket to the event because you’ll know you’ll make even more once he/she is at the event.

Treating guests like the individuals they are and catering your experience to their needs isn’t hard. All it takes is a system that captures all your information in one place, your staff to use that system so it automatically pulls necessary information on the guests walking through your door, and your ability to execute on providing that exclusive experience. It’s the little things that make the biggest difference to your guests and brings the biggest dollar to you.


Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

7 Steps to Profitable Summer Events

Summer is the best season to amp your experience for your guests and boost your revenue. People are looking for big ways to spend their summer months, and are more prone to attend events and parties. The most successful venues host multiple, recurring events throughout the summer to appeal to their audience and boost revenue. Let’s make sure you’re seizing the season and capturing your guests for the most profitable summer season you’ve ever had.

Here are 7 steps to set yourself up for success, whether you’re hosting one event or many.

1. Define Your Theme and Hire Talent

The first step is to make sure you have the high-level strategic information of your event figured out. This includes picking your event dates and times, defining your event theme, and hiring your talent. Remember, there’s a lot of competition during the summer — why should someone choose your event over another? Events that have a focused theme and stay consistent with that theme during their promotions attract the right guests. That’s because the likelihood of you catering your theme to your specific audience is higher than if you never thought through it in the first place. Know who your audience is and what type of party they’re looking for. This will help set the stage for hiring the right talent and providing expectations from the beginning.

2. Get Your System in Place

Make sure you have full control of your events and get access to all of your data before, during, and after the event. This means you’ll need to get an event & ticketing system in place to help you manage your event and pre-sell tickets on your website. Vēmos incorporates ticketing into the rest of your efforts, giving you a complete picture of your event and venue’s results. So not only are you able to manage your events and pre-sell tickets, but you’re also able to handle day-of check-ins from the same system along with your reservations and guest lists. All of your efforts are synced together, which is not only easier for you to operate, but allows you to maximize ticket sales and revenue before the night of your event while capturing all your data in one central spot.

3. Train Staff on System and Set Expectations

Now that you have your system, it’s time to train your staff and make sure everyone is on the same page. After all, new systems and processes only work if everyone is on board and following them correctly. Make sure everyone understands how to use the system so there aren’t any issues the day of your event. Set expectations of staff involvement for your event, including the number of tickets they need to sell and night-of shift expectations. The more crystal clear you are, the more your staff will all be aligned for smooth operations.

4. Use a Pricing Strategy

Encourage people to pre-purchase their tickets for your events by creating supply and demand. Showing them your price will increase as the event gets closer creates demand for the few supply of early bird tickets. You can set your tickets to increase price by the week, day or even hour leading up to your event. You can also set your tickets to increase by quantity after x amount of tickets are sold. Take this example (for easy math, let’s assume your have 100 tickets to sell):

  • Tickets are released and priced at $50
  • Once 25 tickets are sold (one-fourth of your venue), raise the price to $75
  • Once 50 tickets are sold (half your venue), raise the price to $100
  • Once 75 tickets are sold (three-fourths of your venue), raise the price to $125
  • Once 90 tickets are sold, raise the price to $150

You can do this with any dollar increment, with any amount of tickets, and at any time interval. However you do it, it’s going to earn you more dollars per square foot per person, and it’s going to encourage people to buy early and have time to share their plans with others. After all, the majority of people attend summer events based on where their friends are going.

5. Market Your Event

It’s important to first define your audience before you start marketing your event so you know exactly who you’re reaching and what their call to action needs to be. Publish your event on your website event page or create a landing page so people can start buying your tickets. Segment your customers into specific audiences and send messages that speak directly to each segment via text and email. Create a Facebook event and invite people to attend. Boost targeted social ads to your audience to build awareness and interact with your audience. Turn your promoters into a mobile box office to sell tickets on the street from their mobile devices. And throughout all of it, use affiliate links to track all your marketing efforts so you know exactly what is and isn’t working for you.


