Business Interviews

Q&A: Shane Mansfield, Ticketscript

By | Published on Wednesday 1 April 2015

Shane Mansfield

In the run up to CMU Insights @ The Great Escape, CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke will be talking to some of the people who will be contributing to the event this year. Today, Shane Mansfield, Head Of Performance Marketing at Ticketscript, who will explain how promoters could and should be better using analytics and data to sell more tickets as part of Music Marketing Is Broken: Let’s Fix It.

CC: Tell us a little about Ticketscript – what services do you offer and what kinds of promoters do you work with?
SM: Ticketscript was founded in Amsterdam in 2006 and since then has expanded across Europe. We offer event organisers free software to ticket for their events themselves. We provide them all the tools, data and insight required to take control of their ticketing, sell more tickets and ultimately grow their business. Our solution has evolved over time to allow everything from efficient pre-sale through websites, mobiles and social channels, and on-the-door sales with our app and ticket box office solution, and effective access control with apps and free scanning hardware, to the most comprehensive insight reports available. We work with promoters across all verticals. The beauty of our system is that if you sell tickets to an event, you can use Ticketscript.

CC: What is your role?
SM: I am Head Of Performance Marketing. I look after all of our online marketing campaigns with the objective of driving new event organiser sign up. This means that I’m always crunching numbers and using analytics to optimise our activity. I also help advise event organisers on best practice for their marketing campaigns to increase ticket sales.

CC: Why is access to data increasingly important for promoters?
SM: For a long time people have overlooked the value of data. As we’ve evolved to become a more online society people have realised that a lot of data is available and that this data, used properly, can be extremely valuable. Promoters with the means to capture and utilise their data give themselves a strong competitive edge and the best chance of selling more tickets for their future events. The wealth of data now available to event organisers means that they can highly target their marketing campaigns, from internet advertising through to email and all touch points in between. Embracing data, and the insights it can provide, will enable you to improve all aspects of your event organisation.

CC: What kinds of data should promoters be looking to access?
SM: I have a mantra when it comes to this. There are two types of data – interesting data and useful data. The latter is vital. Useful data will help improve your business in the short term and make real noticeable differences. Interesting data maybe become useful in the future but won’t help make an immediate impact.

Good examples of useful data are website referral reports, ticket buyer location, device usage on site and campaign conversions. All of these can immediately help you to improve your marketing and site experience. Good examples of interesting data are things like operating system usage, time of day reports and detailed demographic information.

It’s also important to keep in mind post-event data. Email addresses you collect from ticket buyers will enable you to sell tickets for your next event faster and give you access to an engaged community. Spikes in ticket sales analysed following your event will also allow you to optimise your on-sale times for future events.

CC: How could and should data and analytics inform the way promoters market their shows?
SM: Data and analytics should always inform promoters. Make data-based decisions, not gut decisions. Have faith in the data you collect, it knows your audience better than you think you do.

You can collect data from your site and your ticket shop and this data should influence your marketing strategy. Data and analytics provide answers to questions you should always ask yourself. Where are your site visitors from? Where are your ticket buyers from? Is this what you were expecting? Are there locations seeing heavy visits but little conversion? This could be a key location to boost marketing. What devices do people use? Does your site work well on these devices?

There are so many different questions to ask yourself when looking at data, and the likelihood is that these questions will be unique to each event organiser. It’s always advisable to think of these questions as far in advance as possible as then you can set up your analytics and data capture to answer these questions and improve your event.

CMU Insights @ The Great Escape consists of four full-day conference strands sitting at the heart of The Great Escape Convention, which takes place in Brighton from 14-16 May. Full information about this year’s programme is here.



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