UPDATES AT ATTENDSTAR

NEW FEATURES

(NEW) TICKET STATUS – “SOLD OUT” DYNAMIC BANNER:

This visual element upgrades the standard “Sold-Out” ticket status message with an eye-catching element that draws inspiration from our “Tickets Remaining” functionality. This new element can automatically appear when the respective ticket inventory reaches zero.

To utilize this new feature, when creating or updating an existing ticket, under the section “Status & Tagline” you must enable the feature to utilize this dynamic element which will be automatically placed over the listed ticket. This sold-out graphic only appears when tickets have sold out from available inventory, and is not hidden.

PLEASE NOTE: This feature is not auto-enabled by default, you will still need to update your tickets to utilize this feature. If you are utilizing our Event Marketing services it is more than likely our team is already using this feature to help your event.

• BENEFITS: This helps save you time managing status(es), as well as automatically notify prospective buyers that the available ticket has reached its capacity. Visually, this small feature will help provide quick contextual clues to buyers for which tickets are sold out versus still available as they quickly scroll through your available tickets.
  
  
• RECOMMENDATION: Using this feature along with our “Tickets Remaining” feature to help indicate the remaining tickets that are available. Best practice states to not reveal your entire ticket inventory but rather have the feature auto-enable when the remaining 25 – 99 tickets to help motivate those still on the fence.

(NEW) MULTI-SCAN, PER-DAY LIMITS:

We have had the ability to scan a ticket a certain number of times for a long time, but in certain scenarios, tickets represented a multi-day event such as a “3-Day Pass” and this became problematic.

With our latest rounds of refinements, you can now limit that to 1x time per day or any number of times per day.  So, you could say that multi-scan just got a whole lot smarter!

(NEW) EVENT COMPARISON – MULTI-SELECT:

You can now select more than one seating type to compare when you compare one event to another!  Let’s say you have four seating sections of reserved seating with different ticket names:

• Previously, you could compare tickets: Section 1 to Section 1.
• Now, you can select Sections, 1, 2, 3, and 4 and compare those to the same sections in another event.

This feature now extends to multiple events in your accounts, so if you have repeating events or different events in multiple markets, you can do an analysis comparing ticket types or sales between distinct events. Did someone say goodbye to Excel pivot tables?!

ENHANCEMENTS

1. (UPDATED) TICKET PACKAGES & HIDDEN TICKETS:

We’ve added another improvement to our Ticket Packages feature, you can now hide the items that are sold in the package from being displayed individually on the ticket sale page. Before, the package item had to be available for purchase separately. Now, you can sell an item that is ONLY part of a package!

Here are a couple of examples:

• You want to include a t-shirt in the package, but not sell the t-shirt separately.
• You want to include a VIP parking pass with the purchase of a package, but not allow VIP parking to be purchased individually.

2. (UPDATED) ADMISSIONS & REVENUE:

Though this nifty feature is still in BETA, it continues to get ongoing adjustments and feedback to better suit the different events we ticket. This functionality compares your current event to another subject event to give you a quick analysis of the real-time performance comparison of that event based on admission and revenue.

It can be used to compare with any other show, but its real benefit is when using it for repeat shows in the same market. If you would like to see this feature enabled for your event, please reach out to your Client Success Manager with the event ID of the show you want to compare.

3. (UPDATED) STATIONARY HEADER ON TABLES (STICKY HEADERS):
Previously, you had a long list of tickets covering 2-5 event days. When you scrolled to item number 11 you could no longer see the column names. So now the column names in the header stay put.  No more asking yourself what this number meant.

IN-PROGRESS

1. SCORE CARD V2:

This feature is arguably one of our biggest undertakings of the year and will span into Q2 of 2024. We are excited to lay the groundwork for an overhaul of what started as a self-guided feature framework for event managers to be encouraged to utilize basic features. After a decade of lessons learned and refinement, we’ve decided to distill our expertise into comprehensive recommendations, helping each event leverage our feature set to its fullest potential and monitor event health, and their performance on a weekly basis. 

This will help drive synergy between your Client Success Manager and your event operations. We have found those events that utilize the majority of the features that are uniquely recommended by our event specialist those events benefit in more ways than one.

More details to come, but this feature will be closely interwoven into our “Activities” upgrade to make it even more powerful! We’re excited to continue to share our progress, stay tuned.

