Categories
Spotlights

Promoters and Street Team

Multipass is happy to announce a new feature that’s easy to deploy for your Multipass events: Promotion.

We’ve made it easy to let you set your event up for cross-promotion, and for others to list and advertise it. Additionally, you can selectively choose individuals or specific groups/businesses/venues that can co-promote your event.

What Does This Look Like?

When you mark your event as promotable you can specify a percentage payout anywhere from zero to 100 percent. If someone else lists your event, or uses an inbound referral link with their promoter id, and tickets are sold then they will earn that percentage of your ticket value.

When the event is paid out, the amounts that you owe to your promoters will automatically be deducted from your payout. Once a month we payout promoters and they will receive their funds. This takes all of the heavy lifting off your shoulders and helps automate and streamline your promotion team!

Two Ways To Choose Who Can Promote

When you run an event there are two ways you can promote your event.

The first way is to simply let anyone who has a qualified promoter account on Multipass promote it. This puts your event into a list of promotable events and anyone who wants to promote it can do so. It will still be credited as your event, you will still get the ticket payout, but your exposure will increase. If you offered a commission we will take care of paying your promoters for any sales they generate.

If the promoter has their own group/business/venue page on Multipass then it will show up on that page. If the promoter doesn’t have their own page on Multipass they can still link to your main event page with their own unique promoter link and the sales will be tracked in the same way. This is a great way for a venue to promote a producer’s event, for multiple producers to team up, or for a single producer to reward their event talent or street team for driving sales.

The second way to promote your event is to explicitly invite people to promote it, without opening it up to the entire Multipass promoter population. You can invite people specifically by email address, or easily invite anyone who has previously promoted an event for you. As per above, promoted events can show up on their page, or have traffic driven via promoter-specific event links.

Once you have promoter relationships established you can also choose to increase a payout percentage for strategic partners or promoters. This might let you offer 5% to the public, but 25% to your performers. You have control over these numbers.

How to be a Promoter on Multipass

There are three things that have to take place for you to promote events on Multipass.

The first is that we need a way to pay you. We’ll do this by setting up a payout relationship via Stripe. This is initiated via our site and we step you through it.

The second step is that you have to choose events to promote. Some events might be available to all promoters on Multipass and you can pick any or all of them. For other events you can coordinate with the event producer so that you can be invited to promote their event.

The third step is the one that will make you money. Do the work to get people to your promoter page on Multipass, or get your promoter link in front of people online. When people click your link or buy tickets through your promoter page you’ll get credit! When the event gets paid out you’ll see a credit due for you, and we pay out our promoters on a monthly basis.

It’s Easy, Really Easy

As an event producer, letting your event be promoted by others is a great way to extend your reach and fill your seats. We handle the money side of things including payouts, and Stripe issues 1099s to anyone that receives money.

As a promoter, pick the events you want to promote, then be your own social self. Tell others, get some tickets sold, and watch money show up in your Stripe account, and a day or two later in your bank account.

It’s easy to promote with Multipass and we look forward to working with you!

Categories
Spotlights

Agent Referral Program

Part of how are we trying to humanize the event ticketing progress is our effort to build our event and membership base organically, using real human connections.

We have created a referral program that rewards people as they introduce their friends and business contacts to the Multipass platform. If you’re part of this program, you’re referred to as a Multipass agent, and it’s a great way to start generating some residual income.

Refer People Who Run Events

If you’re reading this you might be a performer, a networker, or someone who simply attends a lot of events. You know people who run events that we will never directly meet, ourselves. Maybe you run a blog for a particular subculture in your city and you know all of the people in your area who throw events that have to do with that scene. You’re a perfect candidate to be an agent.

Apply to be a Multipass agent and, when approved, we’ll give you a link and a QR code that have your referral code built in, and then that URL is passed through our URL shortener. When you meet people who throw events or have membership needs, share that link or QR code and have them make a free account. You’ll be forever linked to their account and you’ll get paid as they throw events using Multipass.

Events keep their own ticketing funds, credit card fees are paid, and you take home 10% of all Multipass service fees that are generated from events you helped bring in. This applies to all events created by the person you refer as well as any membership service fees. Make the right introduction even just one time and that single introduction might turn into thousands of dollars per year for you.

Refer Other Agents

The odds are good that you also know a lot of performers and social butterflies… people like you. These are also people who know a lot of people who throw events. Some might be in your city, some might be elsewhere in our service areas of the USA and Canada. Keep your eyes peeled and soon we’ll have opportunities in Europe as well.

Once you’re an agent, we provide a second QR code for you that links to our agent information page, with your id baked in, and if you recruit other agents we share the wealth of their sales with you too. (Note: both links we give you attach you to someone’s new account. The difference between the two links is which page you really want them to see first, based on which type of person you’re recruiting).

The same applies as per above: events keep their ticketing fees, we pay your agent friend 10%, and we pay you an additional 5% for introducing us to your friend. Plant seeds of this kind in a few cities and watch Multipass, and your passive income, grow!

Get Paid

At the end of every month, we pay out commissions for all events that are marked as complete and paid out. There is a short period after an event is over where they are not yet marked as complete. We use this period to handle any returns or disputes, but once that is complete… everyone gets paid.

Agents will use the Multipass site to set up a connection to a Stripe account, and we will use this to send your payouts. We never get your bank information or credit cards; we have chosen to leave that in the hands of one of the industry leaders.

