Category Archives: Technology

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

What Your Millennial Customers Expect of You

The Millennial generation is driving change across all industries, including nightlife. Defined as the ages of 18 through 35 – the prime ages to be targeting for the nightlife industry – they value experiences over physical goods, and will prioritize their money accordingly. In today’s nightlife climate, engaging your guests in new, exciting ways is the key to building a strong business.

The old ways of doing business with long lines, slow bar service, and apathetic staff is no longer acceptable. This generation is going to go elsewhere to get the experience they want, and we’re no longer talking about just another venue down the street; you’re now competing with sporting events, the theater, movies, Netflix, and even vacations. After all, one Millennial interviewed in The Guardian stated “A night out now costs almost as much as a weekend away…and a weekend away looks better on Instagram.”

So don’t just open your doors and pray that people walk through – think about the best possible experience you can give your guests. Create themes for your night. Be a part of bigger event opportunities. Think about ways to host interactive events. Transform your space using more design elements. This is what creates those experiences this generation craves. People are more likely to go out when a unique experience is offered, and they’re more likely to continue when that experience is personalized. Challenge yourself, get creative, and have fun with the opportunities.

Here’s how you can provide personal experiences to your guests to attract and maintain their loyalty to your venue.

1. Capture Guest Information

A survey conducted by Accenture discovered that 85% of their participants are willing to provide their information to trusted retailers in exchange for targeted, personalized information. Use this to your advantage. Your customers are not only willing to give their information to you, but they’re conditioned to do so. This is especially true when pre-purchasing items online. Use guest list, ticketing, or reservation forms on your site so your guests not only begin to buy in advance (note: more guaranteed revenue), but also so that you can collect their information. You can also capture this information during your night at your door using a digital system. 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.

2. Send Personal Marketing

With your database, you now have a complete buyer persona for all your target customer segments, including demographic, geographic, and psychographic information. This means you have the opportunity to get personal with your marketing. You can send a specific message catered to a specific group of people, such as sending a birthday text message to anyone celebrating a birthday this week and inviting them to celebrate with you. Or you can target customers who have attended a certain event in the past, and send them an exclusive invitation to an upcoming similar event before tickets are released to the public. Making your customers feel like you know what’s happening in their life, or like you understand their interests, is what makes your messages personal and powerful. They’ll feel like insiders and will naturally establish a deeper connecting with your venue. This also helps to make sure the time and money you’re spending on your marketing is spent wisely and giving you a return on investment.

3. Make Their Night Special

Your personalization shouldn’t stop at marketing. You can keep this experience going when they get to your venue as well. When you use a system, you take the guesswork out and are able to understand your customers at a deeper level. Say goodbye to paper guestlists, and start providing personalized service at your door. Use license scanning technology to capture information from every guest that walks through your door. If you see a customer is a regular guest list customer who comes to your venue every week, upsell them to a VIP table and provide a complimentary bottle of champagne as a thank you. Or, offer them a round of drinks on the house at the bar. This costs you very little, but means a lot to them. It’s a simple gesture that’s perceived by the guest as a premium, highly personalized level of service. It shows that person how much they are valued and entices them to stay longer, spend more, bring more friends, and com back more often. This is how you organically build loyalty.

4. Humanize Your Data

All of the above is made more possible when you have your data at your disposal. I know, the word data makes most people cringe – that’s why it’s all about humanizing that data. You don’t want to spend your time combing through spreadsheets of data points that don’t make a ton of sense, just to try to connect the dots yourself. Instead, use a system built specifically for the nightlife industry that handles event management, tickets, reservations, guest lists, and general admission while being backed by easy-to-understand data and analytics.

When all of that is in the same system, you get comprehensive results to truly understand and grow your business. You get insight on how your venue is performing, what your trends are, what your best marketing channels are, and in-depth details about your guests at a click of a button. Do you see something that’s working well with your guests? Keep doing it. See something that’s not? Can it. Want to send a personalized message to anyone with a birthday this week? Do it.

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.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

The 3 Things You Need to Be Successful in 2017

Running a bar or nightclub isn’t easy. There are a lot of areas that need to work together to ensure your success. Yet, our industry still operates in silos, using different systems for different sections – oftentimes leading to missed data and opportunities. Meanwhile, online industries like Amazon have gotten so savvy they’re able to send recommendations based on past habits and send reminders based on timing. As a result, this is the level of service your guests have come to expect.

