Category Archives: Sales

Author Parag Shah Posted on

How to Pre-Sell Tickets to Your Event

Every event or venue, regardless of size, benefits from pre-selling tickets. It’s how you’re able to pay for your event before it even happens. It’s how you know whether or not your event is going to be a success. And it’s one of the easiest revenue-building things you can do.


Follow these steps to earn more pre-sale revenue for your event.

1. Get the right ticketing system

The first step in pre-selling tickets is finding the right ticketing partner. Many ticketing companies fail to give venues access to their own data. 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 that incorporate ticketing into the rest of your efforts, giving you that full 360-degree look at how your venue is performing. This platform enables you to:

  • Create and manage an online event page
  • 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 before the night of your event. Contact Vēmos to learn more about this system and get signed up.

2. Use a combination of selling techniques

Selling tickets is an ongoing effort, but it doesn’t have to be laborious. Use a multi-channel strategy to sell your tickets, such as one that consists of online, mobile, and in-person sales. If you get on board with the above system, you’re already a step in the right direction. The integrated ticketing widget allows you to use the e-commerce ticket sales system directly on your website so your visitors never have to be redirected somewhere else to make that purchase. Plus, the accompanied mobile application turns your promoters and sales team into a traveling box office by selling tickets to customers directly from their device. All the channels working together at once is what drives awareness, buzz, and sales.

3. Get the word out to the right people

Marketing and sales go hand-in-hand. So while your sales team is out there making transactions, make sure your marketing team is working alongside them with spreading the word. The best strategy is to always keep your customers informed while maintaining a clear and consistent message. 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.

4. Make sure the 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 like BookBottles 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.

5. 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. The BookBottles platform automates this process by putting everything in one spot, plus everything is displayed 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.


Parag Shah is the founder and director of sales at Vēmos. Contact him at parag.shah@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

6 Steps to Putting on Your Most Successful NYE Party

New Year’s Eve is right around the corner. 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 party while getting top dollar for your event.


Here are 6 steps to set yourself up for the most successful New Year’s Eve party 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, and consider a surprising treat – such as flying confetti – for when the ball drops at midnight.

2. Price your event accordingly

For pricing, remember it’s the experience, not the deal, that reels your audience in. It’s critical to understand what your customers will pay in return for a good party while still covering all your costs. Don’t sell yourself short by trying to provide a deal on a big event like this. People understand and have been programmed to pay top dollar for major events, especially on New Year’s Eve.

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 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.


Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Get Top Dollar for Your Event

Hosting an event is one of the best ways to create a great party. It’s also one of the best ways to generate revenue if you use the right vendors. Here are 5 things you need to have nailed down to host the best party and get top dollar for your event.

1. Know Your Audience

The people you are throwing the party for should define your business model. This means you need to know your customers inside and out. It’s not enough to have a basic understanding of only demographics. You need to discover their idea of a good party, the music they like to hear, the alcohol they like to drink, and even the servers they prefer. Do your research and work with a partner who can offer these valuable insights through an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system.

2. Price your Event Accordingly

For pricing, remember it’s the experience, not the deal, that reels your audience in. It’s critical to understand what your customers will pay in return for a good party. Don’t sell yourself short by trying to provide a deal on a big event, but don’t try to overprice a more casual affair. People understand and have been programmed to pay top dollar for major events, but also understand when an event is overpriced. Find the right ticketing partner who can help set you up for success before, during and after your event.

3. Set Up Pre-Sale Tickets

Every event or venue, regardless of size, benefits from the pre-sale of tickets and inventory. The best way to sell tickets in advance is to get everyone on board with a single platform. There are platforms available that integrates directly into your website, publishes the page for consumers to purchase tickets, have the page integrate with a mobile app for promoters to sell tickets directly from their devices, and 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 well before the day of the event.

4. Get the Word Out to the Right People

Once you’ve defined your audience and set up the steps for your audience to buy tickets, you can start marketing your event. 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-channels strategy to get the word out, such as text-message marketing, printed collateral, email updates, and social media. If you use the aforementioned CRM system, you’re able to track important customer activity and 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 customers to your event.

5. Be a Good Party Host

Your event efforts must continue, and perhaps even spike, during the night of the event. Treat everyone like VIPs, from the bottle buyer to the general admission guest. Focus on service levels and make them feel appreciated no matter what. Your guests will not only continually come back, but they’ll also tell everyone they know about their experience. This sets you up for success for the long run.

