Ticketbud Tips and Tools*
March 26, 2015  •  by Sean Burke

Reduce Your No-Shows By 52%

Reduce Your No-Shows Drastically You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, organizing your next big event. There’s going to be a fantastic lineup, the bar is fully stocked, and you just recently secured a contract with a great local catering company. But on the day of the event, you only see a fraction of the people who had “committed” to going! No event organizer wants their time to go to waste, and it’s hard to call an event a success if only 50% of the expected number of guests show up. And even if you have paid tickets, you still have to consider the fact that these people, had they shown up, would have purchased food and drinks. If there were bands, they would purchase merch and if they were speakers they would purchase DVDs or other paraphernalia. Regardless of the kind of event that you’re throwing, a ticket purchase is really just a small part of the entire experience. People are social (it’s cliche but you’d be surprised at how easily some forget), and events with empty seats or half-full venues look bad to everybody. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="291"]From Wikipedia, Take That Wembley Concert How you want your event to look[/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="284"]Empty What your event could look like[/caption] So, how do you avoid the dreaded no-show?Well, here’s some ideas that we’ve found have reduced No-Shows by a drastic amount. 1. Charge For Tickets Even if it’s only $4.00, people are going to be more likely to show up to your event if they have to pay. From our own experience, free events are considered “possibilities” by those who RSVP. If they don’t go, so what? They didn’t lose any money. We’ve seen that statistically, free events have a no-show rate of up to 45%. That’s right, 45%. Meanwhile, paid events have a no-show rate that’s a fraction of that. However, if you would like your event to be “free” for some reason, there is an alternative… [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="404"]Ticketbud Helps Reduce No-Shows To Your Events Free events ain’t free; They cost organizers like you and me; And if attendees don’t chip in; We’ll never pay the bill (With many apologies to Team America and Matt&Trey)[/caption] 2. Require A Deposit Deposits work great for events that are essentially free, but drastically reduce no-shows. How it works is that, before the event, the attendee “pays” a nominal fee- I’ve seen events that have deposits anywhere from $10 to $60. When the attendee shows up to the event, they’re refunded the money. If they don’t show up, then that’s their problem – the event keeps the money as a nice souvenir. I highly recommend that any free event does this. 3. Keep In Constant Contact Even if attendees do pay for the event or have a deposit, it’s possible that they’ll forget about the event or just plain lose interest. You need to keep buzz levels high for the event if you want the highest amount of people to show up! Ticketbud in particular makes this extremely easy. Thanks to its partnership with Zapier, you can import your email list of ticket purchasers or RSVPs to Mailchimp, and you can send out messages to them telling them about contests, drink specials or coupons (guaranteed to attract people!) and other information. We recommend sending one email per week, and then ramp up in intensity with an email two days before the event, and then one a day before the event! 4. Act Like An Airline We all know how airlines work – they expect no-shows. That’s why they purposefully overbook their flights so that when the time of reckoning comes, they have a full flight. Now, I should mention that this method could potentially be a little dangerous and it requires some past knowledge of your event in order to really work well for you. For this reason, I don’t recommend this method for first-time events. Veterans should feel free to use this method. Basically, sell more tickets than there are spots. Worst case scenario, upgrade additional event goers to VIP status or use some other method to ensure that, in the event you do go over capacity, you still have some way to ensure that attendees can see the show they paid to see! 5. Accept Purchases At the Door Having some way to process tickets at the door is perfect for reducing the sting of no-shows. Always do everything in your power to fill your event to capacity, even if they didn’t go the normal route of purchasing a ticket beforehand. Money is still money, and I guarantee that you’d rather have more people in your event than less just due to some reservations. Ticketbud’s Point of Sale system is perfect for this, by the way. You can process credit/debit cards at the door with a swiper attached to a tablet or phone. And cash, of course, is always acceptable! Overall, there is a lot of ways to reduce No-Shows for you events. And luckily, they’re all pretty easy to implement, especially with Ticketbud’s event management and registration software, along with its event mobile app and Point of Sale system.    ]]]]> ]]>