We’ve got reports. See what you’ve earned in your lifetime. See how much has closed that you’ll get in the next pay period. See how much is outstanding for events that haven’t closed yet. See who you’ve brought in as event hosts or additional agents. Our aim is to be transparent with our process and have everyone involved feel like they are winning.

Sign Up

We’d love to have you join our team. Visit our Agent page, learn a little more about our offering, and let us know you’re interested!

Categories
Spotlights

Membership Features

Last week’s article talked about ticketing features, this one will dive into some of the things we offer that service groups and membership.

Groups

Within Multipass, you can set up a “group” for your organization or venue. This is your area where you can set up events and also manage and run your membership.

Within your group, you can set up various documents for your members such as terms and condition, disclaimers, rules, refund policy, and a waiver. If you also run events you can require people to agree to all of your terms both during the checkout process and during ticket scans.

Most groups are not run by a single person. It’s easy to set upmultiple people with varying levels of access for administering your group or events within our system.

Follow and Membership

There are three ways someone can participate in your group. The first is to simply attend a group event that has no membership requirement. If you make an event that has no membership requirements, this can just happen.

The second is for someone to “follow” your group within Multipass, and for many groups this will be enough. While there is no cost to be a follower, you might choose to screen at this level. Within your group you can set up questions that any potential follower has to answer. You can review their answers and choose to accept them into your group, or not. When you create new events you can notify your followers. You can also create special offers for followers for ticket promos.

The third option is paid recurring membership. Your entire business model might revolve around membership (such as the Guitar Mamas in Calgary, Alberta), or you might have a private club where paying members have different standing in the face of local laws. We can facilitate people signing up for your group with payment terms of monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually, or lifetime. Additionally, you can have multiple levels of membership (basic, VIP, founding member, etc) and each can have its own pricing model.

Events and Tickets

Groups can use the concept of “followers” and “paid members” in their events as well. An event can be marked so as to not even be visible to anyone who isn’t at least a follower, or its existence can be public with key details withheld for only your followers or members.

Specific ticket levels for your event can be marked as “follower-only” or “paid member-only”. If that’s the only type of ticket you offer then you can effectively restrict your events as you see fit. Additionally, you can offer different tiers of tickets, where followers or members can purchase cheaper or better tickets, and a different type of ticket is available to the general public.

It’s easy with Multipass to create promotion codes for specific member types. You might allow members to bring a friend, and have a single-use code that limits a purchase to a maximum of two tickets.

On a related/unrelated note, groups can have affiliates where each affiliate can have their own inbound links for events, with reporting for how many tickets each was responsible for. Event success is driven by marketing and affiliate marketing is a huge piece of this.

At The Door

Our mobile app will let you scan tickets for your events, and as part of the scanning process, we notify you if the ticket belongs to a paid member or not. This is useful if you have an event with a single type of ticket, but members are entitled to a grab bag or some kind of perk at the door.

We also offer the ability to scan to simply validate someone’s membership. This would be useful for free events that have membership restrictions. Both of these types of scanning can also display an image of the member, if your group requires this. If you need to verify that people are indeed the members they claim to be, this is a useful tool.

Members can show printed or digital tickets at the door, or show a personalized access code from within the Multipass app, to validate as members. Additionally, Multipass offers the ability to have physical co-branded cards that you can provide to your members. Each card can be paired to someone’s account (with both QR and NFC) and they feel special when they show up at the door and whip out their membership card for access.

Communication

Finally, we offer tools to communicate with your members. From email integration with MailChimp, to text messaging either on a group or event basis, we give you the means to stay in touch.

Recap

Multipass can run your event ticketing, and also serve as your platform for membership management. The seamless union of these two features eliminates copy/pasting between multiple independent solutions, reducing headaches and increasing efficiencies.

Let us know if you’d like to schedule a call to discuss your needs. Contact us here!

Categories
Spotlights

Ticketing Features

Multipass is a few things: a ticketing platform, a membership platform, and an attempt to bring humanity to a soulless process. This article is going to be about the ticketing aspect, and some of the ways we have tried to both learn from those that came before us, and to improve on pain points.

The Multipass Motivation

The existing ticketing options left us a bit wanting. Over the years the ticket-buying flow wasn’t that bad, but after experiencing a combination of outrageous service fees with a few missing-or-desired features within the span of a week, we decided we could build something comparable, or better, and more reasonably priced.

Initially we had another much more boring name for the project, but with the proper digging and investment we were able to secure the multipass.com domain, giving us the ability to christen the only ticketing platform on the planet where people smile when they say our name.

Ticketing

You can create events on Multipass and sell tickets to these events. This ability is likely why you’re even interested in our offering. These events can be physical events, or virtual events.

You can sell one ticket type, or multiple types of tickets with different pricing, or you can have free events. We have multiple ways to facilitate entry and validate tickets, but more on that later.

These features are the foundation of our offering, and steer our website and our mobile applications. We also give you a lot more features and options…

Organizations

Businesses, groups, private clubs, and venues will likely want to create more than a single event. To that end we have created “organizations” within our platform.

Organizations can be followed (let your audience know about new events!), can have descriptions, terms, waivers, and more. They can also list all of your events, both past and future.

Some businesses have specific needs to comply with legal obligations, and we introduced the option of paid membership to these groups. We’ll dive into that more below, as well as in the next article, but this feature caters to private organizations, after-hours clubs, and any type of collective that wants to both approve and/or charge participants for membership.

Transfers and Shared Tickets

Some events won’t sell out, but many will. People will buy tickets for themselves and for friends. Both of these scenarios invite the need for ticket transfers. Some of these needs can be addressed by assigning a name to a given ticket, but sometimes you’ll want or need more.

