BuyPlayTix Blog

BuyPlayTix - 5.06

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:46:10 -0600

A lot of bugfix releases have come and gone. But with 5.06 I’ve added two new features.

Group Rates
We had crazy combos, and discount codes, but what about the relatively simple group rate? Now they’re hanging out on your production screen. Get to those discounts!

Logos
I’ll admit it. For a while I was afraid of logos. I think I’ve managed to get over my fear. Now you can go to your settings and add a logo for your theater company to be displayed on every sales page. You can also add a logo to specific productions from the productions page.

In combination with theming this is ridiculously powerful and something that I don’t see other ticketing sites allowing.

What next?
What would you like to see next?

BuyPlayTix 5.2

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:45:00 -0600

What happened to 5.1? It was an emergency bug-fix. 5.2 is where the action is!

Look and Feel

One thing you may notice right off is that I’ve changed the look and feel of BuyPlayTix. My goal is to make it simpler and easier to find things. But if anything is hard for you to read please let me know.

‘Add to mailing list’ checkbox

The ‘add to mailing list’ checkbox used to be listed after every single show. This made buying a ticket somewhat confusing. It’s now in the first step of checking out, and patrons only have to check it once for the entire transaction.

Style Changes

When you go to one of your pages logged in you’ll notice that the producer dashboard no longer shows up by default. There’s now a button to click to make it show up. Once you do you’ll notice the new ‘Edit Style’ button. This allows you to work on styles going from page to page in your website. You can also save your style as a named theme that you can re-use between productions and the global site.

This also makes it easier for me to update the default templates, so hopefully they’ll be seeing some love in the coming weeks.

Pick Your Price limits

Pick your Price the way it was initially implemented left a lot to be desired. You could use it, but could put caps on how high or low people could go. That’s changed with this release. You can now choose a Minimum, Maximum, and the default value.

Accessibility

I feel ashamed this one took as long as it did. But we finally have the ability to make requests for accessible accommodation on the checkout page.

When a user makes this request you’ll see this icon next to the reservation - . Please let me know if it would useful to have this communicated in more detail. Would you like an email when the reservation is made? A nightly email of all requests two hours before show time?

Scanning Tickets

If you have an Android tablet (and if you have an iPad I’d love to talk to you), there’s now the ability to scan tickets from the box office using the camera in your tablet.

And lots of bug fixes. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to some of the new dashboard graphs and reports that were proposed. Hopefully those will be in the next release!

BuyPlayTix 5.0 - Action Required

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 13:45:02 -0500

BuyPlayTix 5.0 has only two new features. But they’re huge!

Stripe Integration

All accounts now require a Stripe account. When you next login to BuyPlayTix you’ll get a message at the top of your dashboard that will start you through the process. In my testing it takes less than 5 minutes to setup.

Stripe provides merchant accounts for websites (like PayPal, or authorize.net). Signup is a one page form and you’ll need a check to provide your bank routing and account number.

Once setup you’ll no longer have to deal with checks. Stripe deposits your money into your bank account 7 days after it clears. Which means you could be getting paid up to a week earlier than you were before.

Stripe has a fantastic accounting interface, and BuyPlayTix has direct linking from the Credit Card report to the actual transactions in the Stripe web interface.

Refunds

The other big feature are refunds! Now you can go to a reservation or pass and refund tickets. It’s a big red button. You can’t miss it.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

BuyPlayTix 4.17

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:56:00 -0500

Dashboard
This is an update that you may have already noticed. I’ve added a dashboard to provide a starting point for most of BuyPlayTix’s most common task. There’s also an activity log that tracks what’s done to your account.

Notifications
Notifications can be setup in ‘Global Settings’. They let you get emails when your box office gets close to full (you decide what that means). And you can send to multiple email addresses so you can copy your Box Office manager.

Graphic Mail Integration
Graphic Mail is the latest mailing list software we’ve integrated with. If you enter your credentials you’ll automatically have your customers added to your email list when they buy a ticket (if they opt-in of course). And you can create custom mailing lists (people who bought a ticket to your last show, people tagged as actors, etc) and export them using the ‘Export Contacts’ functionality.

These changes were all based on customer requests and feedback, so please let me know if I can help you.

Next up - the switch over to Stripe.

System Upgrade - Sun 08/19

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:30:07 -0500

The operating system that BuyPlayTix is running on is approaching its end of life which means no new security patches. To make sure that I keep your data secure I’m going to be migrating to a new server running the latest operating system code. I’m planning on doing the switch over Sunday night. It should take about 5 minutes. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

BuyPlayTix 4.16

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:41:34 -0500

Man, where did those 6 versions of BuyPlayTix go? Mostly to bug-fixes unfortunately.

