Category Archives: Sales

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

How to Set Yourself Up for Successful Labor Day and Fall Events

Labor Day is almost here, which means summer is coming to a close. If you haven’t started yet, now’s the time to start planning and putting the right vendors (including the right event ticketing partner) in place to make sure you host the best events this fall season while getting top dollar for your events.

Here are 6 steps to set yourself up for the most successful season you’ve ever hosted.

1. Hire the right talent

People come to your event for the party, and your talent is a big part of setting the tone of that party. Know what DJ your target audience would die to hear, or at least what type of music they want to dance to, and hire accordingly. Also make sure to set up ample lighting and audio to exemplify your talent’s sound. Know who your audience is and what type of party they’re looking for and provide based on those expectations.

2. Price your event accordingly

When it comes to a good party, it’s the experience – not the deal – that attracts guests. It’s critical to understand what your customers will pay in return for a good party. Make sure you don’t sell yourself short and maximize your revenue when at all possible. People understand and have been programmed to pay top dollar for major events, within reason. Take note, not advantage, of these opportunities if you seek long-term success.

3. Put the right tools in place to pre-sell tickets

Make sure you have full control of your events and get access to all of your data before, during, and after the event. There are technology platforms, like Vēmos, that incorporate ticketing into the rest of your efforts, giving you that full 360-degree look at how your event as a whole will and is performing. With this type of solution, you’re able to:

  • Create and manage an online event page without promotions from competing venues
  • Sell tickets to consumers right through the page via an e-commerce system
  • Get access to a white-labeled widget so your online ticketing page looks identical to the rest of your website
  • Integrate the event with a mobile app for promoters to sell tickets directly from their devices
  • Track ticket sales and results along the way

This type of platform syncs all promoters and marketing efforts together to maximize ticket sales and revenue before the night of your event.

4. Make sure the money goes directly into your bank

Another aspect of a ticketing platform to consider is that of payment. Most ticketing sites collect your customers’ payments in their own banks and hold it until after the event is over. Once the day of your event has passed, they’ll cut you a check for what you earned, but not until they’ve made sure to take any fees they deem themselves worthy to collect. Then, it takes a few business days after the remaining money to appear in your account, meaning you may not actually get your money until a week after the event has happened (and weeks since your guests even purchased a ticket).

Instead, look to companies that ensure payment goes directly through your merchant services provider and into your bank account right from the get-go. That way, a guest purchasing a ticket to your event is the same process as that guest buying a drink inside your venue. There’s no point in collecting pre-sales to help pay for your event before it happens if you’re not going to get your money from those sales until weeks after the event is over.

5. Get the word out to the right people

It’s important to first define your audience before you start marketing your event. After all, it’s much easier to market and promote your party when you know exactly whom you’re trying to reach and what you want them to do with the information.

The best strategy is to always keep your customers informed while maintaining a clear and consistent message in all your efforts. Use a multi-channel strategy to get the word out, such as a combination of text-message marketing, printed collateral, media partnerships, email updates, and social media. If you have a CRM system in place, use filters to segment your customers into specific targeted audiences, which in turn means each audience gets messages that are 100% relevant to their habits. That’s powerful marketing, and that’s what continues to drive guests to your events.

6. Analyze results to increase revenue for the next event

Getting access to your data gives you the opportunity to truly understand how your venue and events are performing. If you get on board with the aforementioned platform, your life will be significantly easier since it will all be in one spot – not to mention the data will be broken down by individual guests and staff members to truly identify areas of strength and weakness. Once you know how well you did, you’re able to better set yourself up for success for your next event. Optimization is key to long-term success.


Interested in learning more about Vēmos event management & ticketing features? Fill out the form below or contact Whitney Larson at whitney.larson@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Why You Should Never Give Away Anything for Free

Two for one drinks. Free bottle with a reservation. Free shot with a purchase. These are common promotions we see in the nightclub and bar industry, and they all have one thing in common: free drinks. While giving away free drinks may work to attract customers in the short-term, it’s an extremely detrimental strategy in the long-run.


Customers equate the word free with cheap, and never expect to pay full price once they receive a free or discounted item. In fact, a guests’ likelihood to spend drops more than 50% with every free drink or bottle. So while you caused a spike with attracting customers, you’re also causing a drop in future earnings with that same guest. To get a good example of this, watch this episode of Bar Rescue.


Instead of giving away free inventory, create packages that entice your target market to increase the perceived value. If you’re accustomed to giving away a free bottle with a reservation, try selling a table that includes a bottle of vodka and a bottle of champagne for a price that’s profitable to you. The guest won’t perceive this as a cheap gesture and will instead see it as a valuable package. This perception is the value of your promotion, and is what differentiates your efforts from simply slashing prices – read Promoting Without Discounting for more details on this.


No matter what type of promotions you run, always make sure they align with your target market and your core values as a brand. People connect with venues that have a focused style, and that style is your brand image. It’s what aligns customer expectation with customer experience; and it’s what drives the right demographic into your venue in the first place. Understanding both your brand and your target customers is what drives consistency, and that consistency will always help to determine the best promotions to generate results. If a promotion is too obscure or makes little sense in comparison of what your brand is known for, it simply won’t work.