There are two ways to share tickets. The first one is the one we just mentioned; add a name to a ticket and someone at the door can look it up via a search.

The most common solution is to transfer a ticket to someone else’s Multipass account. This does not involve any monetary exchange within Multipass, but you can sell your tickets outside the platform as long as the event allows for transfers. To transfer a ticket, simply view your ticket, input their email address, and send the transfer request. To receive the ticket, the user must log into Multipass.com.

We have introduced another unique feature along these lines as well. This is the ability to assign a ticket to someone else without fully transferring it to them. This lets you retain ownership of the tickets but lets someone else pull them up in their own account for door access.

This feature lets you share tickets with friends, but doesn’t give them the ability to transfer or resell them. It also lets you dish out tickets to your friends, including that friend who may or may not show up, and you can retrieve your tickets if they tell you last minute that they can’t make it. After that, assign them again, or transfer or sell them.

We then geared our dashboard towards helping people find what they need the most frequently, or with the greatest urgency. We have been the platform for festivals and there is almost always a rush right before the event where a lot of tickets get transferred. Pending transfers are in your face on the dashboard, giving you full assurance that what you want to have happen is, in fact, happening.

Flexibility

Most events have public ticket sales, but some events will have a more curated list of attendees. Multipass can let you collect contact information from interested parties, letting you easily send unique-code-based invitations to the individuals of your choice. These invites can be time-limited if you want to instill a sense of excitement or urgency.

You can also control your pricing and ticket flow in a number of ways. While it’s not required, you can assign start and end times to specific types of tickets; ie. tier 1 is available for some period of time, then tier 2, and so on.

The Multipass promo code system offers you a lot of additional flexibility. Set up hidden ticket tiers that can only be unlocked with a valid promo code, perhaps within a specific timeframe. Set limits on how many times a promo code can be used. Perhaps it’s a single-use code that you are sending to one specific individual, or giving away in a contest. Maybe it’s a special code that can be used up to ten times, with each purchase eligible to purchase either one or two tickets, but it cuts off when a total of twelve tickets are sold this way. Dream it up, we can help you get there.

You can easily generate a list of single-use codes to manually send to your contact list, or you can upload email addresses and have them sent out automatically. Additionally, send unique codes to all of your group members, or from any other group you manage on Multipass.

Nearly every event has comp tickets and we’ve built a simple way to let you issue these, requiring only an email address or by generating a claim code/link you can send via messenger.

Membership

We mentioned this above, but you can choose to run a group with membership on Multipass. We’ll write more about membership in our next article but here’s a high level view.

People can be asked questions of your choice prior to approval (in a following sense) and automatic managed recurring billing can take place for paid membership levels.

Offer members-only events and have the documentation you need to prove it. Or offer members-only tickets to an event that also has higher priced tickets for the public.

Payment

Our team has been involved in e-commerce for a long time and we believe in establishing and following best-practices for information and credit card security.

At this time we are using a hosted checkout system based on Stripe.com. This affords us, and you, amazing peace of mind. The payment page is hosted on Stripe’s servers and all we ever see are tokens that are linked to single transactions. We don’t ever touch card numbers.

This leaves the security of your payment information in the hands of a company whose entire business is to manage and protect it. We are PCI-compliant because we are working with one of the best PCI-compliant payment processors.

Physical cards and check-in

One of the worst feelings is having your tickets on your phone and waiting in line with 1% left on your phone battery, wondering if you’ll get through the scanner before your phone dies. One option is to print out your tickets at home, bringing that QR code with you. We have another option that is unique to our Multipass platform…

Individuals can get physical Multipass access cards that they can pair to their accounts. Scanning these cards (featuring unique QR codes as well as unique tappable NFC codes) at the door can unlock your tickets, battery-free! Our API lets ambitious developers leverage these cards for their own purposes as well, with the cards functioning as personal identifiers for those who choose to have them. Rig up your venue to let people change the light color, or background music, based on your integration.

Groups can get custom Multipass cards printed as well. While these cards will work for any Multipass-ticketed event, you can generate intangible loyalty and feel-goods by issuing your own co-branded cards. To access one of your events, people can pull out their phones, their printouts, or they can proudly whip out the access card that they got for being part of your group.

Finally, in the spirit of the way things have been done since forever, we have the ability to find people by name. While we have a way to give you a printout of names, we also have a more modern way to accomplish the same. On both our website (desktop and mobile) and our mobile app we have a look up feature. As you start to type someone’s name it searches the ticketholder as well as any assigned names, and filters the list down to possible matches. A few keystrokes and you’re looking through a list of five names instead of hundreds or thousands. This has been amazingly effective at streamlining or eliminating lines at the doors to events.

More to Come

This is a good glimpse at what we can offer on the ticketing side. Our next article will discuss how to use Multipass for your membership groups, whether or not you need ticketing.

On top of that, we have an exciting list of new things we’re planning to add. Some of these will be on the ticketing side, some on the membership side, and some will be relevant but as-off-yet-undisclosed new offerings.

Thanks for checking out what we can do, and if you have ways you’d like to see our system evolve we’d love to hear from you!

Categories
Spotlights

Ticketmaster… and Alternatives

At Multipass we care about the state of ticketing. I mean, it’s what we do, but we also buy tickets to events that are on other platforms. Recently, one of the big players has been in the news.