That’s why in today’s digitally-driven environment, it’s no longer sufficient to make assumptions on how your venue is performing and who your guests are. It’s also no longer sufficient to just focus on the data from one area of your business. This may have worked in years past, but it’s an outdated practice that cold cost you your venue.

So while we understand there are many things you need to run your venue, the following three are the core of what you need be successful in 2017 and beyond.

ID Scanning

You already ID and verify each person that walks through your door. Take this a step further with license scanning technology that not only scans and verifies each person, but also collects data on each person to build your guest database. This is the only way to know who came into your venue each and every night, complete with your gender breakdown, where your customers are coming from, your age breakdown, and which customers are repeat vs first-time customers. You also have access to your digital 86 list as well as a city-wide ban list to keep your venue safe. This tool acts as your guide in better decision making for a process that was already mandatory. And with a solution like Vēmos, all of this is combined with your CRM system and analytics section to truly have that understanding of your whole business.

POS Integration

Speaking of uncovering your true performance, having your point of sale integrated into your operations system is an extremely powerful move. Now, not only do you have the ability to track your VIP table spend automatically, but you also gain insight on your entire bar. “But I can already do that,” you say? Sort of. The reality is POS systems are not in the business of providing their customers with great analytics; they focus on providing a great user experience for your bartenders during the night. Integrating your POS system takes that data and provides you with true analytics that allow you to better understand how your entire venue did rather just a segment. It can also tie to your CRM system to give insight on personalized spending. With Vēmos, all of this data is automatically collated to show you where you won and where you missed.

CRM System

All of this comes back to individualized data. After all, the new name of the game is experience, and personalized experience at that. You can’t provide your guests with personalized experiences if you don’t know who they are. Sure, you may know your top regulars who always come in. And while they’re important, the other hundreds of guests are equally as important to your business. The only way to capture this information is to have all your data tied back to your CRM system. This is what allows you to know each of your customers on a personal level — from how often hey come, to how much they spend, to their specific preferences. You can then use this data to filter your guests into like-minded groups to send targeted messages specifically to them. Now you’re able to provide a complete circle of personalized service both online and in-person.

These three tools are the core of what accelerates your capabilities. Having technology a part of your venue is no longer just about a reservation management system. It’s about a comprehensive appraoch that provides insight into your venue as a whole. With ID Scanning, POS integration, and a CRM system at your core, you now have the capabilities of providing that personalized service previously only available to the likes of Amazon. Safeguard your venue, target sharper, spend smarter, and create an unbelievable experience for every person walking through your door.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

How to Make Your Nights More Predictable and More Profitable

Can you confidently say your night is going to be profitable? Or are you opening your doors and hoping for the best? Chances are it’s the latter, and you’re not alone. It’s common in this industry to not have an accurate idea going into the night of whether it’s going to be a boom or a bust. In fact, few venues have an idea after the night is over whether it should be deemed successful.

While this may be common, it’s a big issue for your business and is one of the main reasons why the average span of a nightclub is a mere 18 months. Fortunately, there are solutions built for the nightlife industry to help you get a hold of your business and to help make you even more profitable. Here’s how you can do just that.

1. Become Interconnected

Running off pen & paper isn’t helping your venue in the long-run. Having different systems for different sections of your venue isn’t helping either. The way you truly understand how your venue is performing is by being interconnected across all areas of your venue. Think about the different solutions you use in your venue. There are point of sale systems, reservation management software, event & ticketing software, employee scheduling programs, customer relationship management systems…the list goes on. But unless these technologies are programmed to connect to each other, the data and processes will ultimately be useless. Why bother with 5 different technologies if it’s going to add 5 different processes? That’s wasted time with duplicated effort, wasted time with manual data entry, and lost data between the systems.

The key ingredient to a successful platform is one that’s integrated into all areas so you can be fully interconnected. Look for a comprehensive venue management platform, like us at Vēmos, that automatically has integration functionality built within it. This is what allows you to manage, understand, and grow your business from a single dashboard.

