Planning a large-scale event is a huge task that requires juggling budgets, vendors, venues, marketing, and ticket sales. Allow digital tickets to transform how you manage event planning and take advantage of technology’s benefits.
They streamline the transaction, distribution, and check-in processes to make your life as an event organiser much easier. Bearing that in mind, it’s little wonder the event industry is rapidly going digital.
The digital ticketing market is forecasted to grow by 7.6% over the next 10 years. At Eventbrite, we support event organisers from all over the world to sell a combined 280 million digital tickets every year. We don’t want you to get left behind, which is why we’ve created this guide.
Read on to find out what digital tickets are, how they work, and how you can generate digital tickets in just a couple of minutes using Eventbrite.
What are digital tickets, and how do they work?
There are two main types of digital tickets:
- e-tickets: tokenised digital tickets that are normally sent to customers via email as a PDF file.
- m-tickets (“mobile tickets”): an electronic ticket you buy from a mobile app presented as a barcode.
Digital tickets must be distributed by an accounts-based system. When a customer registers on the system, it processes the transaction, creates the ticket, and then issues it to your attendee.
If you’re using a particularly effective ticket management solution, you can scan an event QR code or barcode on each ticket. Because every code is unique, digital tickets help mitigate security risks like counterfeit tickets — which means less headaches and more revenues for event organisers.
Why should you use digital tickets for your next event?
Digital tickets have exploded in popularity over the past decade — the market is currently worth £20.5 billion and is predicted to grow to £42.5 billion by 2033. Clearly, you should offer digital tickets for your events.
Digital tickets are designed to make life simpler for ticket recipients, event organisers, and box office teams. Implementing digital ticketing systems can also help you minimise your carbon footprint and give you access to a wealth of big data.
Let’s break down why going digital can boost your ticket sales.
1. Easier technology for the user
Let’s face it: Printing tickets is a hassle. Not everyone — especially the younger crowd — has a printer at home, which can make printing physical tickets challenging. Digital ticketing eliminates this.
Instead of sending a printable ticket, email instructions on how an attendee can download their ticket and add it to a virtual wallet. Tech-savvy event-goers will appreciate this digital option; no printing required.
Since many of your attendees will order their tickets from their cell phones using paperless ticket booking, offering a virtual ticket creates a streamlined process and appeals to mobile phone users.
Simplifying things for customers is what brought event creator MAMA to Eventbrite to manage tickets — and by issuing digital copies and using ticket scanners at the door, MAMA easily streamlined operations for their tasty multicultural food events.
2. Digital tickets are more secure
With digital tickets, event organisers are able to add an extra layer of security to their tickets.
When a customer purchases an e-ticket or an m-ticket for your event, it can be sent to and stored in a secure digital wallet that only the customer is able to access. That means the ticket can’t be lost or stolen — and additional security measures can be added to ensure the ticket can’t be duplicated.
For example, by using a ticketing partner like Eventbrite, each ticket you issue will have its own custom QR code. Once the code has been scanned, the ticket holder will show up on your system as checked-in.
This protects you against fraud in case somebody has taken a screenshot of a ticket and tries to scan the same QR ticket at the door. You can even issue RFID wristbands, which work as wearable digital tickets. Because they’re linked to each ticket holder, it’s a great way to keep track of who’s attending and spot ticket fraud from the get-go.
By partnering with a digital ticketing provider, you’ll also be able to rest easy knowing that all of your customer data is 100% encrypted.
3. Digital tickets are better for your bottom line
Digital tickets aren’t just more convenient for your attendees. They also help you cut down on costs.
Consider the time and expenses associated with mailing physical tickets to every event-goer. You have to spend money to print the tickets, plus postage and envelopes. Beyond that, sending tickets requires you to manually package and mail each ticket, which can be a time-consuming and labour-intensive process.
But digital tickets don’t just save you money — they can also increase your sales potential.
