Our Events Make Great Charity Events

Now might be a good time to market our shows and events for charity fundraisers.  Two things have happened in the last year due to the recession that has affected the non-profit world.  Charity donations are down and they are cutting back on the glitz and expense of putting on events.  These two items have non-profits thinking outside the box.

If you have a venue or show why not market to charities?  There are several ways to do this. 

1) Offer your venue or a show as the event

2) Set aside a certain amount tickets to be sold by the charity

3) Give your unsold inventory to the charity

Many touring shows do multiple performances in a city.  Family shows and theatre stage shows are the most common.  If you are in the city for a week or more why not try selling a performance to a non-profit?  For a charity this could be a ready made event.  No real logistics for them.  They know all the costs upfront.  All they have to do is sell the tickets.  I understand that selling several thousand tickets is not easy.  However, if you give them a ready made event then all their effort can go into ticket sales.  If you do put this kind of charity package together, don’t get greedy.  They can do the math just as well as you can.  If they don’t think they can make it work, they will not do it.  Make it a win-win.

If a non-profit is not big enough to buy an entire performance, why not sell them a portion?  Maybe you can offer them 500 or 1,000 tickets to sell.  This is a good selling feature for group sales.  Offer them a Girl Scout cookie approach.  Consign them tickets at a low discounted rate.  They go out and sell the tickets at full price.  The charity keeps the difference.  You want to make sure they charge at least full price.  You don’t want a charity to flood the market with a discount offer that will hurt your regular ticket sales.

As we discuss on a regular basis, shows are not selling out.  What do you do with the unsold inventory?  Do you leave the seats empty?  If you know that you are not going to fill the seats with a paying customer, why not do something useful with them?  Instead of just papering the house to anyone who might want to go, why not set up charity programs?  You can set up your own charity for a national tour or keep it local.  If you are a venue, you could have an ongoing fundraiser program.  If you don’t have the time to deal with this, there are companies that can help you.  One in particular that I have mentioned a few times is CMarket/Bidding for Good.  You can set up a national deal or a local deal.  You just give them the tickets and they do the rest.

The bottom line is that non-profits need to raise money.  They know that donors like charity events.  They are looking for new ways to raise money.  We produce and market events.  This is a natural fit.

What To Do With Those Empty Seats

On Friday I wrote about how an email was going around offering free tickets to opening night at Ringling Bros. Circus in Miami.  As I mentioned, it was true and I was able to go into Ticketmaster.com and buy two free tickets (except for TM service charges).  I spoke to my friend at Ticketmaster and got the scoop on the Ringling Bros. free ticket offer. 

We all know the term “papering the house”.  Ticketmaster now offers its clients a 21st century way to “paper”.  The option is called Paperfast.  Instead of handing out hundreds or thousands of vouchers/coupons, you can have Ticketmaster handle it for you via their online ticketing system.  You can promote this email offer quickly through ticketmaster’s database, your database, or both.  As it was explained to me, having a customer go through the process of ordering the “free” tickets through TM, paying the service charges, and having an actual seat gives you a better return rate.  It also gives you a better advanced idea of what your attendance will be at the show.  When you give out vouchers, you have no real idea of what will show up. Of course TM makes money with this, but in this case I don’t have an issue with that.  They are doing you a service.  I still don’t think you should have to pay $2.00 plus to print your own tickets, but I will save that discussion for another time.

The downside to this program is that you are exposing the fact that sales are not good.  If email goes out saying a show has free tickets, what does this say about the show? Look how word spreads.  I received a copy of the email here in Boston via two people in Los Angeles for a show in Miami.  If this happens often enough, will patrons wait for the free ticket offer?  Email lists are from ticket patrons.  These are people who have bought tickets for events in the past. Are you hitting your potential paid customers? I wonder how the Miami offer affected the relationship with the opening night sponsor? 

What About Charity?

Another way to “paper” is to give tickets to charity.  There are a number of ways to do this.  You could go directly to a charity; you could create a charity event or even go through your partners charities.

 I had breakfast over the weekend with Stanford Shane slshane@cmarket.com of cMarket / BiddingForGood www.cmarketnetwork.com.  They are an online auction site that caters to charities and non-profits.  I have written about these guys before.  They can hook you up with the option to fill empty seats.  Not only will they take your tickets to pair up with charities but they can promote your event on their website.  If you are a national touring show, you could give them vouchers that could be used at any venue on the tour.  Stan was telling me about a guy who surfs their site all the time looking for sports tickets.  If you are a sports team with empty seats, this might be your spot.  I mentioned on Friday about all the “free ticket” offers at the museums and other non-profits.  This online charity site just might be for them.

 

Charity Makes Good Marketing

If you are a show, event, or sports team are you always sold out?  Do you have empty seats looking for a butt?  Why not use them to work for you and help a charity at the same time.

I went to a charity fundraiser over the weekend to support my kids youth hockey program.  At this event they had a silent auction, live auction and raffle items available.  What I was most impressed with was the amount of items.  There was tons of stuff to bid on.  There needed to be.  This is how the youth hockey group raises money.  The fundraising committee worked overtime to search out and obtain these items.  My thought as I walked around looking at the items was this is a great marketing opportunity.

In this age of cutting marketing budgets and trying to hit as close to the bulls-eye as possible, exposing your product at a fundraising event is good.  Picking what events you give to is most important.  This was a youth hockey fundraiser so what type of marketing demo attends?  They were parents of kids in hockey.  Chances are, they like hockey, sports, and anything related to their kids.  So in turn the most popular items were these things.  Tickets to the local pro sports teams, in particular the Boston Bruins and New England Patriots were big items.  Summer hockey camps for kids were huge items.  What I did notice was that the tickets for the pro teams did not come from the teams but from season ticket holders.  If I was with a team, I would set aside tickets for these events.  This is your low hanging fruit.  These are your past, current, and future fans.  If you are a hockey team, you don’t get any closer to the bulls-eye.  Think how you could market the brand to your core demo at this event while giving away the tickets.

At the company I work for, we get written charity ticket requests everyday.  I try to give to almost all of them if possible.  Because I get so many, I set the rules on who and how many.  At the very least, it exposes the brand and fills the empty seat to someone who wants to enjoy my product.

You don’t have to wait for a charity to come to you.  There are now new opportunities to market your product while doing good.  I mentioned during the summer of one online organization cmarket/BiddingForGood; http://www.cmarket.com/auction/BiddingForGood.action.  EBay also has a charity site. They both host online charity auctions.  On these online charity sites, you reach thousands of potential customers for nothing more then giving away a little product.

 

Put Your Unsold Tickets To Good

For those looking to fill seats that will go unsold, I have a suggestion for you.  Why don’t you do some good with them. 

I met Friday with Standford Shane and Devin Golden of cMarket.  They are part of biddingforgood.  This is a b2b2c play.  The charities sign up to participate, we provide the tickets for the bidding, and the customer bids on the event.  The charity gets the money except for the percentage that biddingforgood receives.   They can make the online auction either local or national.

Their proposal claims:

• The largest group of bidders is between 30 & 55  years of age
• 63% of the cMarket/biddingforgood bidders have household income of $120k+
• 75% female (very interesting)

The carrot that I like best was when they said I could mine the data from customers bidding on my tickets.  Not just the winners info but all the bidders of my tickets.  There is no cost to those donating the tickets.  This sounds really great.  Am I missing something?  Post a comment and let me know. 

No matter if you use these guys or another one out there, the bottom line is that cause marketing is getting hotter, there are a lot of empty seats out there, and we are looking for niche customers.  If we can marry all three then I think that is a good thing.

www.biddingforgood.com

www.cmarket.com