The Ticketing Institute

Latest News

Drip-Feed - Olympic tickets' slow release

by Roger Tomlinson

With little publicity until after the on-sale started, the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic Games made some new tickets available and released further unsold tickets on Friday 11th May at two hour's notice to those ticket purchasers initially disappointed in 2011 when tickets first went on sale.  This is apparently part of a strategy to reduce presssure on the ticket sales website by drip-feeding the release of additional tickets over the next fortnight, until a general release to the public of all remaining unsold tickets on 23 May.  There are also additional tickets for events to be added on 29 May.

Over a million people were "disappointed" in the original on-sale - some believing they had been successful then told there were no tickets for them - and they can now purchase up to 4 tickets for one session provided they apply before 17 May - and are successful.  According to Locog announcements, tranches of seats for specific events will be released each day, with unsold tickets being carried forward to be generally available on subsequent days.  Already there are reports of further disappointments, according to BBC News.

BBC sports news correspondent James Pearce said: "Presumably they had kept quiet for fear of demand being too great for a website which has sometimes struggled to cope."  Once again media coverage is questionning the fairness of the sales method, with restricted access to particular groups of customers and not all events being on offer at the same time.

Lord Sebastian Coe, defending the LOCOG ticketing arrangements on BBC TV's Sunday morning Andrew Marr show said: "75% of the 11 million tickets that were available are in the hands of the British public. That's a commitment we made right at the beginning of this process, and at the end of this process we will deliver it."

Featured Opinion

On the Road to Strategic CRM: The Balanced Database

by Helen Dunnett

Helen Dunnett has been working with Purple Seven on a significant advance in the available techniques to help arts organisations work smarter and more cost effectively.

The flat-lining economies and the reductions in arts funding mean most arts organisations are grappling with having to achieve more with less, and to prove that what they are doing is effective.  It becomes ever more urgent to get a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy in place which works to develop audiences and increase their engagement. 

The Balanced Database is an intensive training programme that gives arts organisations software, training and marketing support, aiming to increase ticket revenue, reduce wasted marketing spend and to improve mailing response rates.  And the best bit is they give you your money back if that doesn’t happen!

The key thing about the Balanced Database is that it does not require any additional data or research, because it is based purely on the existing database, so it can be implemented immediately.  

The first step is to analyse the organisation’s data (that’s real, ‘live’ data) to see if it conforms to some standard principles of recency, frequency and value. After all, one customer type is not enough, we must identify the several customer types in the database, who can be relied on to respond in different situations.  We need to understand the real people we actually have on the database and their propensity to attend. 

What is clear from the data is that recency and frequency drive propensity to attend, and that each segment has different levels of propensity and purchase behaviour. So the more recent your last visit, the more likely it is you will attend again and the more you attend, the more likely it is you will attend again.

This has got to be the place to start building relationships with customers. What’s really important about the Balanced Database is that it is a leap forward in segmentation implementation from the days when I pioneered Audience Builder; then you needed a heck of a lot of dedication and commitment to maintain the programme and monitor progress.  

Helen Dunnett