2. Use Data to Become Predictable

Once everything is connected in the right system, you have access to all your data in one place. This means you’ll be able to predict how your night is going to go based on historical data. Do you consistently get slammed around the same time? Staff accordingly. What issues have you experienced in the past? Fix those issues with processes. How many people have signed up for your guest list, made a reservation, or indicated they may be a general admission walk-up? What were the results of past nights similar to this one? This all helps you predict what your night is going to be like. Pre-selling inventory is another great way to make your nights predictable. It also helps you to understand how far in advance people tend to pre-purchase and whether you’re on target to hit your numbers.

3. Decrease unnecessary costs

Just as your past data helps you understand if you need to boost staff and processes, it also tells you when to decrease unnecessary costs. Do you need to have as many servers as you do working at 8 pm when you consistently don’t get busy until 11? Do you need to pay your promoters a per-guest fee when the guests they bring in don’t end up spending anything once inside your venue? Know where you’re over spending and cut costs accordingly so that the money you are spending is going toward better ways to increase your profitability.

4. Turn Marketing into an Investment

Speaking of knowing where you’re over spending, marketing is one of those places you’re likely throwing money in the wrong places. But when you track your marketing efforts, you’re able to see exactly what drives traffic and results. So while a third-party website may claim to have garnered you 100,000 impressions, you know that it actually only got you 3 clicks and $0 in return. Now you know not to spend money there in the future and redistribute those dollars toward activities you know work for you. Having a system that tracks it all allows you to easily see what you get in return of what you put in. This not only saves you from wasting your dollars, but helps to bring in more money than before, turning your marketing from an expense and into an investment.

5. See it All Come Together

When you use one system to track all areas, you have a clear understanding of exactly what’s happening in your venue without having to log into multiple data systems. Now, you can easily track:

  • How much money you made over a given time period
  • How many customers walked through your door over a given time period (and who they were)
  • How many table reservations you booked, and how much you earn on average
  • When your customers start buying tickets to your event. or start arriving to your venue
  • Which staff members are bringing in the most guests (and biggest spenders)
  • Which marketing channels are and aren’t working for you

You can experience a huge uptick to your bottom line after switching to a system backed by data. That’s because you know exactly what’s working and what doesn’t, which allows you to spend their money more wisely. You also improve your operations to get your guests in the door faster to get to the bar more quickly, resulting in increased bar sales. When you have absolute clarity on your venue’s performance, you can do even more to increase your success. Without data, you’re simply just guessing and could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Giving VIP Treatment: It’s All in the Details

Bottle service has been around for decades as a way to attract high-status patrons and earn high, fast-growing revenue. It’s also become such a standard component to the nightlife scene that many venues treat it as a mandatory guideline rather than a premiere service to their most desirable guests. But getting into this rut is more detrimental to your club than you may realize.

People expect to pay top-dollar to receive this premier customized service, and if your staff is acting like it’s just another area of your club, your guests aren’t going to get the experience they expect or deserve. When this happens, they’re likely going to find a place that provides them a better experience and unlikely to return to your venue.

The below 4 tips will help you make sure your VIPs aren’t falling through the cracks and that you’re able to deliver a first-class experience.

1. Understand where and how VIP guests are being booked

It’s common for nightclubs to get inundated with reservation requests from promoters, staff, consumer apps, agents, and guests themselves. Reservations are coming in from different sources, tables are over promised, and what ends up getting marked down isn’t true to what’s actually going to happen that night. The more organized you are with tracking reservations, the better your entire VIP service will be. Have a reservation management system in place so you have a central location where all reservations are documented to make sure nothing gets lost in the process. Give your front-of-house staff access to these VIPs so they are never stopped at the door or have to wait in line.

2. Know your clients and avoid any immediate hiccups

VIP guests don’t want to be treated like a number. They should be greeted at the door, walked to their table, offered their personal top-purchased liquors, and attended to by their favorite server. Having this all be seamless is what allows you to provide personal experiences right from the start and make your guest feel like a true VIP. To be successful at this, you need to be able to identify the guest and personally greet them when they arrive. There are CRM (customer relationship management) systems that are specifically designed for the nightlife industry to help you do exactly this. Plus, they also give you insight on all your guests, so you know who frequents your venue, spends a lot of money, and would be considered loyal. These systems also tie to your point of sale to allow you to gain a deep insight into your customers and their habits.