2. ACTIVITIES V2:

This feature is getting upgraded to do much more than merely tracking ticket on-sale statuses or milestones, going beyond general record keeping for marketing campaigns and advertising spend. We are expanding this feature for broader visibility on the managed white-glove services we provide to our clients.

This feature will extend not just to our team, but to your ops team as well allowing you to monitor activities such as price adjustments, artwork updates, FAQ details being updated, and key milestones being delivered by AttendStar in our scope of work (hardware, training, support, etc).

Our ultimate goal is this should help provide accountability and unparalleled visibility! After our post-event meetings clients express surprise and amazement at the volume and enormity we help them tackle, and the true value added to their event; the goal is to help give early visibility on our efforts and simplify activity tracking for our client success managers.

3. SCANNED TICKETS (HOURLY REPORTING):

After ongoing discussions with clients and our on-site support team that are in the field regularly, we’ve decided to give unparalleled visibility to our “Scanned Tickets Report By Day” offering an hourly graph from all scanners so clients can see when most people arrive at the show whether it be live, or later as part of their post-event analysis.

NEW FEATURES

• Package Inventory sets limited capacities for a package to ensure you only sell the maximum amount you have allocated.
• Ticket inventories dynamically update associated tickets; when a particular ticket exists in an active ticket bundle and also has a limited capacity, it will automatically sync the remaining capacity to prevent overselling.This will ensure when one of the available tickets becomes unavailable, the entire package will be marked as “Sold Out”.
• Tickets Remaining will return live, up-to-date notices of remaining availability for those packages you’ve chosen to enable this feature. This capability is a powerful tool to help nudge prospects using FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to drive urgency and ultimately increase sale conversions.
• Reserved Seating intelligently integrates into packages, allowing you to offer premium hospitality packages with premium seating offerings.
• Promotional Deals: Offer BOGO or FREE Tickets as part of the ticket package promotional offer with ZERO hassle!

(NEW) META ADS (FACEBOOK) CONVERSIONS API:

The Meta Conversions API is designed to create a direct and more reliable connection between the AttendStar Ticketing Platform and Meta Ads

Use cases for this native integration include pushing ticket sales page event data and order meta-data to your Meta Pixel.  This marketing integration enables you better ad personalization, optimization of campaigns, and deeper measurement across Meta technologies so that your ads are shown to people who are more likely to find them relevant.

(NEW) CANADIAN TAX RATES FEATURE ADDED:

You can now utilize a comprehensive set of tax types specific to Canada when you select Canadian Dollars on the Ticket Payment Options screen. This update introduces three new tax types, expanding your options and ensuring accurate tax calculations for your transactions.

This enhancement is designed to streamline your tax management process and provide you with the flexibility to cater to various tax scenarios within the Canadian market.
How about those sales tax, ‘ey!

1. HST (Harmonized Sales Tax)
2. PST (Regional Provincial Sales Tax)
3. GST (Federal Goods and Services Tax)

(NEW) TICKET PROGRAMS & ANALYSIS REPORT:

You can now access the “Ticket Programs and Analysis” report under Reports > Ticket Sales Report. This report has been meticulously crafted to provide you with insights into the impact of two essential features: “Buy Now Pay Later” and “Ticket Buyer Protection.”

1. Informed Decision-Making: By analyzing the data presented in this report, you will be better equipped to make informed decisions regarding the utilization of both “Buy Now Pay Later” and “Ticket Buyer Protection” features. It serves as a valuable tool in determining whether to continue offering both options or make adjustments to your offerings.
2. Cost Transparency: The report includes an estimation of additional card fees, allowing you to transparently understand the cost implications associated with these features. This insight empowers you to assess the financial impact and make strategic decisions that align with your business goals.

Please note that, at this moment, the report provides estimated additional card fees for Stripe transactions only. We are exploring expanding this functionality to include Authorize.net as well.

ENHANCEMENTS

1. (UPDATED) GOOGLE ANALYTICS V4 INTEGRATION:
We’ve made a series of big upgrades to the GA4 integration, providing deeper insights with conversion tracking and funnel for a simplified analysis for your event marketing needs.