But 4.16 adds a cool new report. If reports can be cool. Which they probably can’t.

On your report page you should see the new Check Report. This will break out the checks you should expect to see in the mail. Clicking on the date or amount will let you drill down into the individual transactions that make up the check.

I really want to make this helpful for you, so if you need this data in CSV format or some other format, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Which brings up some bad news. My payment provider is shutting down on August 15th. So no more E-Checks. I’m working on finding a replacement, but having little luck. So I may have to go back to mailing paper checks by hand (Booo!). I’ll try to keep you updated.

- Tim

BuyPlayTix 4.10

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:57:00 -0500

Last night saw the release of BuyPlayTix 4.10 which contains many bug fixes and performance improvements. As always the full release notes can be found here.

But there are two big new features.

Punchcard Passes

BuyPlayTix has had Season Passes and Festival Passes. But both of those are tied to one person getting a ticket to a list of shows.

A Punchcard Pass on the other hand is a block of discounted tickets. The patron buys the pass which has a set number of punches (say 6). They can then use that pass to buy 2 tickets for each show of the season, or use it to buy 6 tickets to one show.

Passes are a feature that has to be enabled in BuyPlayTix. To do so choose Settings. Then click on Global Settings. Choose the Sales tab. Check the Passes checkbox, and click Save Changes.

Combos

Combos are my second attempt to solve the problem of selling double-bills (and it may not be the last). With a combo you can set a group of shows to be grouped together under one price. Combos can be grouped across productions. The price will show up in the cart with the tickets grouped.

To setup a combo look for the new combo icon on the Production page.

Is Facebook marketing a waste of time?

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:48:00 -0500

This post could also be titled “Why I may start ignoring Facebook marketing”.

Like many people I’ve put a fair amount of time and effort into Facebook marketing. Facebook determines what shows up in your feed by using a formula called EdgeRank. Click and read. You may not understand all of it, but it’s still worth taking a minute. Then come back.

After reading about EdgeRank I started actually looking at the “Insights” that Facebook provides about each post. This information is fantastic. You can see how many people liked each post. How many shared it. And how many saw it.

That’s right. How many saw it.

As in. I have 325 people who have liked my Facebook page. In the case above 70 people saw the post in question. A post that contained a custom comic book promoting the show. A post that was really cool and fun and not full of marketing flack. Only 22% of the people who have gone out of their way to say they want marketing information from Loaded Gun Theory in their news feeds were actually provided that information.

Now look at my MailChimp stats.

At first glance, this looks pretty similar. 27.8% is a little better, and I have more people I’m sending to. But opens are only tracked if the user has viewing images enabled. So if they read the message without enabling images they don’t get counted. And it also doesn’t count the advertising potential of just presenting my email subject in a patron’s inbox.

With email marketing, every single one of my patrons gets the opportunity to read my email. With Facebook. Facebook determines which ones get to see it.

Now you want to get really depressed about Facebook marketing? When I look at the list of people who opened my email in MailChimp it’s a list of people who are not associated with the production. When I look at the list of people who’ve shared my post on Facebook, it’s members of the production staff, cast, and crew. Sharing in a little closed loop. Our conversation basically only exists for each other.

Sure I could follow all the Facebook marketing guidelines. I could drive engagement with contests, surveys, and questions. But why? Engagement with my patrons happens at the theater. They have already engaged and built a relationship with me in the real world.

So while I’m not giving up on Facebook. I’m going to focus on making my marketing emails as effective as possible.

Announcing a new layout. Simple + Calendar. When you first add a...

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:14:08 -0500

Announcing a new layout. Simple + Calendar. When you first add a production you can choose this to add a nifty calendar of show dates to the right side of your ticket page. You can also edit any existing production and add it. It’s on Step 1. Don’t forget to go to Step 7 and click ‘Save’.
When you click on a highlighted date it will scroll you down to that date on the ticket page and highlight it.
The photo is for Capital T’s production of ‘boom’. You can click on the link and buy your tickets. I’ll be seeing this one. I really enjoyed ‘HUNTER GATHERERS’.

