Do You Want More Earned Income Revenue In 2020? Then Here’s What You Should Expect From Your Ticketing Providers

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Regular readers have heard me complain over the years about artificial limitations ticketing and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms place on earned income potential.

One of the more popular posts on the topic was from 2015 where we examined how limitations in ticketing functionality were synthetically influencing discussions on earned income strategy.

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Fast forward a few years and I’m sad to say very little has changed. But at least I’m seeing a growing number of voices.

There was a session at NAMPC 2019 led by Erik Gensler I was unable to attend (thanks to it being scheduled opposite my session!), but I understand from those who attended that he examined some ticketing sites in real time and pointed out the negative impact requirements such as mandatory account creation have on conversion.

I understand Americans for the Arts will be making presentation material available at some point soon and when they do, I’ll include a link to anything Gensler provides.

And just yesterday, Ceci Dadisman posted an article at Medium that lists what she defines as six basic upgrades ticketing/CRM platforms need in order to “not make ticketing/fundraising suck so much.”

Spoiler alert: eliminating mandatory account creation was #4 on that list.

Eliminate Mandatory Account Creation
Making people set up an account creates a barrier to the completion of the purchase. For most other retailers, creating an account is optional but there is that clever little prompt to do so after the transaction is complete where your information is pre-filled so you only have to choose a password. (Read: super easy!)

You should definitely set aside some time to read about the remaining five on her list. I agree with each and every one.

What makes me bang my head against the wall is just how long limitations like this have been around.

Just over a decade ago, I published an article on this issue that recommended doing away with mandatory registration and pointed out how organizations can continue to reap similar data benefits.