• Page Sessions
• Page Views
• Funnel Conversion Tracking
  • Add to Cart
  • Begin Checkout
  • Payment Info Added
  • Checkout

2. (UPDATED) NAVIGATION MENU – EVENT MANAGER:
We’ve updated the AttendStar – Event Manager menu navigation to make it easier to find reports, and new features even easier than before!
 

3. (UPDATED)  NET-SALES REPORT, RENAMED TO “REVENUE SHARE REPORT”:

We have renamed the report from “Net Sales Report” to “Revenue Share Report” to reflect its primary purpose accurately. This new name aligns with its core function of aiding in revenue-sharing scenarios for event manager and promoters. The Revenue Share Report now exhibits tickets in the order configured on the Tickets Overview page. This improvement ensures that you can effortlessly track and manage your revenue-sharing agreements, eliminating the need for manual adjustments. When you click submit you’ll be able to update and save Offline & Comp Tickets.

The Revenue Share Report excels at accommodating complex revenue-sharing arrangements, such as those where artists receive a percentage of ticket sales.

4. (UPDATED) SCANNED TICKETS REPORT:

The Scanned Tickets Report now distinguishes between shows on days with multiple events. This means that if you have multiple shows scheduled on the same day, each show will be presented separately in the report. This feature offers you unprecedented precision and clarity in tracking the performance of individual events within a busy day.

This enhancement is particularly valuable for clients who manage venues with multiple performances in a single day, as it empowers you to assess each show’s ticketing data independently. By doing so, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize ticket sales, audience engagement, and overall event success.

5. HONORABLE MENTIONS:

• CAMPAIGN URLS: campaign builder now include full UTM strings for easy copy & paste to use into your marketing efforts.
  
  
• HIDDEN DISCOUNT CODES: When creating a discount code you have the option to hide the discount field on the ticket sales page, while also auto applying that unique discount code for easy sharing with others.
  
  
• ATTENDEE FIELDS – ZIPCODE OPTIONAL: We’ve made zipcode an optional attendee field versus being previously required. Though we don’t recommend making this particular field optional, in some unique situations this information may not be necessary.
  
  
• ATTENDEE DATA – EXPORT: When exporting data from Manage Attendees, we’ve added additional data for those utilizing Affirm via Stripe to include mention of fees collected.

NEW FEATURES

(NEW) LINK BY STRIPE:
We are now offering customers a frictionless checkout experience. Stripe Link auto-fills your customers’ payment information to create an easy and secure checkout experience. 

Boost your checkout conversions! Those adopting Stripe Link have seen a 7% increase in overall conversion rates and 9x faster checkout than non-Link customers and with no additional costs for this feature! 

HOW IT WORKS:
Link enables customers to save their preferred payment methods to their account and access those credentials globally at any of the hundreds of thousands of Link-enabled businesses.

Link auto-fills your customers’ saved information in a few simple steps. Your customers’ data is encrypted to keep it secure, and, as a certified PCI Service Provider Level 1, Link meets the highest level of certification available in the payments industry.

(NEW) CUSTOM FACEBOOK SHARING IMAGE:
When ticket buyers share your ticket sales page to Facebook, you can now personalize your image shown on Facebook. By default, we utilize the event banner as the default image that will appear, but for those creative and marketing-motivated folks, you now customize it to your heart’s content!

FEATURES & UPDATES WIDGET:
When logging into the event manager, you’ll now notice a new menu item in the footer highlighting important news and updates that have been added.

When you click on it, you’ll see a pop-up where you can subscribe to alerts, make suggestions, and provide feedback to our product team.

(NEW) HIVE.CO INTEGRATION (IN-BETA):
This will empower clients to synchronize their ticket buyer data with Hive.co’s email marketing and SMS campaign platform in real-time.

With this integration, clients will enjoy a streamlined process of seamlessly importing their attendee data from AttendStar into Hive. This enables event managers to create curated data collections on ticket buyers, allowing targeted marketing campaigns and increased event engagement.

ENHANCEMENTS

CHECKOUT – TERMS & CONDITIONS (UX UPGRADE):
We’ve updated the checkout experience only to show each selected ticket’s TOS (terms and conditions) for a speedier checkout!

RE-ENGAGEMENT MODAL (UX UPGRADE):

For those utilizing this powerful feature, we’ve removed mobile phone number input in favor of email due to limited usage, while adding some polishing touches to the user experience.