Author Parag Shah Posted on

4 Steps to Use Data to Increase Profit

The key to measuring the success of your club is by analyzing critical data. Yet, most venues don’t look at their data to get an accurate gage of how well their club is performing. The problem is few venues have a system in place to analyze this data, and even fewer have the necessary time and resources to comb through data points to make sense of it all. As a result, venues are operating blindly and wasting time and money on areas that may or may not be working.


To get a true sense of how your venue is performing, you should be able to rattle off:

  • How much money you made or lost over a given time period
  • Which days of the week are your busiest
  • What type of liquor you sell the most on a given day
  • How many tables are reserved a night
  • Which promoters are brining in the most guests
  • Which servers are upselling the most and making the most tips
  • What types of promotions or events bring in the most traffic

If you don’t have an answer to these points, it’s time to put an analytics system in place. Here are the 4 steps to do just that.

1. Use a platform that collects data on all areas of your venue

Don’t cut yourself short by only turning to your point of sale (POS) system to provide this data. While it’s true that most POS systems collect data, it’s oftentimes presented in convoluted ways. It’s nearly impossible to get a glimpse of your club’s employee performance, promoter performance, individual guest sales, or trending liquor sales. That’s why it’s more important than ever to turn to a system that not only collects, but also reports, the data you need in meaningful ways.

The best systems are fully integrated solutions that collect data from any area of your club and analyze and present it in one central spot in real-time. Make sure everyone who works at your venue has his/her own login and uses the system correctly to capture the most accurate data.

2. Identify what information is crucial to your venue

There’s a lot of data that gets collected on a given night, and there’s a lot of different ways it can be reported. But just because it gets collected doesn’t mean it’s going to be worthwhile information. Define the areas that are the most critical for you to analyze and set a goal for you to benchmark against. The more focused you are, the easier it’ll be to interpret.

3. Use filters to identify strong and weak areas of your venue

Integrated systems that have a filtering process are beneficial in a number of ways, because they:

  • Allow you to identify the audience you want to measure (servers, promoters, customers, overall club performance, or all of the above)
  • Collect data on any given area of your club
  • Provide insight on trending liquor sales, which helps with inventory planning
  • Report key information on individual guests – average spend, total spend, group size, favorite liquors, and top purchases – so you can better serve them
  • Present the results you chose to identify in easy-to-read charts and graphs, which removes the manual labor of you combing through all the data


4. Optimize your efforts to increase profit

Review the data that’s presented, benchmark it against your goals, and optimize your results to work in your favor. If something isn’t working – such as a certain type of liquor isn’t selling well or a promoter isn’t providing results – then fix the problem. The more you now, the more you can do.


Parag Shah is the founder and director of sales at Vēmos. Contact him at parag.shah@vemos.io.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

The Strategy Behind Your Lines

We attended an event last week at a local nightclub and took note of how the line was treated. Lines aren’t something that most clubs put a ton of thought into, and it was quite evident at this event that it was not a part of the event planning process. The venue did a decent job of pre-selling tickets to their event, and they also had the opportunity for people to buy tickets at the door. What they did a horrible job at was managing their line.


There was only one line for this event. While that may not seem like a big deal, it is when you consider that there are 3 different audiences standing in this one line:

  1. Guests who pre-bought a ticket
  2. Guests who were on the VIP guestlist and did not need to buy a ticket
  3. General admission guests who needed to buy a ticket at the door

What’s the benefit of a guest pre-buying a ticket if they don’t even get to skip the long line? Plus, when there is a second line for pre-purchased tickets, it entices guests to make behavioral changes to buy a ticket ahead of time, which in turn equates to more money in your pocket before the night of your event. That’s a win-win for everyone.


Putting a bit of strategy into how you treat your line can increase your revenue and speed of night, especially when it comes to pre-sale tickets. Here’s what many top-performing nightclubs do to achieve this:

  1. Use separate lines for different functions (ex: different lines for general admission, guestlist, VIP tables, and pre-purchased tickets).
  2. Slow down the general admission line for your events, but not enough that it takes away from your speed of night and becomes a true annoyance to guests.
  3. Focus on your speed of night in your pre-paid ticket line by speeding this line up a bit more than the general admission line. This mitigates a long buildup in the pre-paid line, which shows your general admission guests the benefit of buying tickets ahead of time.
  4. Use ticket scanners at your cashier station to speed up the check-in and payment process. Scanning a ticket allows the cashier to quickly pull up guest information and charge the proper amount (if any) within a matter of seconds rather than entering each person into a system manually. This speeds up the bottleneck at the cashier and allows your club to collect more valuable data.

Don’t overlook the strategy behind your lines. After all, they’re an important aspect of increasing the performance of your future events.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.

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