Tickets: 7+ Common use-cases to help you get the most out of Tickets – Raisely

Tickets in Raisely can have a lot of various use cases. Here we’ll explore some of the main ones, and provide some guidance as to the best way (not the only way) to set them up. Let’s explore…

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Creating Early Bird Ticket Timings

3 Ways to Best Use Promo Codes

Selling Merchandise alongside an Event Ticket

Portioning part of the Ticket sale as a donation

Adding Group Tickets option

Adding Postage Option

Event Participation without Fundraising

Creating Early Bird Ticket Timings

Many events offer varied ticket pricing based on when the registration is made. Often called Early Bird Pricing, this offering can encourage ticket sales, especially for repeat events offered to previous entrants.

The easiest setup method:

1: Add new Tickets Types including Early Bird, Standard, Late (and other options)
2: For each Ticket Type, have the same Display Name (ie. Registration Ticket), but for the Ticket Name, name Early Bird, Standard, Late, etc.
3: This will mean that it presents as the same ticket but when reporting or viewing your Ticket orders you will see what kind of Ticket it is.
4: For each Ticket, set the Ticket Availability to Set Start and End Date & Time to activate/deactivate at the correct timing.
For example, your Early Bird Ticket may go from 01 June - 30 June, Standard from 01 August - 14 September, and late from 15 Sept -30 Sept.
5: You can also set a Ticket limit for certain timings.
For example, you may have a limited quantity of Early Bird tickets to encourage early ticket sales.

Promo codes allow you to apply discounts ($ or %) to a purchase order. You can set up as many as you like, limit the number of times each can be applied, and set their start/end date.

There are 3 ideal use cases when using promo codes:

Flash Sale

Used when promoting a short-term sale period for tickets. This could be used if you have excess tickets you are wanting to be sold or a seasonal rhythm you have such as a unique holiday day.

Single-Use

Used when needing a quick way to discount a specific person's ticket (eg. provide a quick way to process a free ticket). Since you can limit the use of promo codes, a quick code sent to an individual can have them provide all the normal info, but upon checkout have the order amount changed.

Equipping staff at the Ticket Booth

Used where people can purchase tickets at-event, as a simple method for ticket staff to apply certain codes when needed.

When using Promo codes, the risk is often misuse of them. Be sure to add into your messages how to use the promo code (rules you define), as this can often deter people from misuse.

Selling Merchandise alongside an Event Ticket

Many events will offer merchandise purchases as well, encouraging brand presence and community participation. There are two ways you can offer merchandise that create a unique user experience.

All-In-One Purchase

Use Ticket Types to add additional merchandise to your form
For your Merchandise ticket types, style it differently than your Event ticket type, using images and leaving the description blank. For your Event ticket type, don’t include an image but add a description.
Make sure the Merchandise options are also moved to the bottom of the Ticket types so they appear below event tickets on the form.
You can now configure your Attendee Fields, adding conditional fields that only appear based on what Ticket Type is selected. For example, if you are selling items with sizing and items without, you can hide the sizing field if they do not purchase sized items.

Separate Offering

You can set up multiple ticket forms that can separate event tickets and merchandise. This gives you greater flexibility to change the user experience.

Create a separate page in your campaign for merchandise, adding the merch options, images, and pricing.
Add a Ticket Form to the page you will use for merch sales, switching off the event ticket types within the form's settings.
Create a unique purchase follow-up Message that invites those who have already registered/purchased to check out the merch and purchase. Separating the event ticketing and the merchandise purchasing can give you opportunities to create hype and share your purpose & mission regularly throughout the pre-event journey.

Portioning part of the Ticket sale as a donation

There may be events where the ticket price incorporates a fixed donation amount based on the profit margin of the ticket.

For example, you may charge $100 for a dinner function of which $60 of that acts as a donation. Since the ticket holder is receiving something in return for their ‘donation’, they are unable to claim it as a tax deduction.

You can however add to your order receipt Message a notification of how much of the ticket price is counted as a donation, so they can claim it as a tax deduction.

Otherwise, you can enable Donations in your ticket form (within Block settings), clearly separating your ticket price and the donation.

Be sure to seek advice from your tax department when managing events as a charity or non-profit.

Adding Group Tickets option

You may have events where the supporter purchases a group ticket - a single ticket made up of numerous ‘spots’. It may be a Golf Day where a single ticket represents 4 players or a dinner event where a table ticket is for 10 spots. Here are some suggestions when adding group tickets:

Create a Ticket Type for a ‘group ticket’ which represents the whole group. Include a clear description of what this is.
Limit the Ticket Type ‘max quantity’ to the availability (eg. 18 for Golf Tournaments as there are 18 holes).
Since a ticket is only counted as 1, you will need to manage your Ticket availability based on your ticket sales.
For example, if you sell 4 group tickets (10 spots) and 18 individual tickets, then you have sold 58 tickets, BUT the system will only recognise 22 as group tickets count for 1.
Use hidden custom fields to help manage preferences. Creating a custom field (eg. Table Preference or Dietary requirements) can enable you to have a blank field you can fill in at a later date. This can be helpful if you are sending out messages post-purchase to gather some more information from group ticket purchasers.
Consider setting up a basic landing page with a Lead Form, that is sent after the purchase, helping the group organiser to enter more needed details. Using PURLs can be a great idea to pull extra data into the form you create.

Adding Postage Option

For some events, you may be needing to post the welcome/registration packs to participants pre-event. In this case, you’ll be needing to create separate Ticket Types, where one represents postage and the other an in-person collection. For the postage Ticket, build in the cost to the overall ticket price and note this in the description.

If you'd like to create an event where participants can take up a challenge but have the option not to fundraise, you can also set this up within Raisely using the Ticketing feature. You can achieve this by setting up the Signup Form block with tickets enabled, for participants who want to fundraise. You can set up a separate Ticket Form, where participants can choose to join the event without creating a fundraiser profile. This allows you to track registrations via ticket sales.

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