According to researchers at Stripe, 75% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy something online if they can do it in just one click. By offering secure digital tickets that your customers can purchase and download directly to an app or get sent directly to their email, you give them the confidence to buy.
The more confident your customers are, the more tickets you’re likely to sell.
The occasional special event might call for physical tickets. For event-goers who want a physical keepsake from a memorable event, Eventbrite offers the option to create fully customised, printed tickets, which can complement virtual concert tickets.
4. Easy tracking and verification
Printed tickets are hard to track. When you’re using software like Eventbrite, you can easily keep track of ticketing data, which can help you better manage your event. The Eventbrite organiser app allows you to see in real time how many attendees have checked into your event.
You can break down contactless entries by the hour, day, month, and year to monitor ticket-selling trends over time.
Live attendance tracking allows you to make smart decisions about your event and better manage traffic flow. For example, you might discover from your check-ins that twice as many people are arriving at the east gate of your venue than the west gate. Armed with that information, you could redeploy some of your team to make sure the busiest entrance is adequately staffed.
Digital tickets also enable you to track and verify data, making them a smart choice over traditional paper tickets. For example, you’ll gain insights into how genders and age groups are represented or the proportion of customers travelling to your event from far away. This ensures you’re able to put the right support into place so that everybody’s got what they need.
That data is also incredibly useful in making sure you stay in touch with your ticket holders to keep them warm and make sure they turn up — and you can analyse the data afterwards to better target your niche audience and send out post-event surveys to find out what attendees thought about each aspect of your event.
Easily sell tickets online!
5. Digital tickets are a green choice
Printing event tickets isn’t just costly — it also wastes a ton of paper. A lot of tickets are promptly tossed in the trash or, worse yet, left on the floor at your event. Less paper means less waste, making your event more environmentally friendly.
Easy and convenient digital tickets make your event more sustainable — and that buys customer loyalty.
According to researchers at Deloitte, one in three customers say they stop buying from brands that prove they’re unsustainable. Better yet, 66% of UK consumers are willing to buy from brands with strong ethical and sustainable credentials.
Translation: Going green is good for the planet and for business — and with the right ticketing partner, going paperless can be as simple as sending a QR code to an email address rather than generating paper waste by sending it through the post.
6. Streamlined entry
Long lines at the door are a frustrating welcome for event-goers and event managers. You can get people through entry gates faster with digital tickets.
Rather than handling paper tickets that might not have been printed to high quality, you can quickly scan each attendee’s phone to reduce waiting times. In addition to being efficient, digital tickets also create a stress-free experience for event staff. There’s nothing worse than battling with poorly printed barcodes.
Eventbrite makes it easy to create, track, and sell tickets to your next event if you’re ready to switch to digital tickets.
By joining Eventbrite and distributing QR tickets to customers, event organisers can slash entry times at their events and give their attendees more time to relax and enjoy.
How do you generate digital tickets using Eventbrite?
Now that we’ve covered why you should go digital, you might be left wondering how on earth you’re supposed to start creating e-tickets. But don’t worry — with Eventbrite, the process only takes a couple of minutes.
- Here’s how to do it. After joining Eventbrite, simply follow these steps:
- Go to “Tickets” and then Select “Create ticket.”
- Choose a ticket type. You can go for paid tickets, free tickets, or donation-based tickets.
- Add a name, quantity, and ticket price.
- Fill out extra fields in advanced settings if you want to. These include adding a sales end date, a ticket description, tickets per order, or sales channel.
- Save your changes.
That’s really all there is to it.
Ready to go digital?
At the end of the day, digital tickets save you time and money as an event organiser — but they’re also more secure, streamline the check-in process, and boost your green credentials.
You’ve just got to make sure you choose the best digital ticketing partner. That’s where Eventbrite comes in.
With Eventbrite, you can create multiple ticket classes and issue them out to customers automatically — all while tracking your sales in real-time to optimise your attendance rates.