Ticketmaster has been the most familiar name in ticketing for a long time now. They service the biggest venues in North America and don’t have a lot of competition in that space. Big venues have dedicated ticketing scanning hardware (more than just a barcode scanner) and that’s an investment. They are locked into contracts that span years. Changing these sorts of things is not inexpensive, nor without effort and commitment.

Thirteen years ago (2009) Ticketmaster took another step and merged with LiveNation, one of the largest event promoters in the country. Having a lock on both the shows and the tickets gave them a one-stop monopoly. This has given them a way to charge exorbitant service fees and there’s nothing the consumer can do about it. If you want to see a specific show then you have to pony up both the ticket price and the fees.

Recently they made news when their infrastructure failed to keep up with the demand for Taylor Swift’s new tour. People were experiencing multiple charges with no tickets to show, losing tickets that were supposedly being held in their cart, or simply being unable to use the site at all. A month before that, Ticketmaster made waves with an experimental pricing feature that was inspired by surge pricing on Uber, where the price varies based on supply and demand. Blink 182 tickets when on sale and shoppers were staring down rates of over $600. Either of these would have been bad publicity, but both happening in rapid succession certainly has people talking, with a buzz building about breaking up their monopoly.

The only competitor in the big venue space is AXS. If a big venue is not on Ticketmaster, it’s likely on AXS. They also run and promote events, sometimes also owning the host venues. They control shows and fees, like Ticketmaster, and in both cases the fees are steep. For AXS and Ticketmaster shows, service fees seem to start at 25% and have been as high as 50%, and this is on top of the ticket price.

Ticket prices themselves vary. Some seem palatable, more so with AXS, but tickets to most Ticketmaster shows are themselves massively priced, and that’s only speaking to tickets sold directly from Ticketmaster to buyers. Once we get into the scalper market, prices double, triple, or more. There are various avenues for purchasing aftermarket tickets, but Ticketmaster does have one of its own and, you guessed it, big fees. It’s a vague and nebulous topic, but there are accounts of how Ticketmaster may be giving priority ticket access to buyers who intend to purchase the bulk of available tickets. Ticketmaster will make their fee on the original sale, then another fee on the resale.

The ticket-buying process isn’t bad, but it’s not great. You have to make a free account on Ticketmaster in order to do anything. If all you want is one ticket to one show, make an account. Generally, the flow is okay. You choose your seat, if applicable, then you buy your tickets. These days you also have to wade through a handful of additional offers, most of which you’ll never care about or use.

The current leader in the next tier of events is EventBrite. For mid-sized and small events they are the current most popular offering. They’re doing a lot of things right and haven’t alienated nearly as many people as Ticketmaster , but sometimes their fees are still high and there are many types of legal events that they opt not to ticket as part of their policy. There are other smaller platforms that have some level of traction at events I see here in Denver. There truly are a lot of events and there are a lot of ticketing opportunities.

There is also a home in the ticketing space for us here at Multipass. We listened to event producers and tried to address the pain points we heard. We have a streamlined checkout process, with accounts being completely optional. Our fees are extremely competitive, charging 80-90% less than Ticketmaster while also having our stated figure account for credit card charges.

Our tagline is “Experience Humanity”. This refers to the events that people are creating, and sharing their own passions with you, but also applies to the ticketing process itself. We want to help you get to know more about event producers via blog posts and short videos, and we want the ticketing process to feel personal. If you call us we want you to talk with a human. If you have questions, we can help you set up your events. Multipass donates 5% of all service fees collected (gross, not just from our profit) to worthy causes, starting with the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation which focuses on mental health research and treatment.

Could we have handled the Taylor Swift ticket drop? Since the biggest in the world couldn’t handle it, it would be foolish to say that we’d have done better. That said, there are other ways to handle events with huge drops (waiting rooms, lottery, ticket drop staggered by city), and advising on that strategy would have been part of our offering. We would have also scaled up our infrastructure, just like all quality sites do at times of pre-anticipated need. That said, we’re not going for those venues, nor are we servicing a world tour for one of the planet’s most popular musicians.

Quality experiences and personal service, join us as we try to put humanity back into event ticketing.

Categories
Spotlights

Colorado Burn Event Ticketing

We are thrilled to have been the ticketing provider for three regional/renegade Burn events in Colorado in 2022. As a Colorado business with members who are part of these communities, we understand useful-and-required features coupled with frustrations with high service fees on most ticketing platforms. We wanted to offer a better solution.

Colorado Burnal Equinox

Upon launching Multipass, our first live event was the Colorado Burnal Equinox (CBE). Their ticketing needs were pretty basic: collect money, allow transfers, print out a list that could be checked offline in an area without internet. We had this functionality, and much more.

Our event producers and participants loved the ease of use and the reponsivness of the platform developer of Multipass and plan to use it again.

CBE Lead

This was a small event, and the ticketing process was successful. We listened to feedback and built reports and features whenever something came up that wasn’t yet built.

Elsewhence

After TTITD, we ticketed the Elsewhence burn event, a significantly larger event than CBE. Reporting needs were higher, transfers were critical (and plentiful!), and we worked with their ticketing lead to deliver a solid experience.

“Ticket to Elsewhence purchased and it was positively seamless. Way better than Brown Paper Tickets!”

— Elsewhence 2022 Customer

Ticket sales spiked in the first minute of availability and the Multipass system didn’t break a sweat. Elsewhence set up various ticket types, some of which were protected by unique codes. Their approach to ticket pricing was to offer a fixed price that included all fees as this kept it simple and clean for buyers. We have three pricing options and this was one of them. They cut transfers off at an announced time and then ran their gate entry from a printed list as well. This event also went off without a hitch.

