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  • Event Promotion Tips

Case Study: Gatecrasher Classical

  • By Mike

  • 02 Jul 2017
  • 6 min read

Celebrated trance brand and nightclub Gatecrasher unleashed one of its most anticipated events in recent memory back in June – Gatecrasher Classical. As part of its 24th birthday celebrations, the new event will see an as yet unannounced 50 piece orchestra re-imagine some of ‘the lion’s’ most euphoric floorkillers, a format that fits completely with the music it’s emulating. The announcement of Gatecrasher Classical was understandably a big deal, and one that trance and dance music fans from across the country were itching to be a part of.

Unlike the raucous clubnight, Gatecrasher Classical will be a mostly seated affair (although getting up and dancing is actively encouraged), taking place at Sheffield City Hall. This presented a whole new challenge for Skiddle, and after extensive work from the ticket outlet’s development team, a new way of ticket-buying through allocated seating was introduced. Here’s how it all unfolded:

The Problem

  • Allocated seating – customers need to be able to choose the venue area they would like to sit in and for this to be clear to them.
  • High demand – traffic and demand for these tickets is extremely high with hundreds of people looking for tickets at once.
  • Pre-registration – Skiddle needed to gauge the demand for tickets and give customers the chance to sign up for access to a presale, before they become available to the general public.

How Skiddle Helped

  • Along with the promoters own customer signup page, Skiddle allowed pre-registration through the event listing (customer name and email recorded). Once tickets had been set up this switched to Remind Me (worded as Pre-Register), allowing Skidle to continue registering customer interest up to tickets going live.
  • Skiddle provided an allocated seating service. All seats were linked to tickets, the best available given first as customers chose their areas. Seats confirmed upon ticket selection.
  • Queue system – A Waiting Room was open online from 9.30am; customers entered this as they hit the listing page. From 10am the presale began, pushing customers through from the Queue in a random order to buy tickets, in batches of 50 people per minute.
  • The availability of remaining tickets (shown as a percentage) for each seating area is made clear to customers while they are in the queue, refreshing every 20 seconds.
  • Skiddle supported the launch of the event through several marketing channels. An editorial feature was published ahead of the pre and general sales, encouraging people to register for early ticket access. This article was shared via Facebook and Twitter.
  • Regional mailers were sent to cover email marketing to Skiddle’s Sheffield database.
  • From 30 minutes before the general sale, a Re-Targetting Ad was launched via Facebook, showing to an exclusive audience of potential customers. These are people who have viewed the event listing but not purchased tickets, or had tickets in a basket but not completed the order, so a lucrative engagement.

The Outcome

  • The presale launched with huge success. Upwards of 800 people entered the waiting room to be fed through for ticket buying.
  • Seats were allocated and paid for rapidly.
  • Customer feedback has been overwhelming positive for the process of Waiting Room, Queue, and purchasing tickets.

Customer Feedback

“The queuing zone was great and worked perfectly.”

“I thought it was a good idea, better than having to keep trying and the page not loading“

“Just thought I’d let you know how great I thought the queuing system was for Gatecrasher Classical. It made the ticket buying system stress free. Probably the best I’ve seen. All the info I needed for wait time, place in queue and remaining tickets in all areas.”

“The queuing system was excellent, I knew my position the whole time, it continuously updated. It was so efficient and worked wonderfully. It was particularly great how I was updated on the percentage of each ticket left. Very impressed!”

“That was one of the best most proactive ticket queuing system i have had the pleasure of using. I loved the fact you could watch how much longer it was going to take by both minutes and place in queue ( number of people in front of you ).

Also the ticket availability tool was great to be able to see availability by area as a percentage. Just prior to being able to buy meant you could make a dedicated decision on which area you wanted to sit by noting how much availability there was. For instance I wanted centre circle but was hoping to be sat near the front row – I could see prior to having opportunity to buy that ticket sales were already going in that area so chose circle left and nabbed near on front row tickets as i could see availability was good.

A lot of ticket companies could learn from you guys, a very stress free ticket purchase well done 👏”

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