An important but often overlooked aspect to hosting a successful event is creating an intentional pricing plan. One method that’s particularly underutilized by Event Organizers is dynamic pricing, which, in relation to events, is a strategy where the price of a ticket changes one or more times based on market conditions. Dynamic pricing can be used by Event Organizers to adjust their event’s ticket price(s) in relation to time and/or desirability, in order to best ensure they’re charging the right price at the right time.
Dedicating time before your event to creating a dynamic pricing plan, whether it’s demand-based, date-based, or both, can have a large impact on your revenue. Planned price increases (or flash-sales) can increase demand for your tickets early on and help you maximize your revenue.
For those who want to implement a dynamic pricing schedule, EventSprout’s unique features make execution simpler and more convenient than ever before.
Making It Easy To Automatically Change Your Ticket Price
At EventSprout, we’ve made it easy to set up demand-based and date-based price changes. This article will focus on demand-based.
The demand-based dynamic pricing feature on EventSprout automates ticket price changes based on the number of tickets that have been sold. For most Event Organizers, this feature will be used to implement planned price increases; Event Organizers will arrange a schedule that increases the ticket price in response to how many tickets have been purchased. Using this strategy, Event Organizers give their customers several opportunities to benefit from a limited-time-only discount (with the discount decreasing ever-so-often) until the ticket finally reaches its full, box-office price.
Without our feature to automate the process, this would sound like a lot to tackle and manage. However, our unique system allows the Event Organizer to input their schedule just once and then (essentially) forget about it - our algorithms will take over and automatically adjust the prices as tickets are sold. In an effort to make our Event Organizers’ lives as easy as possible, we’ve built this feature to require minimal work.
Our dynamic pricing feature is extremely convenient, efficient, and straight-forward. Forget about having to create duplicate versions of the same ticket with different prices; our customizable feature allows you to set price tiers within one ticket, creating less set-up time, simpler backend reports, and less confusion for customers.
Benefits of Demand-based Dynamic Pricing
A demand-based dynamic pricing plan is a great way for Event Organizers to make certain they’re charging the right price for their tickets based on the current demand for their event. Increasing your ticket price based on market conditions can:
1. Increase Urgency Early On
When your ticket price is too high too soon, you may deter early customers and lose out on potential revenue. Selling discounted tickets at a limited quantity can create urgency early on and is a great incentive for your customers to hurry and purchase while the price is right. It’s important to advertise and communicate your pricing structure with your fans if you want this method to effectively increase urgency.
Chances are, early purchasers will invite their family and friends to join them at your event, too. You’ll appreciate the boost in revenue well in advance, and your most loyal customers will appreciate saving a few bucks.
2. Maximize Overall Revenue
Alternatively, when you keep your tickets priced too low for too long, you may miss out on revenue from customers who were willing to pay a higher price for a last-minute ticket. If a customer wants to buy a ticket the day or week before your event, they are likely prepared to spend more money than the customers who purchased tickets when they were first released.
With all this in mind, we built our demand-based dynamic pricing feature so that we can offer an extremely efficient method for planning and executing your desired schedule.
Maintain ‘Full Price’ Tickets at the Box Office
The one place you shouldn’t discount your tickets is at the box office during the day(s) of your event. If someone has arrived in person and is ready to buy tickets, then they’re prepared to pay full price.
Plus, if your fans know the price online is slightly discounted, they’ll be more incentivized to purchase tickets ahead of time, saving you time and expenses at the gate. Not to mention - you’ll be able to collect demographic data from your online sales that you may not get at the box office.
Directions for Setting Up Demand-Based Pricing
- Set a ticket price.
- Click on the (3) dots to the right of the ticket and select “Ticket Settings.”
- Toward the bottom of Ticket Settings, you’ll see “Date Pricing” and “Demand Pricing.” Select “Demand Pricing.”
- Input what price you would like to increase your ticket price to after how many tickets have been sold.
- Save!
Example Scenario
Jane is building a dynamic pricing plan for her annual Beer Festival for the first time. Last year, she charged $20/ticket and sold 2,000 tickets online in the weeks leading up to her event. She sold 500 tickets at the box office for the same price.
Jane knows she wants to slightly increase the price of her ticket this year, as is common with annual events. Jane knows she wants her full priced ticket at the box office to be $30 this year. This is the price she will compare all other discounted prices to.
Jane knows the lowest she can charge for her tickets is $15, so she will start this year’s price there to create urgency.
She creates the following pricing schedule:
• The first 200 tickets are $15 (50% discount)
• The next 200 tickets are $20 (33% discount)
• The next 200 tickets are $22 (26% discount)
• The remaining online tickets are $25 (16% discount)
• Tickets sold at the box office are $30
Let’s say Jane sells the exact same amount of tickets this year as she did last year (2,000 online and 500 at the box office). She will make $11,400 more, despite selling the same number of tickets. For every additional ticket she sells, she will make $5-10 more per ticket than she made last year.