6. Experience Seamless Operations
It’s the day of your event, and you should already be well-informed of how many tickets have been sold and feel at ease with the revenue you’ve already earned. Now it’s time to make sure operations are seamless for an enjoyable night. To do this, you need to optimize your lines and focus on getting your guests through your door so they can get inside to enjoy heir night and spend money on drinks.

Using a bit of strategy in your lines not only ensures a seamless door, but also physically shows guests why they should pre-purchase their tickets for your next event. Create a different line for a different type of customer, such as a line for your pre-sale customer and a line for customers paying at the door. This allows your staff handling pre-sale checkin to only focus on that task and increase line speed for those that bought ahead of time. On the other hand, it allows you staff selling tickets at the door to only handle that task, aiding in long waits for door sales. We helped a venue check in more than 1,200 pre-sale guests within 15 minutes with this strategy. The more organized your lines are, the faster your speed of night will be, the happier your customers will be, and the faster they’re through your door to spend money inside your venue.

7. Analyze and Optimize

Now that you’re event is over, it’s time to analyze results for a bigger return next time. Getting access to your data gives you the opportunity to truly understand how your venue and events are performing. This is why we recommend using a unified system like Vēmos, where all functions are operated through one dashboard. That way, all of your data will be in one spot – not to mention the data will be broken down by individual guests and referrers to truly understand areas of strength and weakness. You’ll know what marketing efforts worked and which didn’t, along with which items sold and which didn’t. Repeat and enhance the initiatives that worked and table the ones that didn’t to continue to grow your efforts and increase your revenue. This information allows you to set yourself up for even more success for your next events throughout the summer months.


Interested in hosting more profitable summer events at your venue? Contact Vēmos to get started on your free trial.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Marketing and Advertising: Get the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

You have an event coming up. Your talent is booked, your event landing page is created, and you have tickets set up. Now, you need to get those tickets sold and get customers through your door. That’s where marketing and advertising comes in.

I oftentimes see venues and events blindly posting information with no true strategy. They’re handing out flyers, posting messages on social, and doing promotions to one mass audience without any tracking measures in place. Sound like you? Don’t worry — you’re not alone, and there’s a fix.

Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane. In the past, marketing and advertising was done exactly like I described above. It was a one way street of communication, with businesses blasting messages and hoping someone hears it. It was nearly impossible to track results, and didn’t foster interaction with customers. So, when businesses started to sink, marketing and advertising were the first departments to get cut. But not anymore.

In today’s digital landscape, not only can you track each and every marketing effort you do, but you can also tailor your message to each individual customer (read more on that here). This drives results. This drives sales. And this drives the understanding of what does and doesn’t work so you have even more success in the future.

Here’s what you need to do.

Use trackable affiliate links

Affiliate links are a specific URL that contains the affiliate’s ID or username. This is what allows you to track which of your marketing efforts are truly working for you. You can also use affiliate links to track your staff and promoter results.

Here’s how you use affiliate links:

1. Create a trackable link for each and every channel — Facebook, Twitter, third-party media, digital ads, every staff member, etc. Every channel needs its own link.

2. Provide your links to the appropriate people. In other words, make sure your staff is using their link when they promote your event so they get credit. This means they use their link on their own social channels, through texts, in their emails, etc. On our system, they can also sell tickets through a mobile device for in-person transactions using their login, and be tracked that way as well

3. Use your marketing links when you’re posting. Doing a Facebook ad? Use your Facebook link. Have an post on a third-party media outlet? Send them your media link. Each individual link should be used on its individual channel.

4. Track results. Find out how many leads and purchases you received from each of your channels and each of your staff. What worked, and what didn’t? Stop doing the activities that didn’t drive any business, and put more effort behind the ones that did. That’s how you make sure your marketing dollars are working for you and isn’t just being tossed down the drain.

Vēmos automates the affiliate link processes, so you can save time and energy with the manual labor of creating and tracking each individual link. The results are track within your dashboard and show marketing channels and which staff members are bringing in not the most guests and the most sales. This in turn allows you to understand how your venue is performing and what efforts are actually working for you. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your event.

Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.

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