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In-person events are back, with lots of demand being driven by Gen Z’s first-time concert goers. The return of events means lots of ticket printables. But print-at-home PDF tickets are not equipped for the challenges of running events today. Event organizers need to protect the fan experience, their brand reputation, and their revenue against black market sales. And amidst the continued Covid-19 pandemic, organizers are in charge of validating vaccine passes and negative test results while also effectively communicating their health and safety protocols.
Fortunately, mobile ticketing innovations have advanced to help organizers get back to live events. A blockchain-empowered SaaS solution can help you increase operational efficiency and manage safety protocols.
Here are 8 essential benefits of using mobile ticketing this year, and in the future.
1. Pre-event Covid pass checks and health surveys
Unions, countries, and cities around the world have passed regulations requiring complete Covid immunization or negative Covid tests in order to access restaurants, pools, universities, trains, event venues, and more. While ultimately essential to protect human lives and businesses’ ability to remain open, these regulations come with a hefty compliance burden. It’s up to your company to ensure that that vaccine passes and test results are verified.
TIXNGO offers multiple features to help event organizers handle Covid regulations:
- Pre-event pass or test validation: Using the mobile app, attendees can scan their document, and our software validates the name against the name of the attendee. This way, attendees can use your fast pass lane, and not have to wait at the door to show their document.
- Safety protocol notifications and acceptance: With our push notifications feature, you can send your safety protocols, such as social distancing, mask-wearing, sanitation station availability, or other details. You can also require attendees to accept these safety-related conditions before admittance to the event. If safety protocols aren’t accepted, you can ensure that that person’s ticket will not be displayed.
- Health surveys: You can also use our health survey feature to ask standard questions 24 hours before the event such as whether or not the person has a fever or if they’ve had close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.
- Covid-free self declarations: Another useful feature is asking attendees to declare themselves as Covid-free before the event, meaning that they state that they do not have Covid-related symptoms and haven’t had a positive test result recently.
2. Fewer staff at the gate and less overhead
With a modern mobile ticketing system, you can avoid completely manual gate processes. TIXNGO offers ticket activation when someone passes through the gate (enabled with a bluetooth beacon) so they don’t have to hunt for their ticket. The technology will open up the ticket on their phone and activate it, so it can’t be used again. Organizers can also activate tickets automatically and in bulk to reduce last-minute sales and transfers.
When you couple this with the Covid-related features above, it’s clear that individual interactions will be greatly reduced (from minutes searching for documents and QR codes to mere seconds). This means that you can have 50-90% fewer ticketing staff at the gate. Blockchain-enabled ticketing is highly scalable. One of the clear examples of mobile ticketing success was the implementation of the SECUTIX’ Blockchain Mobile Ticket solution during the UEFA EURO 2020. Over 860.000 mobile tickets were used by fans in the UEFA branded ticketing app, and all that with fewer staff required.
3. Quicker and safer entry for attendees
Creating an amazing fan experience is essential to the longevity of any event-related business. You want positive social media posts and word-of-mouth surrounding your event. When you use mobile ticketing with instant ticket activation and pre-event Covid checks, you can cut wait times drastically. This will result in pleasantly surprised and delighted attendees.
4. Timed entry management
Timed entry is critical for crowd control. Museums and parks use timed entry to better spread out visitors throughout the day. Large concert venues use it to reduce crowding at the gate. Print-at-home tickets make this challenging to manage, as someone at the gate has to verify the time slot. When you use a next-gen mobile ticketing solution, you can rely on push notifications to remind attendees about their time slot and automated or location-based ticket activation to permit only the right attendees at that time.
5. Elimination of “fake tickets”
Unfortunately, print-at-home tickets are often sold to multiple people by scalpers. When this happens, only the first person to get the QR code scanned is allowed through the door. Everyone else is out of luck. They’ve been scammed by someone else, but they’ll be frustrated at the event organizer regardless. This can harm your reputation and future ticket sales. Worse, this situation paves the way for serious upheaval and security risks at the gate. If you use a blockchain-enabled ticketing solution, you can put unique parameters so that each ticket is only resold once. Blockchain technology offers unprecedented traceability and transparency.
6. Transparent ticket transfers
Blockchain technology also helps you guarantee the chain of ticket ownership. With TIXNGO, you can allow or disallow transfers. If you choose to allow them, you’ll have direct access to the other attendees. Here’s an example: With the old method of printing tickets, one person might buy their own ticket and their friend’s ticket. You only have access to the buyer’s data. You can send them an email before the event, but you don’t have access to the other person. With TIXNGO, when a ticket is transferred, the other person will need to download the mobile app to accept the ticket. This gives you access to that person for customer research surveys, important communication, and Covid vaccine pass validation.
7. Push notifications for any communication
Over the past year, every business owner and operations leader has learned that things can change quickly. The importance of communicating with customers directly is higher than ever. With average open rates of 15-25% across all industries, email just won’t cut it. Push notifications, on the other hand, have high open rates for event organizers and near-perfect impression rates. Meaning, even if a customer doesn’t open the notification, they are highly likely to see it.
Here are some use cases for sending push notifications:
- Ask attendees to upload their Covid vaccination pass
- Remind them about their time slot
- Send out safety protocols
- Ask for feedback
- Share gate entry procedures and details about the fast lane for people who completed their pre-event check in
- Update event start times, locations, or other details
8. Customer data and surveys
A mobile ticketing platform also securely collects and stores customer data like contact information and purchase history so you can target the right people with your marketing campaigns. Plus, you can send out surveys to learn more about what your customers want in future events.
In the continued fight against Covid-19, most industries are forever changed. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, especially in the event industry. Operational efficiencies, cost savings, and a better fan experience are all possible when implementing the right technology.
Get back to events with TIXNGO’s Mobile Blockchain Ticketing solution. Request a demo.