This powerful tool can help capture prospects interested in your event by sending abandoned-cart campaigns to help increase checkout conversions. You can easily download these prospects as a CSV file, and then email those that haven’t purchased. Pretty cool ‘eh?

TICKET BUYER ORDER EMAILS:
Confirmation emails have been upgraded with user accessibility improvements to make essential links easier to click and darker color contrasts. Ticket Buyers will find more straightforward buttons to click to Print Tickets and show Tickets Online.

HIDDEN DISCOUNT CODES:
We’ve made minor improvements to the front end and better support some specific scenarios with hidden discount codes and URLs on the ticket sales page.

(ON-GOING) EVENT REPORT ENHANCEMENTS:

• Ticket Sales Report: now includes a detailed breakdown of the event, ticket, discount, and fees with the ability to run reports by custom date filters. The functionality extends to also generating Printed PDF, and CSV reports, which are helpful to archive and import into other reporting tools.

• Emailed Sales Reports: now send at 7 AM Central Time by default to ensure previous day sales are accounted especially for various events in different timezones.

IMPORTANT CHANGES:

• (DEPRECIATED)  WE-PAY PAYMENT METHOD:
  We have discontinued supporting this payment method for any future events.

IN-PROGRESS

• Package Inventory sets limited capacities for a package to ensure you only sell the maximum amount you have allocated.
• Ticket inventories dynamically update associated tickets; when a particular ticket exists in an active ticket bundle and also has a limited capacity, it will automatically sync the remaining capacity to prevent overselling.

  This will ensure when one of the available tickets becomes unavailable, the entire package will be marked as “Sold Out”.

• Tickets Remaining will return live, up-to-date notices of remaining availability for those packages you’ve chosen to enable this feature. This capability is a powerful tool to help nudge prospects using FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to drive urgency and ultimately increase sale conversions.
• Reserved Seating intelligently integrates into packages, allowing you to offer premium hospitality packages with premium seating offerings.
• Promotional Deals: Offer BOGO or FREE Tickets as part of the ticket package promotional offer with ZERO hassle!

META ADS (FACEBOOK) CONVERSIONS API:

The Meta Conversions API is designed to create a direct and more reliable connection between the AttendStar Ticketing Platform and Meta Ads

Use cases for this native integration include pushing ticket sales page event data and order meta-data to your Meta Pixel.  This marketing integration enables you better ad personalization, optimization of campaigns, and deeper measurement across Meta technologies so that your ads are shown to people who are more likely to find them relevant.

SOCIAL PROOF NOTIFICATIONS:
The power of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) in marketing and sales is rooted in the scientific principles of cognitive psychology and decision theory.

One of the best ways to sell more tickets for your event is to elicit consumers’ emotional responses through your marketing messages and experiences. This includes the messages and experiences on your event’s ticket sales page.

A powerful emotion that research proves directly motivates people to buy is fear of missing out. In fact, social media has exacerbated the influence of FOMO, and recent research found that 69% of millennials experience it.

DID YOU KNOW?: When you sell event tickets through AttendStar and request to utilize this Social Proof feature, all recent customer ticket purchases will dynamically and automatically display directly on your ticket sales page.

TICKETS REMAINING
This feature is a great way to encourage ticket sales by displaying the remaining available inventory. You have the flexibility to enable this feature on all or select tickets and set a maximum inventory threshold for when it appears.

STILL COMING? (BETA):
We are excited to introduce this new capability, which perfectly complements events with free or general admission ticket types or even parking passes where there is a fixed capacity.

With this feature, our managed marketing services can go above-and-beyond by helping event managers quickly send personalized and targeted messages to ticket buyers to confirm their attendance and reduce no-shows.

HELPFUL TIP: By allowing attendees to confirm their attendance, you can free up additional ticket inventories. This is an excellent way to ensure your event is able to maximize overall attendance while avoiding overselling and “no-shows”.

TICKET BUYER PROTECTION:

We have integrated with Protecht Group, a leading provider of cancellation protection and refund protection for events. Now, your attendees can purchase additional coverage to protect them from life’s unexpected surprises.

For a small additional fee your ticket buyers can add this additional upgrade and be approved with no extra steps or paperwork for instantaneous coverage. Best of all Protecht Group takes care of the rest for a hassle-free refund process. Protect and grow your ticket sales by eliminating ticket abandonment for those potential buyers who might still be on-the-fence.