So the next time you’re about to give away a free drink in part of your promotions, just remember that you’re setting yourself up for marginal returns and a low-paying demographic in the long run. And unless that’s what you’re going for as a business, you just might want to reconsider.


Interested in learning more? Fill out the form below or contact Whitney Larson at whitney.larson@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

A Better Way to Manage Your Event

I recently attended a large rock festival, and realized how the common event processes they were using were incredibly inefficient. Paper tickets that were simply ripped in half to confirm my arrival, colored wristbands to indicate which ticket I purchased, and cash-only policies to purchase a ticket at any of the ticket stands.


While the above process is the norm in today’s event management landscape, it’s not the best nor the most efficient process. How much of the cash people were paying at the event from all the various selling areas actually made it back to the managers? How did they know to a tee exactly how many people attended? How do they know who their guests were, how successful their event was, which channels contributed to the highest sales, or how to market next year’s event?


The truth is you can’t know the answer to any of these questions when using a manual paper process like this. You can have a rough idea, but you’ll never truly know. The good news is there’s a way to capture this information while also running a more efficient (and more profitable) event, and that’s with a fully integrated platform.


What’s a fully integrated platform? Good question. It’s a digital system that manages every area of an event in one spot, including:

  • Selling tickets online via your website or event landing pages
  • Selling tickets from a mobile device on the street before the event or at the event, becoming a mobile box office that accepts both cash and credit purchases
  • Seeing every type of ticket that’s sold
  • Seeing every person that bought a ticket
  • Being able to check people in to the event by a simple tap or swipe
  • Getting access to all the data about your event in a simple, easy-to-read analytics dashboard

Having all of these features (and more) synced together in one system is what we call an integrated platform. It allows you to manage every aspect of your event from the palm of your hand. It takes the manual process out and replaces it with an automated, easy-to-use system that increases speed, decreases error, and ultimately enhances the performance of your event. And that’s exactly what we at Vēmos do for you.


To learn more about how this system will help your event, fill out the form below or contact us at 877-388-7872. Together, we can take control of your event and make it bigger and better than ever.


Contact Whitney Larson at whitney.larson@vemos.io, or fill out the form below.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Ticketing?

Most ticketing systems only allow you to manage ticketing transactions. That’s it. Nothing before; nothing after. It’s just a site where consumers buy a ticket to your event. While this is absolutely an important aspect of ticketing (maybe even the most important), there’s more to the story.

Here’s how you can take control of your event and get the most out your ticketing.

1. Use a solution that manages all ticketing situations from one platform

It’s common to have more than one ticketing option for your event, from single tickets to packages to guest lists and even reservations. That’s why it’s important to use a system that can not only sell all of these ticketing options, but integrate all of that information into one system for you to manage. Using this type of solution allows you to run your door better the night of your event and strategize your lines based of which type of ticket your customer purchased.

2. Become a mobile box office

Selling tickets doesn’t have to end with posting your event online and getting people to go to your ticketing site. Turn your sales and promotions team into a mobile box office. The best ticketing solutions, like BookBottles, provides you with a mobile application that allows you to sell tickets directly through this device, while syncing that information with the rest of the online ticketing purchases. Using a combination of online, mobile, and in-person sales is what drives traffic and revenue to help you pay for your event before it even happens.

3. Make sure your money goes directly into your bank

Most ticketing sites collect your customers’ payments in their own banks and hold it until after the event is over. Instead, look to companies that ensure payment goes directly through your merchant services provider and into your bank account right from the get-go. That way, a guest purchasing a ticket to your event is the same process as that guest buying a drink inside your venue. There’s no point in collecting pre-sales to help pay for your event if you’re not going to get your money from those sales until weeks after the event is over.

4. Get access to your data

Wouldn’t it be great to capture complete, personalized data from all your guests and transactions? With the right ticketing vendor, you can. Just stay away from the majority of ticketing companies that fail to give venues access to their own data. Getting access to your data gives you the opportunity to truly understand how your venue and events are performing as well as providing you with detailed information on who your guests are. Make sure the ticketing company you work with not only gives you access to your data, but also provides it to you in one central spot. This helps you to easily see data about individual guests, sales, and staff members to truly identify areas of strength and weakness. Once you know how well you did, you’re able to better set yourself up for success for your next event.


The ticketing system you use translates to the amount of money your event makes. Look for a ticketing provider like BookBottles that incorporates ticketing into the rest of your efforts, giving you that full 360-degree look at how your venue is performing. This type of ticketing solution will allow you to:

  • Create and manage an online event page, or be provided with a white labeled widget that gets embedded in your website. This widget ensures your customers never have to leave your site to go to a third-party ticketing vendor.
  • Sell tickets to consumers right through this page via an e-commerce system.
  • Integrate the event with a mobile app for promotes to sell tickets directly from their devices, turning you into a mobile box office.
  • Track ticket sales and results along the way.