In supporting the last-minute ticket transfer scramble we learned a few things, listened to feedback from buyers and recipients, and used that feedback to improve our system. The goals are always to streamline everything and we care about your feedback! The founder of Elsewhence was thrilled with this experience and our customer service, offering to pitch us to another large regional with whom they have an affiliation.

Decompression

Denver DeCOmp 2022 was the largest of the three. Hosted at Reelworks, this annual event had multiple quantity-limited pricing tiers, each dropping on a certain schedule. They also used our app for scanning tickets at the door, and this went extremely well. Our lead developer worked the door for much of the event and, while the Multipass system worked as designed, he saw opportunities to enhance the event management process.

With goals of keeping the buying and entry process as smooth as possible a few more enhancements were made (specifically auto-generated QR codes for purchasing events both with and without promotion codes baked in), and the completion of our door sales functionality with the app. DeCOmp used web sales, even at the door, and a few changes could have provided a better experience for people who didn’t have advance tickets.

[Multipass software engineer] Dan was great and put in lots of extra hours to help us make sure things ran smoothly leading up to and at the event. We look forward to working with Multipass again in the future

Sante – Event Lead, Denver DeCOmp

We met with DeCOmp after the event to debrief and this resulted in the creation of our best-practices article. In it were suggestions for streamlining the door experience, and for working with volunteers. Additionally, while at the event, we spoke with a volunteer coordinator as well as a seasoned volunteer and got wonderful feedback about expectations, accountability, tracking, and coordination. Features resulting from these conversations will find their way into our upcoming product offerings.

More Burn Event Ticketing Features

In addition to the features we have listed above, we have some other features that we’ve added for these kind of events:

  • Physical tickets: basic, designed, holograms, numbered, fancy.
  • Optional required mailing address (required for physical tickets)
  • Name required for each ticket, starting at the time of sale
  • Name required on tickets to receive transfer
  • Agree to event terms and conditions at the time of sale or transfer receipt
  • Event information page available only to ticket holders
  • Communicate last-minute details/changes by email or text
  • Fixed- or variable-priced add-ons for things like art donations, parking, etc
  • Advance interest signup
  • Require accounts prior to signup or don’t, your call
  • Immediate partial payouts for established events
  • Support for USD, CAD with EUR coming soon!

There’s a lot more to our system, of course, but these are some of the highlights for this kind of event.

Lots More to Come!

CBE has chosen to use Multipass again for its 2023 event. Elsewhence has indicated the same for 2023, as has DeCOmp. We’re honored to support our local artistic events and welcome feedback and any suggestions that can help our platform assist you in your event coordination.

Header Image: Center Camp presented by Camp Be, shot by Brandy Ultra

Categories
News

Event Ticketing Best Practices in 2023

Each event is different but there are a lot of common needs across most types of events that require ticketing solutions. All events have description information and locations, even if the location is virtual. Most events need to sell tickets and get people through the door. Many events have promotions that are part of sales, or some level of staff or volunteers to manage.

Below are some things to think about when planning your event. Multipass brings you a combination of suggested best practices coupled with questions you might ask yourself about your event needs.

Setting Up Your Event Online

These days it’s expected that your event information will be available online. This includes details about your event, the location, the date and time, sponsors, parking details, and any other pertinent information. We live in an information age and there is usually no reason not to make this information easily available.

If you can create a nice URL coupled with a QR code that you can attach to your marketing (such as posters, social media graphics or flyers) then it will be very easy for people to get to the ticketing information page you create.

Public vs Private Events

Most events are public but sometimes you want to keep details private. If this is the case, make sure the platform you’re using gives you a way to control access and visibility. This can range from keeping an address hidden to making the entire event password-protected to where you can’t even see the name of the event unless you have paid membership, you’re part of a group, or you’ve got the password for the event.

Sometimes it’s about the mystery, sometimes it’s just nobody else’s business. There are ways to control all aspects of information flow and you can choose a platform that gives you this type of control.

Online Event Tickets (Free Tickets Too!)

Your event platform should let you sell tickets. If your event is free you might still want to make people get tickets or RSVP; one benefit to doing this for free events is that you can build a marketing email list from your event attendees.

If your event isn’t free then make sure you understand the mechanics of cash flow. What are the fees associated with ticket sales? When do you get paid? Is there a possibility of advance payment or do all payouts happen after the event? How many steps is the checkout process? Do you want to require people to enter a physical or billing addresses as part of the checkout flow, or not?

There are many viable platforms; make sure to choose one that gives both you and your customers a good experience.

Ticket Levels and Promotions

Most events have more than one ticket price. Even if there is only really one ticket it’s near-certain that someone involved is paying less. Do friends or family get half-price? Volunteers? Make sure that your ticket platform has the ability to handle the scenarios that will apply to your event.

Much of this will also touch promotion codes. If you want to send a presale announcement out with a code anyone can use, that’s great. Want to invite specific people with promo codes that work a single time? Make sure the system you’re using can do that.

Additionally, consider how easy it is to offer complimentary tickets. These don’t have to be different ticket types, these are tickets that simply aren’t charged for. This can be done at the door with a guest list but you can streamline the door even more, and keep your attendee statistics in one place, by just providing people comped tickets.

If you think you might want to offer QR codes with promo codes built in, consider whether you have an easy way to make that happen as well. Don’t use a third-party QR services (more on this below) unless you trust them.

