A pretty exciting new release. I’ll go into detail in the future on this blog, but here are the highlights:
- Event Calendar showing all your shows in an easy to use (and configurable) calendar format.
- Export email addresses automatically to YourMailingListProvider
- Send surveys using SurveyGizmo so they’re waiting in your patron’s Inbox when they get home after seeing a show
- Easily insert links to your calendar, ticket page, or facebook event in status updates, shorted by bit.ly
- Added an export button to Manage Lists, letting you make complex email and mailing lists and easily export them to another program for processing.
- Signup now needs just 4 pieces of information. So it’s easy to signup and try out BuyPlayTix
In addition there were too many bugfixes to mention, and automated testing was added to help keep silly bugs from keeping you from managing your theatre.
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I’ve been seeing a lot of announcements lately about arts organizations getting iPhone applications. This seems like a great idea in the short run. You get to really connect with your audience with something that’s hip and cool. And frankly if you have a volunteer building it for you and covering all the costs there really is no downside.
But as an Arts Organization I’d warn against building a custom application. Because what do users on Google Android devices get? What do users who have phones with the full featured mobile Opera browser get? Or the upcoming mobile Firefox? Unless they’ve got an iPhone they can’t connect with your organization’s message. And while iPhones are certainly popular right now, there are still plenty of cellphones on other carriers.
I’d highly recommend investing your resources in building a standards compliant mobile web application. There are libraries that will let you hook into the various cool features of the phones (like location detection), without having to build a custom application.
And if the next trendy phone happens to be running Google’s Android operating system, or something else, you’ll still have a presence.
Just saw a patron request a ticket reservation over twitter. Anyone think that would be a cool feature to have? Let me know in the comments.
Generally you’ll simply point buyers at your main ticketing site and they’ll be greeted with the ticketing page for your current production. But occasionally you’ll want to sell tickets to more than one show at a time. You can get a nice link for each show, by first going to your show list:
Then click on the “view production” icon.
It will open a new window with the URL directly to that production. That’s it. Simple!
While you’re there you can also check out the link for an iCal file (a way for your patrons to add your event to their calendar) or creating a Facebook Event.
Status Updates are now in the application. You can find them under Contacts->Status Update.
Facebook Status Updates are posted as coming from your Page. As long as the user you use to setup your facebook account is an admin on that Page, it should work seamlessly.
There are some great new features revolving around tracking sales that come from facebook and twitter coming soon.
And if you have any ideas please let us know. We’re still in the Wild Wild West when it comes to utilizing social networking to sell tickets, so ideas are welcome!
Facebook has improved their API to allow status updates for pages. This is great news and support for it will be in the next version of BuyPlayTix.
You’ll be able to update your Twitter account and Facebook status from the same page in BuyPlayTix.
There’s even more exciting new stuff coming in the next release too. Stay tuned…
My theater company had to cancel a performance tonight. Of course with cancelling a performance comes notifying ticket holders. BuyPlayTix has a great feature for handling this, which took my stress level from a 9 to an 8.95.
Better than nothing, I guess.
To create a notification list based upon people reserved for a given night go to Contacts->Manage Lists. Enter a name for your mailing list. Then look under criterion on the right. You should see a “Show” capsule. Chose the correct production and show.
Then drag the capsule from the Criterion box to the Query box. If you do it correctly you’ll see all the contacts for that night populated at the bottom of the page. Click ‘Save’ and you’re ready to go.
Go to Contacts->Compose Message. Chose the list you just made from the List box, then type your message of regret and hit send.
At least one piece of cancelling a performance can be easy.
One of the goals of BuyPlayTix is to be a great starting point for small theater companies, and to provide the features they need to grow.
There are a lot of features that are not used by the majority of users, so starting with release 3.5, they’re going to be hidden.
If you go to Productions->Global Settings, and click on the ‘Extensions’ tab you’ll see the following:
By checking these boxes, new features will show up in BuyPlayTix. Let’s go over them, one by one:
Enable Shopping Cart
The shopping cart lets the user add more than one ticket before checking out. This is especially useful if you have more than one show running at a time, or if you have multiple prices (for instance a customer wants to buy 1 student ticket and 2 full price tickets).
Enable Passes
There are currently two pass types - Festival and Season passes. Enable this feature if you would like to offer one of these pass types to your customers.
Box Office
Most companies will simply print out their reservation list and record their box office manually, but the Box Office software is to help you take tickets at the actual event. It lets you keep track of walkups, season passes, and reservations. It also offers some advanced reporting.
Those are all the extensions for now. Let us know what you would like to see, and how we could make BuyPlayTix simpler for you!
Just got my cuecat barcode scanner in the mail. You can get one of these barcode scanners for less than $15 including shipping off of ebay. Just plug them in and you can scan barcodes. Ok, there is a bit of a learning curve to scanning with them, but the price can’t be beat.
BuyPlayTix is adding season and festival passes in the next release. I’ve implemented them with a barcodes since manually typing in the pass code each time would be a bit of a pain. Couple a barcode scanner with the boxoffice software and you can easily lookup passes by scanning them.
We’ll be adding barcodes to all tickets in the near future. Our whole goal is to make taking tickets fast and accurate.
Welcome to the BuyPlayTix blog! BuyPlayTix exists to help take the business out of creating art. To that end we’re constantly adding new features that not only help you take tickets, but also market to your existing patrons and keep track of your budgets.
This blog will be a starting point to introduce new features, explain existing ones, and start a discussion about how BuyPlayTix can serve your needs better.