This type of platform syncs all promoter and marketing efforts together to maximize ticket sales before the night of your event, and allows you prosper in marketing efforts for future events to come. And that’s what’s going to set your venue and your event up for bigger success.


Interested in learning more? Fill out the form below or contact Whitney Larson at whitney.larson@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Promoting without Discounting

The most common types of promotions in this industry are happy hours, two-for-one drinks, or free bottle for booking a VIP table. The common denominator in all of these options is discounting drinks. Discounts and promotions aren’t the same, and it’s possible for you to run promotions without giving up your profit margin.

When you boil it down to basics, a promotion is simply the act of 1) raising customer awareness of a product or brand, 2) generating sales, and 3) creating brand loyalty. To do this, you’ll need to focus on 4 areas, as discussed below. But first, you must abide by the number one step of marketing: identifying your audience.

Know Your Audience

Before you an 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.

Once you’ve solidified your target audience, it’s time to get the pieces in place to set up your promotions. To be successful, you must understand the importance of brand marketing, pricing structure, inventory control, and brand perception.

Brand Marketing

The first part of promotions is brand marketing. Brand is king. This is something most venues don’t consider, but is one of the most important parts of setting up your business. People connect with venues that have a focused style, and that style is your brand image. It’s what aligns customer expectation with customer experience. Your brand needs to represent your club’s reputation through your attributes, values, purpose, strengths and passions. It should clearly differentiate you from the venue down the street or even across the country. Define your vision, create the essence you want your customers to experience, and design everything – from your logo, to interior, to your messaging – around these items. From there, your featured drinks, events and other promotions should aligns with this brand image. Never lose site of your brand, and always work to strengthen it online and inside your doors. This is what drives consistency for your public perception and what gets people to connect with you on an emotional level.

There are three critical components to brand marketing:

1. The experience. Promote and provide the experience you have for guests. This is what you customers are really seeking.

2. The venue. Ensure your venue supports the experience you are proposing. This includes interior design, layout, DJ, drinks, and service. Your customers expect a certain type of atmosphere based on your branding, and your venue needs to support that.

3. Special events. Events are a bonus to your branding, and shouldn’t be the branding itself. When putting on an event, make sure it aligns with what you’re creating and gives your guests that extra bump in excitement.

Pricing Structure

The second part of promotions is the pricing structure. It’s critical to understand what customers will pay in return for your atmosphere, party, drinks, and food. To do this successfully, focus on these three items:

1. Market research. What are your competitors pricing structures? Is that working for them? Why or why not? learn from this information to help you determine your own pricing structure so you’re not pricing yourself out of the market.

2. Target market. What is your target market’s potential entertainment spend? This goes back to knowing your audience and understanding what they’ll pay for a venue like yours. It also goes back to your brand experience. if you’re a higher-end establishment, your prices will naturally be a bit higher. If your’e the neighborhood bar, then your pricing needs to reflect that. If you price yourself too high, you’ll scare your customers away; but too low, and they might see you as cheap.

3. Profitability. Always remember the formula r-e=p. That’s revenue – expenses = profitability. Understand your margins relative to pricing. The only way to increase your revenue is to either raise your profit potential (by increasing the price of inventory) or decrease your expenses.

Inventory Control

The third part of promotions is inventory control. You need to manage your inventory and reservation process to get a predictable level of what you can promote. There are three steps to do this effectively:

1. Designate a decision maker. There needs to be one or more decision embarks who control what your sales and promotions team are selling. Every item of inventory – from drinks to tables – is up for grabs in terms of promotions. Remember, it’s not just the price that drives your guests in, it’s the overall experience. Bottle service is a part of that experience. The party is a part of that experience. All of that can be sold and can be promoted.

2. Sell. Create the demand for what you’re selling ad price accordingly. For VIP tables or event tickets, guests understand they have to pay more when it’s busy, so capitalize on that when you can. That’s your yielding strategy. Increase price as tables or tickets become more sparse.

3. Control what inventory you give away for free. This is where the “promoting without discounting” comes in. Free equates to a loss. A guests’ likelihood to spend drops more than 50% with every free drink or bottle. To get a good example of this, watch this episode of Bar Rescue.

Brand Perception
The final part of promotions is brand perception. This is the difference between promotions and discounts. Promotion is raising customer awareness of a brand, generating sales, and increasing brand loyalty. Discounting, on the other hands, falls within the price area of the marketing mix. Discounting and promotions are congruent in marketing, but they are not the same.

Let’s go back to free. Free is a four letter word, and that’s it. That’s all it should be to you. The last thing you want to do is promote anything for free. Customers equate the word free with cheap and never expect to pay full price. Do you really want them to think of your brand that way? Instead of giving away free inventory, create packages that entice your target market to increase the perceived value. Also, make sure your promotions make sense to your target demographic. If something is too obscure or makes little sense in comparison to what your brand is known for, it simply won’t work.

Next comes the fun part: putting it all to work. If you know your audience to a tee, you’ll be able to better identify which marketing channels are the best to reach them. It’s best to use multiple channels to spread the word and target your audience directly with messages that tie into your overall brand image. After all, brand consistency is a critical part to making your promotions work for itself.

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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