Black Friday and the biggest payday surge of the year

Image – Black Friday sales in New York

It may have started over in the States but Black Friday has rapidly become a thing in the UK too. In the lead up to Christmas, the opportunity for both online and offline retailers to drive interest for their goods has seen a surge in sales – something which has been mirrored in recent years in the events and ticketing industries.

That grapple for consumer’s cash at the time when they spend most of it means we’re seeing increasing amounts of promoters offering short burst one-off ticket promotions, with everything from reduced price tickets to 241 offers taking place on the weekend that starts on Black Friday (23rd November in 2018) and then closes on Cyber Monday (26th November).

Setting ticket offers up using our Promotion Centre is incredibly simple. Here are a few straightforward suggestions:

Group Tickets – Traditionally ‘3 for 2’ or ‘4 for 3’, group buys are a great way to boost your numbers quickly. When adding tickets set the minimum and maximum tickets per order to the number of tickets given in the offer (so 3 or 4).  Divide the total cost of the tickets by the number of tickets given to set the price, i.e. the price of 3 tickets divided by 4 equals the cost per ticket for that offer. Alternatively set a minimum number of tickets to 4 or 5, and lower the face value, so the offer is for anyone buying a minimum number of tickets for a group.

Flash Sale – One tactic is a significantly reduced ticket face value for a very limited time; an hour, a morning, 24 hours. Add your flash sale ticket as normal but take care in choosing a realistic allocation (the maximum tickets you would like to potentially sell at the discounted price) and carefully set the onsale / offsale times to reflect your offer availability.

Hidden Fees – The most simple option to set up! When adding a ticket you have an option to select ‘I pay the fees’ rather than the default ‘customer pays the fees’. Opting to pay the fees yourself will mean the booking fee will be hidden, and knocked off your face value, this is known as a commission. Commissions are paid to us when we release your ticket funds to you.

We will be publicising the best Black Friday offers through the Skiddle Inspire Me section, short and snappy sales articles which now feature on our app. These will be shared across our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts from Thursday 22nd to Monday 26th November.

Even if Black Friday isn’t for you, it’s reliably the busiest period of the year at Skiddle for sales announcements. The final payday before Christmas, promoters often use the opportunity to get big events for the following year, both within live and dance music, announced. We also see the start of festival line ups surging through; already foreign festivals such as Defected Croatia and Annie Mac Present’s Lost and Found have revealed some of the names playing (check the details in the Skiddle Festival News section).

So if you are planning an announcement of any sort during this period, it’s crucial you let both your account manager and the relevant editor as quickly as possible so they can plan for coverage. We see more requests for both content coverage and promotional materials than at any other point during the year other than New Year’s Eve, so please let us know.

Further reading:

Contacting our Content Team