Over the last couple of months the Tickets.com executive team have been regular contributors to the ProVenue® blog. Some of you are already familiar with the leadership team here, but alas - some of you are not. Over the next couple of weeks let us share with you some unknown facts about this dynamic group.
Today we take a closer look at John Rizzi, SVP Product Management & Strategy. John started his tenure at Tickets.com almost 3 years ago and has quickly made a name for himself in the industry.
John Rizzi: Things You Won't Get From My Resume or Bio:
What you can see on my resume is that I've been in Technology for more than 20 years, what you won't see on there is that my favorite Tech saying is "yak shaving": sadly something I'm sure most can relate to.
If you read my bio, you'll see I'm married with two young boys - what's not there is that my wife and I got married in Vegas… by Elvis. While I AM a fan of the king, I love my wife even more for allowing us to have such an…. errrr…. affordable wedding.
My bio mentions that I went to Cal Poly Pomona (in the 80's) but what it doesn't say is I was the "R" in S&R Sounds DJ's. Those of you old enough might remember that the song that got everyone on the dance floor at frat parties, keggers, and school dances was the Romantics "What I Like About You"…. Uh huh huh…. HEY!!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
INTRUST Bank Arena and Mercer University Both Convert to ProVenue®
INTRUST Bank Arena, an SMG managed facility, and all other regional Select-A-Seat venues have recently converted to the ProVenue Platform. INTRUST Bank Arena is one of the Midwest's premier arenas with a 15,000-seat capacity and host to several of the industry's top sporting events and live entertainment shows.
Select-A-Seat also provides ticketing services for several Wichita area clients; including the Wingnuts, Orpheum Theatre and the Grand Opera. The move enables the organization to recruit additional venues that would also benefit from a shared system (single database) to promote and increase ticket sales.
Mercer Ticket Sales (MTS), a regional ticketing distribution company based in Macon, Georgia, also joined the ranks of Tickets.com clients operating on ProVenue. The decision to move from the ProVenueMax system and invest in the ProVenue platform, along with Access Control for the Macon Grand Opera House, allows them to extend their regional ticketing service more readily in Central Georgia and beyond.
Residents of the Opera House, The Macon Symphony, will join MTS for their 2011-2012 season as well as Mercer University Athletics, which plans to add NCAA Division 1 Football in the coming seasons to complement its strong Division 1 Basketball program.
Select-A-Seat also provides ticketing services for several Wichita area clients; including the Wingnuts, Orpheum Theatre and the Grand Opera. The move enables the organization to recruit additional venues that would also benefit from a shared system (single database) to promote and increase ticket sales.
Mercer Ticket Sales (MTS), a regional ticketing distribution company based in Macon, Georgia, also joined the ranks of Tickets.com clients operating on ProVenue. The decision to move from the ProVenueMax system and invest in the ProVenue platform, along with Access Control for the Macon Grand Opera House, allows them to extend their regional ticketing service more readily in Central Georgia and beyond.
Residents of the Opera House, The Macon Symphony, will join MTS for their 2011-2012 season as well as Mercer University Athletics, which plans to add NCAA Division 1 Football in the coming seasons to complement its strong Division 1 Basketball program.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Right Offer to the Right Person
By Derek Palmer, Managing Director, Executive Vice President, International, Tickets.com
In today's economic climate everyone is focused on providing the right offer to the right patron at the right time. Allow me to share with you my perspective.
Technology obviously plays a large part in this effort. The days of brochures and ushers asking patrons to fill out “contact me” cards in the lobby have given way to complex XRM systems that overlay pricing models and demographics to try and predict and (more importantly) shape consumer behavior. However, the thought process is the same and still seems to rely a great deal on the quantity and quality of data. I would argue it is even more important to have a plan of what you want to do with the data.
Organizations without clear goals for data management risk a condition I have heard best described as "paralysis by analysis" and a waste of valuable time and money.
Before investing in technologies to help manage your data you would do well to ask a few key questions:
1) What are we trying to achieve?
2) What are the key drivers and KPIs that we will use to measure our effectiveness?
3) What are our success criteria?
These are fairly simple questions and therefore it would follow that there are simple answers: We want to sell more tickets and make more money... But how do you achieve that seemingly obvious goal? And what if one doesn't necessarily lead to another? More importantly how do you ensure that you are connecting to the right consumers in the way they wish to be communicated with at the frequency at which they are willing to communicate with you?