The Landing Page

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:53:04 -0500

And finally we get to the landing page. One of the first questions that usually comes up is “how do I link this to my website”. There are lots of complex answers to that. But the simplest is now the landing page. You can get the link to your specific landing page by going to ‘Productions’ and clicking on the Links icon. It’s the first link listed. Here’s what it looks like:

It will show all the shows you’re currently selling tickets for. It will list any passes you have up for sale, and if you have the ‘Donation Link’ checkbox checked on the ‘Donation’ tab under ‘Global Settings’ you’ll see a place to accept donations as well.

It’s always up to date with your latest information. Hope you find it useful!

E-Checks

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:56:02 -0500

A question I used to get a lot was, “Can’t you just deposit my ticket sales directly into my bank account?” For a while PayPal was really the best way to do this, but my payment provider Batchex recently added this feature, so I was able to add it to BuyPlayTix.

In the application click on ‘Settings’, then choose ‘Global Settings’. On the Billing tab you’ll see an option for Disbursement method. Choose E-Check then enter your account and routing numbers (these are generally the two numbers in the lower left corner of your check). Don’t forget to hit ‘Save Changes’!

Unfortunately this is still not instantaneous. Due to when payments from the various processors hit BuyPlayTix’s bank account, an E-Check will probably get the money into your bank account about as fast as a paper check. But it saves you a trip to the bank!

Mailing Lists

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:31:04 -0500

One of BuyPlayTix’s coolest features is one of its least used. Did you know that every time you sell a ticket you can have that contact’s email address put into your email marketing application? Well as long as they opt-in to your mailing list. We do still obey the law.

Currently BuyPlayTix exports contacts to MailChimp, YourMailingListProvider, and ConstantContact. In BuyPlayTix 4.8 I moved this out into its own page off of the Settings page. Just look for Contact Settings.

You can setup all 3 of the providers here, but let’s try out the newest one - ConstantContact. First click the ‘Authorize BuyPlayTix’ button.

After a few seconds you’ll be redirected to ConstantContact’s web page. Enter your account information and login:

Next you’ll need to grant BuyPlayTix access to your account.

And you’ll be redirected back to BuyPlayTix. If everything went according to plan it will now say that your username is logged in. Now every email that comes in will go into your ConstantContact account.

UI Tweaks

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:53:31 -0500

Have you logged into BuyPlayTix recently? Noticed anything different?

The Navigation is now on the left. Hopefully this will make it easier to get down to work.

BuyPlayTix 4.8

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:25:40 -0500

BuyPlayTix 4.8 is out. If you have any problems please contact me at support@buyplaytix.com.

I’ll be detailing the release in blog posts over the next few days. But for now, bullet points:

UI Tweaks - should be easier to use BuyPlayTix on both normal displays and tablets/phones.
Constant Contact Support - Automatically export your contacts to Constant Contact.
E-Checks - You can now setup BuyPlayTix to automatically deposit into your bank account via E-Check.
Landing Page - The default landing page has been improved to handle shows, passes, and donations.

The Best Time To Post

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:31:31 -0500

I’m guilty of it. I know there are scheduling features in pretty much every marketing tool I use. But do I use them? Somtimes… maybe. Not really.

But perhaps I will more now. I spend time crafting content for my theatre company. But usually at 11pm at night after I’ve spent 4 hours working on a marketing image, I unleash it on the world. At 11pm. And no one notices.

What to do? Use those scheduling features. And the good folks at bit.ly have written a roundup of when people are actually clicking those links. As they say in the article:

It’s easy to see that just like your neighborhood restaurants, each social network has its own culture and behavior patterns. By understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people.

So this blog post is going out at lunch time. Hope you enjoy reading it while you eat!

Pick Your Price

Wed, 02 May 2012 14:40:00 -0500

So I’m going to be honest at the beginning of this post. I don’t have much data on Pick Your Price tickets. Those are the tickets where you let the audience decide how much to pay. BuyPlayTix has this feature, but frankly it’s new and I don’t have enough data yet to draw any data based conclusions.

I do have a hunch, though, based on some very scientific personal reflection.

My company - Loaded Gun Theory - tried this once. But not with online ticketing. We had Pick Your Price only in person. And by far people chose to pay almost nothing. Pretty sure we had at least one person offer us the lint from his pockets.

But that was offline. And I think that’s where online ticketing offers a benefit. I had this really negative experience. I was swearing about how f’ing cheap people are. And yet if I had $9 in my pocket and was going to a show that cost $15 normally would I go by an ATM…

….

Probably not. Unfortunately. I’d probably give them $5 and buy a beer with the remaining $4. Hey I’m being honest.

