TJ Crawford's Archive
Feb
3
The International Ticketing Association is holding it’s annual conference in Salt Lake City this year at the Salt Palace (Man that place is big). I attended both the morning and afternoon sessions.
In the A.M. it was with Pro Sports/College Athletics Mini Conference. The group was mostly ticketing directors and box office managers from the MLB, NFL, NBA and colleges, but had vendors like Tickets.com, Ticketmaster, Veritix and of course Twelve Horses. The “Sports Guys” are relatively new for INTIX (last few years) but absolutely came out in significant, if not the majority numbers. Topics ranged from ticket printing, to print@home, box office logistics etc. There definitely was an underlying consensus around the down economy and how to continue to maintain attendance levels. The tactics that put butts in seats and performed were, deferred payment plans, payment installments and franchises using financing vendors that extended credit to purchasers who in turn paid over time. Groups that adopted these practices (US & Foreign) were reporting anywhere from 15% to 25% bumps in their ticket sales. I would say when your spending $1,500 to $10,000 on season tickets payment plans definitely would help. Great session with LOTS of open collaboration.
Later in the day I went to the “Breakout Sessions for Non-Sports Topics – College & University PACs” (Performing Arts Centers), The “Artsy” side to see what they were spending time and energies on. Because most of these organizations are non-profit or extensions of state agencies, “Doing more with less” was a significant topic. Also how to incentivize students to use these amenities and facilities. While there were not any commonalities in the tactics these groups were using, like with the Sports guys, there were lots of small ways that add up. Bundling of the entertainment and then food was a big one. We all like to eat right! I think the one I found the most profound was around the perception of value for these tickets. Basically if tickets are given away to students, the perception is they don’t have any value. But! If tickets were packaged as a student wide activity fees (everyone pays) or charged for, even if only a few dollars, then attendance went up. Perception of value, just like perception of brand, was a huge factor. Again LOTS of open collaboration and sharing of ideas.
Posted in Salt Lake City, Technology, Uncategorized, Utah, events
Dec
15
I had twins not too long ago, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still like to get out for the occasional concert, sports game, or event. In fact, I probably need time out now more than ever.
And even though I have to shell out a pretty penny when you take into account the babysitter, food, tickets, etc, there is one thing that inevitably irks me to no end – excessive ticket fees. Why do I have to pay another 25-30% on top of what the ticket costs? And “convenience fee”? For what? Great master of tickets didn’t find me a babysitter or convince my wife that we should go!
That’s why I was completely behind Twelve Horses’ initiative to develop their own ticketing system.
The ticketing industry is in need of a major overhaul.
75-90% of the market is run by 2 entities. You know who they are. Not only that, these entities have been known to command upwards of 25-35% of a venue’s total ticketing revenue. Their convenience fee model (and the model many copy cats have duplicated) often takes a minimum fee plus a percentage. I just can’t understand why these guys get a larger fee for selling a $250 as they do for a $20 ticket. Plus, the whole “convenience fee” is only convenient for the ticketing system provider collecting it, and definitely does not endear the purchaser to them or the venue they are servicing.
The openness of these systems is a huge pain point as well. They all need to take a lesson from the SaaS and web development revolution. Open standards and plenty of interoperability is just what the doctor ordered. Think about all the travel portals and concierges that need to sell tickets from different venues and providers. It’s just better for the consumer to allow these exchanges. I think you will see the industry go through a standardization to accommodate this in the future.
And for all you venue and event management people out there, ask yourself why these big ticketing providers should get their branding material all over your event? Why can’t you control the branding and even throw in a few sponsors’ branding as well?
For these reasons, and many others, Twelve Horses has launched its own ticketing platform. We are embracing the ideals of fairness, openness and control. Give me a shout, I’d be happy to show it to you…
Posted in Mobile, Web & SEO
May
29
While 2007 newspaper advertising revenue dropped 9.4% – the biggest plunge in 50 years (source), internet advertising gained an incredible 26% (source). The total revenue for newspapers still dwarfs internet ($42 billion compared to $21 billion) but with 25% gains year over year, it’s still a matter of time before internet catches up. How did other media types do?