ON-SITE TICKET SCANNER ENHANCEMENTS:

We have made a series of minor enhancements to our ticket scanner that will provide better response messages with additional insights into scans that return invalid tickets. This will allow you to know the reason without having to lift a finger!

Now you’ll see whether the ticket was canceled, refunded, or voided with contextual information right from the palm of your hand.

DID YOU KNOW? All of our devices come with optional 4G connectivity on it’s own dedicated band, meaning while customers can’t connect our devices will work rain or shine!

• Optimized Checkout Flow
• Mobile Optimization for Ticket Sales Pages
• Buy Now, Pay Later with Affirm
• Apple Pay / Samsung Pay

INTRODUCING BUY NOW, PAY LATER WITH AFFIRM

AttendStar is happy to announce our integration with Affirm to provide a Buy Now, Pay Later option to ticket buyers. Affirm, via Stripe, allows buyers to receive personalized financing options for each transaction. Learn more about this feature at Stripe.

NEW FEATURES

CUSTOM ATTENDEE FIELDS & BY FIELD TYPES

Want to collect specific information from ticket purchasers of certain ticket types? AttendStar allows you to create Custom Attendee Fields to collect data and choose the ticket, or tickets, that the data needs to be collected for. For example, if you are selling a ticket that includes a t-shirt. Create a custom field to ask for t-shirt size when the t-shirt ticket is being purchased, without having to ask ALL ticket buyers for ANY ticket for their t-shirt size.

NEW FEATURES

GROUP INVENTORY

Need to sell tickets with different prices from the same inventory of tickets? AttendStar allows you to set a Group Inventory and have different ticket types pull from the same inventory.

AN EXAMPLE USE-CASE: When you have 10,000 General Admission tickets but are offering an adult price, a senior price, and a child price with no maximum limit on how many from each you want to sell. Create a Group Inventory of 10,000 and add the various priced tickets as sub-tickets to the Group! Tickets will sell from each price level until you reach 10,000!

NEW FEATURES

This week, one of the biggest updates ever comes to AttendStar.

• If you need to cancel your event, we can process all refunds with one click.
• Tickets can now be set to be validated by our ticket scanners only certain days and times!
• We redesigned the Browse Attendee table so you can see quickly if a ticket was scanned or not.
• We have updated some of the colors in the Event Manager.

CLIENT SUCCESS

The Client Success Team is pleased to introduce expanded and improved “At Event Support.” When you call your Client Success Manager after their normal business hours on their direct line, your call will be forwarded to a new Priority Client Support Team. If unavailable, our new 24/7 client support line will note the issues you are having, and your message will be sent to all on-call team members. No more wondering who to call about the problem you are having! No more learning a new number and no more “press 2” for support.

• UPDATE – CHECKOUT BUTTONS: We have added the ability to rename the buttons that take your ticket buyers through the checkout process.
  
  

• UPDATE  – EMAILED SALE REPORTS: Our emailed sales reports have been updated to separate your add-on tickets from your admission tickets – making it easier to monitor your event capacity!
  
  

• NEWS – Sold out our first air show of the year.
  
  

• NEWS – Won the contract for the Smoky Mountain Air Show in September 2022!
  
  

• UPDATE – SCANNED TICKET TYPES – You can now see which specific ticket type you are scanning with our ticket scanners.

• UPDATE – Attendee Export: Your event’s attendee export will now contain order level fees, such as credit card fees and sales tax. Ticket prices listed will also include discounted ticket prices. This gives you not only attendee information, but a better picture of your sales!
  
  

• NEW  – Reserved Seating Navigation: Ticket buyers will be able to navigate through your reserved seating sections going left and right between each section.
  
  

• NEW – Editing Ticket Buyer Info – Need to update a ticket buyer’s email address, or name on the order? No problem! This can be done under your Manage Attendees page.
  
  

• NEW – Charge Breakdown – After an order is completed, your ticket buyers will see the breakdown of their charges as they do prior to ordering. This will eliminate questions about their charges after they have purchased.
  
  

• UPDATE – Scanned Tickets Report – Ticket scans can now be grouped by the individual scanner username, knowing ticket scans by scanner