Feature Focus: Upsell with Add-ons, Merchandise, and Donations
Increase margins with add-ons, sell merchandise in advance of your event, and collect charitable donations by using LIVE IT's new upsell features.
If you're looking to boost your event revenue, there are a number of ways to do it – but adding on extra services, add-ons or merchandise can be a great way to go.
You can entice attendees with add-ons like food or drinks packages, or offer them exclusive access to VIP areas or after-parties. You can also sell branded merchandise, or ask for donations from participants to support a good cause.
Whatever route you choose, upselling is a great way to increase revenue without significantly increasing your costs. LIVE IT's new upsell functionality allows you to arrange this quickly and easily in the booking process.
Read on to learn more...
How does Upselling work?
Simply put, our Upselling feature adds another step to the booking process. After they've selected their tickets, customers are offered additional products and/or the chance to make a charitable donation before paying.
The system works by using our new Ticket Groups functionality. When editing these, you will see a new selector for "Type", which determines which stage of the booking process this Ticket Group is displayed in, and some other properties.
To get started, set up your event tickets as normal, and either put them in a Ticket Group with the type set to "Tickets" or simply leave them ungrouped.
You'll then need to set up your add-ons. Create the add-on products as tickets like normal. Then create a group and drag the add-on products into it. You now need to choose a Ticket Group Type.
For Merchandise and Addons, and other additional products, e.g. VIP Upgrades or Car Parking passes, choose that category. Add-ons purchased in this category will have an e-ticket with a barcode issued.
For charitable donations, choose the Donations category. The ticket price you set becomes the default donation amount. Customers can donate more, less, or none if they choose. No tickets will be issued for donations made.
Now when a customer is booking, they will be shown Tickets first, then any ticket groups under Merchandise and Addons, and then any ticket groups under Donations.
Best Practices
Make sure what you are upselling is relevant to the ticket types and intended audience on your event page. E.g. don't upsell camping amenities to non-camping customers.
It is possible to have both Tickets, Merchandise/add-ons, and Donations all set up as distinct stages of the booking process. And it is possible to have multiple ticket groups and ticket types within those. But we recommend keeping it simple.
We recommend making all your add-on ticket groups "show as expanded on booking page" so that information is quickly presented to the customer without the need for additional clicks.
For donations, we recommend setting a small default donation of £1/£2 for optimal uptake levels.
Most importantly - make sure you have robust procedures in place at your event for your customers to collect their pre-booked add-ons/merchandise!
Get Started
Ticket Groups and the Upsell Functionality will soon be enabled by default for all LIVE IT organisers, but if you would like to have this available now, drop us an email at support@liveit.io and we'll set you up.