Consider if you want to let people transfer their tickets. Maybe general tickets can be transferred, but not VIP tickets. Make sure that your platform lets you set this on a per-ticket-type basis. The same would be true if you are considering allowing tickets to be resold in online marketplaces.

Service Fees, Price Models, Payouts

The biggest pain point in ticketing these days is the often outrageous service fees. If you want to pay through the nose you can certainly find those options. If you want competitive and fair prices then you can find that too.

There are a few ways to display prices to your audience. Here are three possibilities:

  1. The price you set is the price that the buyer pays. That means that if you ask $50 for your ticket’s final price then that already includes service fees, venue fees, credit card processing fees, taxes, and potentially shipping. Your own takeaway will be less than $50 but the upside is that the pricing is as transparent as possible.
  2. The price you set is your takeaway, all other fees are added on top. This includes service fees, venue fees, credit card processing fees, taxes, and potentially shipping. Does your platform show the fee breakdown to your buyer or keep it hidden?
  3. The price you set is your takeaway, but credit card fees will be held back. This results in a lower additional fee. The service fee and venue fee will be added, but no additional charge is added to cover credit card processing. Buyers are already used to seeing lines for tax and/or shipping and those will be shown if applicable.

Consider as well what the payout schedule will be. When do you see the money for the tickets you have sold? Is there a possibility of an immediate partial payout or is it all after the event? After the event, does any get held back to cover disputes/chargebacks? If so, when do you settle up with the platform?

Ticket Transfers

With the exception of a small percentage of invite-only events, you will usually have people wanting to transfer tickets to other people. Make sure your platform lets you grant or deny the transfer of a ticket on a per-ticket-type basis.

The method of the ticket transfer makes a difference to the security of the exchange as well. Ownership can be changed on a ticket but another option is that the original ticket is invalidated and a completely new ticket issued, with ownership exchange history preserved. This latter approach can be important because in this age of digital tickets you need to know that the QR code that you have will still be valid when you get to the door. When tickets are exchanged, the person who originally had the ticket will have had access to that ticket’s QR code and, if acting in bad faith, could try to use it before you get to the venue. When tickets are expired/recreated then entirely new codes are generated and the original codes cannot be used to negate the use of the new ones.

What is necessary in order to transfer a ticket? Do you need someone’s email address? Can you transfer with just a phone number? How about a transfer claim code that you could give to anyone through social media, not knowing anything else about them? Can you cancel a transfer that has been initiated but not yet received?

Virtual Event Support

During the pandemic, online events boomed. Does your event need an online participation component? Can you differentiate ticket types to know that some are in-person and some are online? What measures are in place to communicate information to participants while reducing the risk of premature information leakage? Can you set how far in advance online links are sent out automatically? Do you not want to do this, instead preferring to send them out manually? What happens if someone buys a ticket at the last minute after this information has been sent out, or after the event has already started?

Late Reveal Of Information?

For reasons of privacy or mystery, sometimes you will want to not share certain information in advance. This might be location information (secret party!), a surprise headliner, or maybe a link to an online event. Maybe this wasn’t even a secret event but you have a last-minute venue change or health notice to get out to people.

Consider what your communication methods are. Do you have the ability to email your attendees? Can you reach them via text message? Text is an interesting option as it can put information in front of people even after they have already left for the night and are no longer actively checking email.

Getting People Through the Door

Nobody likes lines and there are some things you can do to streamline things at the door. Some of these will be more, or less, possible depending on the number of people you have available at the door.

To that end, the single fastest thing that can happen to get someone through the door is to have them pull up a QR code and for a door person to scan it with success. The time for this is a couple of seconds and this fast is important to keep in mind.

When someone shows up at the door and has to buy a ticket there are a few ways to make this happen.

You can have people purchase tickets online while standing in line. This is certainly a possibility but it’s a bit awkward. If you need contact information for everyone this might not be a bad way to go. If you do this, make sure to tell people in advance that this is the case, and that you’re not accepting cash or even in-person credit cards.

Most events have a hybrid system of advanced sales and door sales. People still expect to be able to show up and gain entry with cash or credit. You might also choose to accept Venmo or Paypal. Make sure your ticketing platform has support for these. For credit sales, there are both integrated options and external options. An external option might be something like using Square as a standalone credit card swiper, then issuing a ticket and having it marked as used. An internal option will have credit processing built right into your mobile/tablet app, or computer software, where you’d run a card using functionality built directly into your system. Internal credit card processing is almost always going to be faster and smoother than an external method.

If you have the ability to offer two lines at your event you might consider doing so. It’s a piece of cake to scan a QR code and you can reduce the length of a line and increase morale by giving people with prepurchased tickets a near-immediate admission process. One line scans tickets, one line sells tickets.

Cash sales or offline sales are more susceptible to theft or abuse. Having a single spot that you process all sales through can give you unified reporting while also decreasing the temptation of an employee pocketing a bit for themselves.

Volunteer and Staff Management

Most events are made possible by people working together. Does your event platform have the ability to define volunteer or staff roles, while giving you, or volunteers, the ability to fill those roles? Do your volunteers get discounted tickets, or maybe rebates, if they show up?

It’s a common practice to maintain a printed guest/volunteer list but there are opportunities to improve communication and accountability as well. Providing volunteer tickets in advance, possibly their own ticket type, can help you get people through the door much faster than human eyes looking up names on multiple pieces of paper will ever be.

