Events, be it concerts, performances, or sports games, attract a large market with varying demographics. The traditional way of ticket selling goes like this: tickets are purchased, they’re printed with the relevant information, it gets delivered/retrieved, and they’re scanned at the entrance.
Since all information regarding the date, time, location, and seat numbers are typed into your database before printing a ticket, you could simply generate digital versions of tickets and have customers store it in Passbook. Skip on the step of printing, which reduces your expenses, and speed up the delivery process. Your customer gains instant access to the ticket while your company forgoes the added printing and delivery fees. Everything is done on the computer, without you having to individually send tickets to your customers’ doorsteps.
Passbook Push Notifications
With Passbook being time and location enabled, and with geo-fencing according to your customers’ locations, push alerts can be sent directly to their phones. For ticket holders, event dates can be synced with their calendars, and you can even send push reminders to them 2 days, 5 hours, or 1 hour before the event.
If the location or time of an event changes, you could easily be in contact and inform your customers of the change. They will receive a notification of the change, and their tickets will be updated automatically to the latest information. You no longer have to deal with reprints or communication by other means. This streamlined process allows for ease of change at an expeditious rate. The fact that you can now notify your customers of news or updates within seconds saves time for you and makes it convenient for your customers.
Now what could happen on the date of an event? If Jason Mraz was performing, you could quote part of his song like “You can turn off the sun, but I’m still gonna shine”, just to get your customers hyped for the big event. If it’s a rugby game, a simple “Can the All Blacks claim the title again? Find out tonight!” could get people in the right mindset. Little notifications like this could help your customers stay in tune, and will let them know that you’re not just a traditional ticketing agency, but an engaged one at that. 
You could then go on to offering even more than the standard ticket. On the back of each ticket in Passbook, you are allowed to store as much information as you’d like. The customary route would be to include contact information, an enquiry hotline, and terms and regulations. But you could also include, for example, The Eagle’s set list for tonight or a short snippet about their band history. You’ll be seen as the agency who is providing an even more enriched concert experience, and your customers would be appreciative of the new information they’re learning about the performer.
So with all this information about your customers, you can create customized push notifications based on the types of events they attend. For example, those who attended the Maroon 5 concert last week may want to know about next month’s Coldplay concert. Or someone who went to a jazz festival would like to be informed of when the next jazz related event would be. You can keep your customers informed and up to date with upcoming shows or events, on a broad spectrum or a customized level.
Ticket Marketing
In terms of event tickets, there is not much value after the concert’s over, other than for memorabilia/keepsake purposes. So as a ticketing agency, you could add even more value to the ticket itself, but in a different way. For example, you could partner up with a restaurant like Fat Angelo’s, and when customers present their concert ticket to a waiter, they would receive a 10% discount. Since event tickets are usually sold in high volume, those outlets who partner up with you can attract an even larger audience, which is a win-win for everyone.
This could directly lead to marketing and advertising deals as well. On the day of an event, you could send push notifications to customers asking trivia questions about the performers. A little friendly competition by which the first 20 to e-mail back the correct answer would get a $100 cash coupon at H&M. This allows outlets, in this case H&M, to “sponsor” trivia questions which could help promote their brand too.
Rather than a simple ticket which lessens versatility, your ticketing agency could now provide so much more through digital tickets in Passbook. The ability to engage with your customers and the possibilities of joint ventures with other outlets is now even more of a possibility, and could transform the ticketing industry indefinitely.
Create Passbook Tickets
Our team came across this website called PassK.it which looks to be a company that could help your business integrate Passbook effectively. Passk.it provides a platform for firms to create, distribute, and manage tickets and incorporate it into Passbook in an easy and affordable way. If you have iOS6, you can download their sample event tickets directly into your iPhones, but we’ve provided a screenshot of an event ticket and an airplane ticket here for those who don’t have access to it. Sign up with PassK.it to learn more about how the types of solutions they could offer to your business.
