Live performances have always drawn people to casinos. From concerts to major touring productions, the revenue potential for ticketed events is huge. Whether a casino has performances booked every night or a few a month, there’s an easy way to ensure that maximum return from bookings is achieved and traffic is added to the gaming floor—the event life cycle just has to be increased.
The event life cycle has evolved over the years. It used to begin with the on sale and end immediately following the performance. However, promoters and marketers know now that the true event life cycle begins before the show is even announced and expands through the days and weeks following, allowing for even more ways to drive sales, increase incremental revenue and capture key prospect data.
Pre-Sale: Hooking Them Early
The show announcement is going to result in one of the biggest organic spikes in traffic surrounding an event. To take full advantage of this excitement, customers who visit a casino’s website or is a follower on social media should be directed to a native email list by the promise of pre-sale ticket access.
Here are three major reasons casino marketing teams should focus on building an email list leading up to the pre-sale:
- The average conversion rate from emails captured through the Etix pre-sale system is 28%.
- Pre-sale emails alone account for at least 10% of ticket sales on average.
- The average annual value of an email address is $17.
Engaging and Upselling After the On-Sale
Of course, ticket sales aren’t the only way to drive revenue for live events. Customers can be upsold on hotel packages, parking, dinner and drinks, gaming credit and more—the only limit is creativity. And these incremental sales can add up. For example, in 2014 parking upsells added $570,000 in incremental revenue for Etix partners.
Upsells can be taken a step further by implementing loyalty programs that can be integrated with the gaming floor, restaurants and hotels. It costs 7X more to find new customers than it does to nurture existing relationships, so keeping an active customer base is essential. People have many choices when it comes to visiting casinos, seeing live events, dining and more, but loyalty programs give customers incentives to favor a particular casino, performances and restaurants.
Day Of: Maximizing Engagement, Promoting Future Events and Moving Customers to the Gaming Floor
Event promotion doesn’t end when the day of the performance arrives. This is prime time to add sales, build an email database even more and drive traffic to the gaming floor.
Taking to social early in the day with messaging that aligns with goals is key. For the sellout event, attendees can be reminded to arrive early to beat the crowds, get better parking, enjoy a meal before the show and try their hand at a few games. If tickets are available, scarcity messaging should be utilized to drive last-minute sales both online and on-site.
Next, a casino can take advantage of opportunities to meet unknown ticket buyers. The average ticket order is three tickets, meaning that approximately two thirds of an event’s attendees aren’t automatically added to an email database. These customers can be reached by contests with on-site prize pickup, kiosks where customers can submit their contact information and digital photobooths where attendees enter their email addresses to receive their photos.
Post-Event: The Afterglow Effect
Traditionally, the opportunity to drive revenue from an event ended with the curtain call, minus a few last-minute merchandise sales. However, casinos have a lot more revenue streams than traditional venues. It’s time to get inventive.
Every single person at a performance has a ticket stub—casinos should give them another chance to use it. When customers arrive, a casino’s staff can let them know that they can show their tickets for a free appetizer at the bar or a small gaming credit. Post-event, customers are typically in a great mood and often aren’t ready to call it a night. All a marketing manager has to do is give them a reason to keep the party going.
When the last customer has left the building, it’s time to start the digital afterglow—or post-event—campaign. Afterglow emails see 2X the open rate and 6X the click rate of regular promotional emails, so each casino should think strategically about what to include in them. Casinos should send event attendees an email thanking them, offering them a gaming or restaurant credit, directing them to a loyalty program and reminding them of upcoming events.
Conclusion
Live events possess a large revenue opportunity for casinos in addition to tickets sold. Incremental revenue in the form of hotel room bookings, food and drink sales and additional traffic to the gaming floor can be achieved by taking full advantage of the expanded event life cycle, building a large and loyal customer base and thinking outside of the box.
By Emily Harris, Rockhouse Partners
This article was originally published in the April 2015 edition of Indian Gaming for the National Indian Gaming Association’s Trade Show and Convention.