QR Codes

If you are going to market your event/tickets using QR codes it’s vital that you provide a safe and secure experience to your audience. QR codes are commonplace for scanning directly to website URLs and any code you use should point directly to your destination page.

Avoid the use of third-party QR-generation sites that you don’t have prior experience with. Many of them make their money by redirecting users to their own hosted pages and serving up confusing advertisements, possibly even getting people to enter credit card information. Some of these sites might look like they go directly to your site but later pull a bait-and-switch, rendering their own in-between page only after some number of people scan their code. You DO NOT WANT THIS, and you must control your own experience. If you are generating a QR code for a certain URL then make absolutely sure that the URL that your phone shows you upon scanning is the actual destination you want to send people to. In-between pages result in bad experiences and you can avoid them.

The URL that is scanned from a QR code needs to go directly to the destination you want them to see, and there is no reason for anything else.

Physical Paper Tickets

If you allow paper tickets these days they will still almost certainly include either barcodes or QR codes for security purposes. Do you want to design and produce attractive tickets that people can use for souvenirs? Check to make sure that your platform can support this. Keep in mind that print tickets will have a production lead time and make sure to account for this timing.

Ticket Resale Marketplace

Transfers notwithstanding, do you want people to be able to resell their tickets online? Do you want to allow this for some ticket types but not for others? Do you want to prohibit resale until the main sale no longer has any tickets available? Do you want to cap the maximum possible resale price? Does your resale platform allow you as a venue/event/promoter to share in the aftermarket resale fees?

Conclusion

There are a lot of options for ticketing platforms these days and there’s no reason to go with one that doesn’t meet all of your needs.

At Multipass, we are happy to promote healthy ticketing best practices as well as offering a solution that gives you the flexibility you need to run your event the way you want to. Ready to start? Set up your event on Multipass here!

Categories
Spotlights

Door Ticket Sales

In addition to scanning tickets via Multipass you can also sell tickets at the door. This page will show you through how to do that.

Set Up Available Ticket Types

The first thing to do is to set up which of your ticket types are available for door purchase. You can have various levels of promotional tickets, pre-sale priced, or VIP level tickets, that you might not want to sell at the door.

In the website admin on each ticket level there is a toggle that will let you choose whether to present these for purchase at the door. See “Allow Door Sales” in this image:

In most cases there will be a single type of ticket available at the door. If you need more then make to set the toggle on each of them. You can have as many ticket types as you’d like but having six or fewer will streamline the door flow.

Set Up Door Payment Types

Once you’ve enabled your ticket types to be available for door sales, you can enable door sales for the whole event. In the web admin, go to Manage your event, then select Payment from the subnavigation.

You’ll see a toggle to allow door sales. When you enable that you will also see a list of possible payment methods. Enable the ones that you wish to accept. These payment methods include: cash, check, Venmo, comp tickets, or external credit. For external credit that means you’re providing your own credit card swiping solution like Square. Lower in this article we’ll talk about enabling integrated credit cards (the smoothest way!!) so keep reading if that’s part of your plan.

That’s all of the advance preparation you need if you want to sell tickets at the door using external payment methods.

Door Sales In The App

To sell tickets at the door, open the Multipass app. Go to ‘Scan’ on the bottom menu. If you have the right permissions then you will see your event listed. (Note: event creators and designated event managers can see the event under ‘scan’). When you select your event the app will enter scanning mode. On the bottom right there’s a button that says “Door”. Select that to access the “Door Sales” screen.

You will be presented with the list of ticket types that you set up earlier. All ticket quantities default to zero at this time. Use the plus and minus buttons to adjust your ticket count accordingly and click Next.

The next screen will show you the total that will be charged, including any fees, as well as a list of possible payment types. Please note that you are responsible for collecting any of the offline payment types. If you select “cash” then you must collect the cash, and so on. The only payment type we can specifically capture for you is the integrated credit (more on this below).

You must choose one of the available payment methods in order to proceed. Once you choose a payment method, the “Continue” button will appear. Press the “Continue” button and the system will record the tickets as sold and increase the value collected for your reporting.

You will see the Success screen. Press “Ok” to return to the main door ticket sales screen and you can repeat this process.

Integrated Credit Card Sales

Processing credit cards via the Multipass app is possible and requires a couple more setup steps. Since we have reduced risk of chargebacks as well as reduced customer support we can offer lower rates at the door as well as being able to send the money directly to your own Stripe account.

There are two extra steps involved. The first involves copying a couple values from your Stripe account and the second involves setting up a location that Stripe will use. Both of these steps are pretty straightforward.

Copy and Paste the Stripe API Keys

On the same payment screen from above, you’ll see a section called “Integrated Credit Cards”. There are fields for Secret Key and Publishable Key. We need to get those values from Stripe.

Next, log into your Stripe account. If you have never done anything with your API Keys before they might be presented to you on the front page but you can access the values by going to https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys. You can also get there by clicking the Developers button (top right) and selecting API Keys from the left menu.

If you click on the publishable key it will be copied to your clipboard. Paste that value into your other Multipass browser tab in the Publishable Key field. Do the same with the secret key value. The secret key will only let you do this once. If you need to do this again in the future you can click the “…” link on the right and “Roll Key” to reset it. Once both values are pasted into Multipass, click the green Save button.

Set Up Stripe Location

The last thing we have to do is let Stripe know where you’ll be when you swipe cards. This is a fraud prevention measure. If this is the first time you’re setting this up then you’ll click the toggle to set up a location.

When you click this you will see additional fields. They will be prepopulated with any location information you have already entered for your event. Edit these fields with proper values and click Save.