Once you have communicated with your target audience, what is your call to action? Too often the immediate response to a slow moving event is to offer a discount to get “butts in seats”, if the goal is to sell more tickets, but does it necessarily make you more money in the long run?
There are many new technologies that allow venues to focus on more nuanced strategies around yield management. Stored Value integrations with merchandise and concession providers offer venues the opportunity to be extremely flexible in their offerings to consumers and in a targeted manner. Instead of giving someone a £10.00 discount on a ticket why not offer them £10.00 worth of value towards purchases at your concession stands or gift shops. In addition to the incremental revenue opportunities, guess what else you get? That’s right-more data. But in this case it is extremely specific data about that individual consumer and their spending habits.
Introducing Dynamic Pricing program for your events is another approach to yield management. Some people will read that sentence to mean “raise ticket prices as high as possible” but in fact a Dynamic Pricing scenario allows just as many discount opportunities and in this case it is based on data. More importantly it allows precision discounting - just because one person in section 400 will only buy if the ticket is £10.00 under face value doesn’t mean the person next to them won’t buy at £2.00 under face value. It goes back to the right offer to the right person.
In today's economic climate everyone is focused on providing the right offer to the right patron at the right time. Allow me to share with you my perspective.
Technology obviously plays a large part in this effort. The days of brochures and ushers asking patrons to fill out “contact me” cards in the lobby have given way to complex XRM systems that overlay pricing models and demographics to try and predict and (more importantly) shape consumer behavior. However, the thought process is the same and still seems to rely a great deal on the quantity and quality of data. I would argue it is even more important to have a plan of what you want to do with the data.
Organizations without clear goals for data management risk a condition I have heard best described as "paralysis by analysis" and a waste of valuable time and money.
Before investing in technologies to help manage your data you would do well to ask a few key questions:
1) What are we trying to achieve?
2) What are the key drivers and KPIs that we will use to measure our effectiveness?
3) What are our success criteria?
These are fairly simple questions and therefore it would follow that there are simple answers: We want to sell more tickets and make more money... But how do you achieve that seemingly obvious goal? And what if one doesn't necessarily lead to another? More importantly how do you ensure that you are connecting to the right consumers in the way they wish to be communicated with at the frequency at which they are willing to communicate with you?
Once you have communicated with your target audience, what is your call to action? Too often the immediate response to a slow moving event is to offer a discount to get “butts in seats”, if the goal is to sell more tickets, but does it necessarily make you more money in the long run?
There are many new technologies that allow venues to focus on more nuanced strategies around yield management. Stored Value integrations with merchandise and concession providers offer venues the opportunity to be extremely flexible in their offerings to consumers and in a targeted manner. Instead of giving someone a £10.00 discount on a ticket why not offer them £10.00 worth of value towards purchases at your concession stands or gift shops. In addition to the incremental revenue opportunities, guess what else you get? That’s right-more data. But in this case it is extremely specific data about that individual consumer and their spending habits.
Introducing Dynamic Pricing program for your events is another approach to yield management. Some people will read that sentence to mean “raise ticket prices as high as possible” but in fact a Dynamic Pricing scenario allows just as many discount opportunities and in this case it is based on data. More importantly it allows precision discounting - just because one person in section 400 will only buy if the ticket is £10.00 under face value doesn’t mean the person next to them won’t buy at £2.00 under face value. It goes back to the right offer to the right person.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Record Setting MLB Franchises
By John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com
Recently I read where the 2011 Red Sox set a club record by reaching the “3 million tickets sold” mark earlier in a season (August 5th) than ever before in the franchise’s history. And in 2010, the Twins set a franchise record for attendance in their new ballpark. What’s the connection? Winning, of course. But not lost on me is that both teams were in their inaugural seasons of using ProVenue. That says an awful lot about the folks working in the sales and ticket offices for these Clubs – being able to manage unprecedented demand on a new system. It also says a lot about ProVenue and Tickets.com. We’re enjoying the push to these limits.
Recently I read where the 2011 Red Sox set a club record by reaching the “3 million tickets sold” mark earlier in a season (August 5th) than ever before in the franchise’s history. And in 2010, the Twins set a franchise record for attendance in their new ballpark. What’s the connection? Winning, of course. But not lost on me is that both teams were in their inaugural seasons of using ProVenue. That says an awful lot about the folks working in the sales and ticket offices for these Clubs – being able to manage unprecedented demand on a new system. It also says a lot about ProVenue and Tickets.com. We’re enjoying the push to these limits.
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