Internal ticketing & marketing
context
A few years ago, we had several ticket sales networks, which belonged to large companies. Faced with the increase of online sales, we decided in 2017 to upgrade our website and add an integrated ticketing service. This tool offers many possibilities regarding marketing, business operations, and has also been very useful in times of covid to manage cancellations and refunds.
For several years, audience data management solutions have been offered to music venues and festivals. These new tools can be interesting in more ways than one, they make it possible to respond to loyalty issues, but also to renew and develop audiences. We wished to study these new tools to gain in: knowledge of audiences, optimization of communication tools, automation of communication actions, public loyalty, renewal, and diversification of audiences.
In 2022, we decided to train our team on CRM, a program on customer relationship management, specifically on the audience segmentation and sales analysis to improve our understanding of the subject and do new actions though cooperation and exchanges based on statistics and data.
Implementation at le grand mix
The first step was to identify our needs and study our customers’ online experience.
Then, it’s important to discover and to compare the different company solutions: modalities, price, projects monitoring and customer service. And, to always look for new functions and add-ons for digital marketing.
Reforming the ticketing system took time to Le Grand Mix team but increase our capacity of sales. Moreover, we integrated our new tool in a complete communication platform formed by a responsive website and ticketing platform developed by a French agency.
Positive impact
We can provide a better service to the audience with our own ticketing, to help them online or by phone. This ticketing tool is also helpful for the team. They can have all the information in the same platform. About CRM, to raise special fundings and favorize cooperation, we ran a project group with other French venues. We had a lot of common points: same ticketing system, small or medium capacity and common values in our artistic and social projects.
First, we followed a training together about CRM, and we compared the different offers. To be 4 venues, instead of one, was a good point to negotiate reduced prices. Then we adapted our ticketing and marketing policy to our own activities because each venue has different needs in different contexts. The CRM tool is useful to build a relation with customers, sending them targeted information about concert propositions, subscription modalities. We are achieving retention of existing audiences and developing new audiences.
Benefits
After an initial phase of investment for training and software, this practice is economically sustainable. Indeed, being independent on our ticketing system brought us a straightly source of income and allows to finance the yearly cost of the ticketing software.
This action is part of a CSR policy of paid to independent and local partners comparing to ticket resale sites mostly owned by multinationals. Being independent is a good choice, especially during covid time. There is benefits for the audience, who improve their online experience, and Le Grand Mix communication team who improve our understanding of the audience
Challenges
The financial budget is obviously very important to change its ticketing and customer relationship management policy. It costs money to buy and adapt these digital tools, as well as time to change the team behaviors. It requires the training of all members of the communication and sale ticketing team to build a new strategy under the well understanding of all the capacity of the CRM tool. It needs proper data training to know how to analyze and modify to design multi-channel digital marketing strategy suitable for different types of target audiences. These practices need to be integrated to the human resources policy.
Another challenge is to assume the business position related to music producers who want the tickets to be on sale on other platforms: this requires regular business negotiation.
Resources and other examples
- Our website shows the integrated ticketing platform: www.legrandmix.com
- The ticketing platform: https://la-billetterie.net/
- The CRM platform: https://arenametrix.com/