You can now enabled “Integrated Credit Cards” as a door payment method for your event and you won’t have to jump through these hoops again when you make your next event.

Acquiring and Pairing Swiper

You will need one more thing, a compatible device that can read credit cards. We have built this to use the Stripe Reader M2 device. If you are near a Multipass office or representative we have some we can provide to you on a temporary basis. Alternatively, if you are running multiple events it makes sense to get your own which you can start here: https://stripe.com/terminal/stripe-reader

After you have entered your Stripe API Keys, set up a location, and enabled integrated cards, you will be able to select Integrated Credit Cards as an option on your Payment screen. Once you do that it will also show up in the app as a payment option.

In the app, the first time you select “Door” with this enabled, it will prompt you to allow the app to use Bluetooth. Please grant this permission. It will then seek out the device and pair it. Make sure the swiper is either plugged in or fully charged.

Now, when going through the door flow, you can select Integrated Credit Card and the swiper will automatically move you through the flow when it has collected card information. It can read a chip card, read a tap, or use the magnetic stripe on a card.

Multipass is Here to Help

Questions or comments on this process? Our team is happy to assist in getting your devices ready for your event. Reach out!

Categories
How To

How to Scan Tickets

There are a few ways to check people in using Multipass. You can use the app to scan QR codes or NFC cards, use the (mobile) website, or print out your list (old school!) Additionally, you can do door sales for people who show up without already having purchased tickets.

We have a separate article for setting up your event for door sales.


Multipass Mobile Website

Using the event’s admin account, or another account granted access, visit the event page in your app dashboard. If you have the right permissions then you’ll see a button labeled “Check People In”. Click it

You will see an alphabetical list of names (last, then first) as well as the associated email address for the account.

The top of the page has a filter box. Enter the first name, last name, or email of the person you are checking in. You can do parital values as well, but you’ll have the most success if you stick with using just one of the fields.

The list of names below will filter and only show you matches. This makes it really fast to find a specific person’s entry.

On the right of each row it will tell you how many tickets they have. Clicking the row their name is on will expand the ticket selection. You will be able to see which tickets have been used and which remain.

Click the green button that says “Mark Used” to mark a ticket as used. You will see a notification that this was successful. Do this for as many tickets as they want to use in that moment.

Click the red X to collapse the tickets and send you back to the top of the page. Use the filter box for the next person and repeat the above steps.


Use the Multipass App

First, download and install the app on your phone using one of the following two links:

  1. Google Play
  2. Apple App Store

After you have installed the app on your iOS or Android device, log in. On the bottom nav touch ‘scan’ and then select “Scan Tickets” under the event you’re checking people in for.

The next screen you see will allow you to scan QR codes. You can scan a QR from someone’s printed ticket, the QR for their ticket in their app, the QR from the mobile webiste on their phone, or the QR from a linked Multipass card.

For individual tickets (all of the techniques above other than the card) you will get a response. A green check will indicate success. A red X will indicate failure and tell you why it failed.

If you select “Scan NFC” from the bottom nav then you can let patrons touch their Multipass cards to your reader as a ticket. Make sure to test your reader ahead of time so you know how best to get it to scan a card, as different devices will have you touch different areas. Touch “Scan QR” to return to the QR scanning screen.

When you scan a Multipass card (QR or NFC) it checks to see if any unused tickets are linked to the account and returns a success if there is at least one. It will also indicate how many tickets remain. A failure will indicate whether tickets were once available or not.

If you have a recent version of the app then you will also see a button on the bottom nav for “Manual”. If you don’t, please get the new version! This will bring up a screen that will let you search for and manually process people by name, similar to the Website section above.

The manual flow lets you filter attendees by first name, last name, email address, or ticket note. This lets you reduce the list almost immediately to only the matches you care about. Each time you process tickets for someone the filter will be reset.

Touch a person’s name to show their tickets. If someone has multiple tickets you can process them individually.

Touch a ticket to mark it as used. As a fraud-prevention measure there is currently no way to unmark a ticket as used. Please mark responsibily!

If you would like to enter notes on a particular ticket click the “Edit Note” button. Make sure to “Save Note” when you’re done.


Use a Printout of the Attendee List

In the event admin nav you can select “People With Tickets” to export various forms of reports. This includes individual tickets or distinct names. Import this into Excel or just print it out. Cross names off as people arrive. This works well if you’re in an area with no connection. This is also a good backup plan for all events for the rare moments you lose internet connectivity.

Categories
News

The Multipass Blog

Multipass is a membership management and ticketing company that wants to have a soul.

Instead of just being rectangles of information on a page where transactions happen, we want to put a human face on the experience. Our customer service is one part of that; this blog will be another.

Events are more than a name. People put their heart and soul into their art, their music, their business ventures, their causes. We want to share a bit of that with you, to capture and reflect their personality and give you a taste of what’s to come. We want to help you feel the humanity of those throwing events.

In addition to spotlighting upcoming events on our blog, we’ll occasionally have reports from events after they happened. We’ll also share new features and Multipass site/app improvements in its own section.

Lastly, it would be disingenuous to pretend we don’t live in a social media age. You as event producers need social content, and we do to. Give us a little of your time and we’ll give you some content you can can even as we share the same. Sometimes we’ll write articles, sometimes we’ll do video interviews, and sometimes we’ll do short video snippets that can be used for stories or TikTok.

We’re excited about this blog. We’re excited to try to bring a feeling of humanity back to the event ticketing process.