Tiered Pricing Calls-To-Action Prompt 20% Of Entries

When it comes to selling tickets, selling too low can mean a lot of hard work for little revenue and setting the price too high can leave you with spaces on the start line. 

The science behind pricing is never an easy, but automated pricing tiers and discount codes combined with marketing efforts around the traditional peaks, registration opening, a price increase 1-2 months before race day, and the build up to race week will help boost sales

Research shows 20% of all registrations were within 3 days of a price increase or registration close reinforcing the conclusion that time-based calls to action are a reliable method for prompting sign-ups..

What is tiered pricing?

Tiered pricing is the use of different price levels for a period of time or for a specified quantity of tickets sold to drive sales. 

The aim of a tiered pricing strategy is to get enough participants registering sooner and more at a higher price than your core tier price to raise overall revenue above that if you sold all of your tickets at the same price.

Setting your core tier price

Your core tier price is the price the majority of participants will pay to enter your race.

If this is the first running of an event, finding your core tier price will come down to comparing it with similar other events and considering location, amenities and popularity

If you’ve run this event before, look back and see how much your tickets sold for. If you’ve made any changes that will improve the participant experience or if you’re in a position to raise the price, go for it!  Don’t stay at the same price year after year!

Ideally your core tier price should represent good value for money, but it needs to be high enough to allow you to offer discounts for early bird promotional offers.

Introducing pricing tiers 

Once you’ve found your core tier price which is what  the majority of participants should expect to pay for your race,  you need to work out how to extract more than that using tiered pricing.

Some participants look for a bargain and love paying less than the advertised price, whilst some are happy to pay more because they absolutely love your race or more likely nowadays because they don’t want to commit early and for those laggards pricing tiers are useful to secure early entries.

If you’ve run your event for multiple years, building a pricing tier into your existing sales strategy is as simple as asking yourself, at which juncture did past attendees buy their tickets in previous years?

By looking at any previous patterns, you can see if there was a lull right in the middle of your ticket sale promotions and/or if you have a week that does especially well every year. It could be a good idea to introduce a promotion to increase sales during those times.

Your Early Bird Pricing

Your early-bird period is the earliest, and often the longest registration period with the biggest discounts to encourage early sign-ups. 

Early bird is all about creating a sense of urgency to motivate bargain hunters and depending on the type of event you run, you should aim to sell between 30%-60% of your tickets during your early bird period.

With Eventrac you can:

• Monitor sales using heat maps, charts and tables and make adjustments to your pricing or ticket availability or marketing if necessary

• Receive money early, with Eventrac receipts are sent directly to your account without any retention so you can get on with putting your event together

• Plan better, because you get early insights into your resource requirements

A successful early-bird strategy opens with a significant discount and then automatically introduces new gradually increased price tiers based on time/date or tickets sold until the price reaches the standard late-bird full price. 

Two tips that will help you make the most of early bird pricing:

• Limit your early-bird places. Eventrac allows organisers to limit all pricing tiers by either by tickets sold or a time/date so if you end up setting a too low price you have an automatic safety mechanism to limit the damage..

• If you’ve worked hard enough to have a popular race then you should make fewer early bird places available. Don’t sell out too cheap.  Make the most of that popularity and sell the majority of your tickets at higher priced tiers.

What About The Late Birds 

Your higher standard/ late-bird price exists for two reasons:

• To make your early-bird price look good.  A higher standard/late bird price here makes for a more attractive discount for early registrations and also for a last-minute targeted sign up offer if you need it towards the end of your registration.

• The higher price makes up for you receiving money later.  By the time your standard price tier starts you would have had significant outlay and made supplier commitments. So latecomers are paying you for all of the uncertainty and risk you took on so they could pay later..

Sell more tickets with discount codes

Once your early bird tickets have gone, and you have entered your late bird phase, you can still entice people with discount codes:: 

• Try converting people at a standard price. That can be people that have shown strong social media interest in the race and have not yet registered, subscribers to your mailing list etc. These sales will secure premium revenue at your late bird price.

• Offering targeted discounts to select groups, sports clubs, corporate clients.  Research shows nearly 30% of participants join a team when offered. There are still people, even at this late stage, looking for a bargain. Eventrac will allow hidden entry and optionally a password to prevent discount codes and deals becoming visible to those who have already bought at full price. 

A rule of thumb for discount codes is to go as low as your early bird price. To make the most of discounts, you can offer some of the following deals rather than just discounts: 

• Buy 1 get 1 Half Price (or similar) deals. This is an effective 25% discount per entry, gets you two places sold instead of one and sounds great to people looking to race with a friend. 

• Sending unique 10-20% discount codes with short expiry dates to existing registrants, to encourage them to bring a friend or a club. Similar to the above but aimed at people who have registered already.

• Create competitions on your social media pages with 1-2 free tickets for a prize. This is a great way to generate interest and more likes, comments and shares creating lots of awareness which should hopefully translate to some full-price sales. 

Overall

Eventrac’s  automatic tier pricing, combined with time-based calls to action are a reliable method for prompting potential registrants to sign-up.  discount codes, multi-buys, gift cards  Use Eventrac’s integrated email marketing to communicate deadlines for price increases and send personalised call to action messages featuring discount codes, multi-buys,  and gift cards too

Give Eventrac a try, test drive our automatic tier pricing by yourself or book a demo with one of our experts.