3. Focus on experience

Experience is the name of the game now. It’s a big trend for millennials, and has always been important to VIPs. We mentioned above the value of a CRM system. The best solution is a system that allows you to manage your venue in one dashboard, including reservations, guest list, general admission and events. When you use separate systems for each area, this data is sitting separately in each system. But when you have one system that handles all areas, you’re able to capture more data about your guests. Have they been in before but not as a reservation guest? Is this their first experience? Is this their 10th experience? These are important things to know, and what will help you cater an experience to the individual guest. That’s what people want and expect, and the only way to see that information is if everything is working together.

4. Optimize your efforts

Now that your in-person operations are more streamlined, what about your digital processes? Your marketing can be boosted by putting more strategy behind your efforts, both before and after a guest comes to your venue. Because your CRM system tracks important customer activity, such as when they come to your club, how much they spend, what they drink, and how many people they bring with them, you’re able to send more targeted, personal and relevant messages to individual guests. This means you’re able to 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. Doing this, you can upsell a non-VIP customer who you think would benefit from a VIP experience. You can also reach out to a previous VIP customer and invite them back sending a promotion that aligns with their previous visit. The personal treatment you’re able to offer both offline and online will provide your guest with a better experience, making them more loyal and more likely to refer friends to your venue. And it all starts with just having information at your disposal.


Get started with a better VIP process today. Contact us for more information, or sign up for your free trial.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

What to Look for in a Ticketing Provider for Your Event

Events are a great way for nightclubs to pre-sell revenue and offer an exciting experience to guests. But there are many factors that go into making sure your event is a success, a large one being event promotion and selling tickets. Ticketing companies are a dime a dozen. And with all the choices at your disposal, how do you know which one to go with? The best thing you can do is to choose a system that will set your entire event up for success.

Here are the top 5 things you need in your ticketing system.

1. Go Beyond Registration

Most ticketing companies are simply a registration system. They allow people to buy a ticket for your event, and then their offerings end there. They don’t help you connect the dots of what brought your customer to buy a ticket, what they did once they got into your event, and how you can retarget that customer in the future.

Instead, use a ticket system that goes beyond registration. This means following your customer’s journey before, during, and after they walk through your door, and having the tools at your disposal to also manage your event operations.

2. Don’t Redirect Your Customers

A customer comes to your website to buy a ticket. They click that “buy” button and are now redirected to the ticketing company’s website. You’ve now lost that customer’s data, your brand is out of sight, and they’re now getting messages to register for competing events on your ticket buying page. Does this sound like the right experience to you?

Stop redirecting your customers to a different company. Use a ticketing system that functions on your own website without their branding being present. That way, your customers will always feel like they’re purchasing directly from you, and you get to fully control the experience.

3. Connect Your Accounts

You have more to manage for your event than selling tickets. Maybe you have reservations, or a mobile bidding component, or employee/volunteer management, or marketing systems, or whatever else. This means you’re managing separate tools and systems for each of these functions. Not only is that a hassle, but your’e losing out on data and duplicating information.

Look for a solution, like Vēmos, that allows you to connect all your accounts together in one dashboard. So not only are you selling tickets to your event, but you can handle all other areas in this one system, including general admission walk-ins, VIP reservations, and comped gust list attendees. Information flows seamlessly between your services automatically so you never have to re-enter or duplicate information in each account.

4. Collect Money Right Away

Most ticketing sites hold your money until after the event to cut you a check, which means your revenue is held up while your expenses continue. Make sure your ticketing provider works with you and your bank account so payments go directly into your account as soon as a transaction is made. This way, you earn your revenue leading up to your event rather than making up for your expenses weeks after.

5. Own Your Data

When your guests are redirected to third-party sites, and when your event information lies in multiple accounts, you’re unable to track all your data. In fact, you don’t actually own that data. Technically, the ticketing provider owns it and they’re going to use it to target your customers for competing events.

Put the power back in your hands. Use a ticketing provider that’s not profiting off your customers, but instead exists to serve you. This way, you’ll collect key information on your customers, staff, and event as a whole to understand what worked and what didn’t for future success.


Take your event to the next level and go beyond registration. Control your experience and discover how your data can bring you increased profitability. Get set up with your account now.

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