But the trend I am seeing with the online Pick You Price (if it is a trend) is that by not requiring people to pay in cash I’m opening up a lot more price points. And they’re more likely to pay full price or just under. At least that’s what it looks like from where I’m sitting.

So if I was going to do another Pick Your Price I’d probably do it online only. But I’d still work it into the budget that every ticket could sell for a penny. Just in case.

Release 4.8.1

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:13:52 -0500

BuyPlayTix version 4.8.1 was released this morning. It includes many bugfixes, and one new feature

Include Service Charge

This is a frequently requested feature. Now you can include your service charge in the ticket price. So if you want to sell four $15 tickets instead of having a $60 ticket price with an additional service charge in the cart, the customer would just see their tickets in the cart. When you go look at the Credit Card Report you’ll see that rather than $60 you’ll be getting:

54.30 after 5.70 service charge

The option is on Step 3 of the Add/Edit Production Wizard.

Tiered Pricing

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:48:30 -0500

The guy who is constantly teaching me something new about theatre, Travis Bedard, recently posted a link to an IndieGogo fundraising effort for Crossroads Theatre Project. It’s called the $1 play project and from the website:

For the people who’ve seen it, enjoyed it, and want to experience it again and for the people who missed it but would love to come see it, I’m doing Tulpa, or Anne&Me again.
I need you to contribute just $1 to make that happen.

Sounds great, right? $1 is trivial for most people. But if you go look at the donations a funny thing has happened on the way to asking people for a dollar. As of this writing 9 people have donated $1. But 11 people have donated $20. So if this project had not had tiered pricing. Those 11 people would have potentially donated only a dollar each. And the producers would be $209 poorer.

There’s a valuable lesson here for theater. We should always have tiered pricing. We may not sell any $50 tickets, but it would be silly to not give a patron the opportunity to give it, wouldn’t it?

I always recommend to BuyPlayTix customers that they select 3 tiers. Usually in $5 increments. Although if you’re starting price is over $30, $10 increments might not be out of the question.

I attempted to draw some meaningful numbers from BuyPlayTix’s sliding scale data, but quite frankly it appears fairly random. Some nights nobody buys a high dollar ticket. And some nights the majority of tickets sold are in the highest bracket.

Most importantly the lowest price should be the base price you determined you needed when you chose your ticket price. Because tiered pricing is about not leaving money on the table. It’s not about discounts.

Choosing a price

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:45:00 -0500

My theater company Loaded Gun Theory started talking about budget and pricing for our next show last night. Much like I expect most theater companies we seem to always start from a random list of assumptions. Have you heard these?

“Well I think $15 is fair”
“Times are hard right now, so…”
“$20 is way too much there’s a price barrier there”

Actually times aren’t that hard right now in Austin. We have 6% unemployment. And we shouldn’t be ashamed to charge a fair price even when times are tough. Neither Walmart nor your favorite local merchant have any qualms about that.

But really I wanted to talk about choosing a price. As a group we tend to just start bandying numbers around and talking about “fair”. But we’ve been using BuyPlayTix since the beginning, especially the BoxOffice feature. So I know how many credit card sales we have, I know how many walkups we have. I can really break down the numbers.

And as much as I’d like to have bigger audiences, we have 250 people. Consistently. So that’s where I try to start with our budgeting. What is our proposed budget, and what price do we need to charge 250 people to get there? If we have a $3,500 budget with rent, design, and stipends then what do we need to charge?

$3500 budget / 250 patrons = $14 per ticket.

We are not immune to the fact that some people would like to see a lot of theater and $14 is a bit steep. So we’ll be using BuyPlayTix’s discount code feature to offer a discount for up to 20 people to buy tickets for $10. So let’s find out the maximum that can make us:

$10 tickets * 20 patrons = $200

So we’re losing 20 patrons to these tickets and we’re making $200. So let’s refactor our original equation with that in mind.

$3300 budget left / 230 patrons left = $14.35 per ticket.

So if we round up to $15 a ticket we should still be set for meeting our budget. But if we hadn’t accounted for those discount codes we would have ended up potentially losing $80.

Do you do this type of budgeting? How do you choose a ticket price?

Next up how Pick Your Price and Tiered Pricing affects your bottom line.

Now Playing! Have you noticed the new Now Playing list on the...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:54:29 -0500

Now Playing!

Have you noticed the new Now Playing list on the front page of BuyPlayTix? You can sign up for an RSS feed to be notified of new events. This is made to be easily read by search engines.