- Cable advertising was up 11% (source)
- Local broadcast TV advertising was down 4.4% (source)
- Radio advertising was down 2% (source)
- Outdoor advertising was up 7% (source)
- Magazine advertising was up 6% (source)
More and more advertisers are migrating to the mediums that can target by niche. This is reflected in the growth of internet, cable, and magazine.
Posted in Advertising, Service Industry, Web & SEO
May
14
Twelve Horses rarely, if ever, will produce a website that doesn’t have a content management system (CMS). Our CMS – which we call WebGen – allows our clients to update the content on their own website independent of calling us. It’s one of our core beliefs here at Twelve Horses, that a website is living breathing entity. As such, the content on the site should be added to and updated frequently and we want this to be as easy and quick as possible.
In my tenure at Twelve Horses – just over 6 years – we’ve always had an in-house CMS that we implemented. We’ve constantly been evolving it, adding features and making it better. Today, we are pleased to announce the release of version 1.4.1. While it appears to be a dot release, it’s quite significant for us.
We’ve added 12 new features, enhanced 10 existing features and fixed numerous bugs. Of the new features, the two most impressive are a comprehensive permissions-based system and multi-site management system.
Our larger clients have a need to allow certain people within their organization to edit separate parts of their sites. These clients still need to have control over the content to make sure the brand and style is maintained. Our new permission system provides for permissions around adding, editing, publishing, approving, uploading and just about any element of the website you can imagine. And while we’ve had permissions in the past, this is the first time it’s been implemented in WebGen and to the extent it’s capable now.
Multi-site management allows clients to manage two or more separate sites through the same interface. This means sites that are hosted on separate domains can maintain consistency, share content and provide one seamless interface for updates.
As you can see, we take our CMS very seriously. We are well down the road map for the 1.5 and 2.0 releases. If you are a current customer, we will be contacting you shortly about the upgrade. If you are not yet a customer, contact us about doing a demo today.
Posted in Atlanta, Company News, Finance & Banking, Las Vegas, Member Orgs, Reno-Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Travel & Tourism, Web & SEO
May
7
It’s darn near impossible to build a website today without needing to integrate it with some kind of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. From Siebel to Salesforce.com to custom in-house solutions, CRMs have migrated from enterprises down to businesses of all sizes. The website and the CRM system need to share critical pieces of data in order to allow customers to maintain their own profile, while also giving internal teams the ability to provide the best customer experience available.
Because Application Programming Interfaces (API) have become so prevalent, keeping these two parties talking is doable. An API is like providing software with a phone that can receive calls to tell software to exchange data or execute commands.
The problems with APIs is they usually just sit there waiting for someone to call. Just because two separate programs have phones doesn’t mean they can call each other. One program has to learn – or be programmed – to dial the other. It also needs to know what data and commands to send over the line in order to receive back the proper response. It’s one of natures most fundamental processes.
What this means to the business is you are going to be changing code on either a sophisticated web application, or on an even more complex CRM system. In turn, this means developer costs, quality control testing and potential bugs can be introduced into one or more of these systems. Think of it as, Websites are from Mars and CRM systems are from Venus.
Enter data replication. Think of data replication as software’s match making friend. Data replication has a little black book of phone numbers and the notes on how to speak the other’s language. However, in this relationship, data replication doesn’t just setup the call and walk away. No, he sticks around logging the results, interpreting the responses and making sure no fights break out over who said what or who’s not being attentive to the other’s needs.
Sure, now every time the two pieces of software need to get together, data replication has to be there…in the middle…on a schedule. Awkward. But neither party is trying to be changed. Neither has to bend to the will of the other. No compromises. And if anything does go wrong, everyone can look at data replication to see how, when and where.
Now for the cheesy classified ad for data replication services, “Sound like a relationship you looking to create? Visit our Data Replication Engine page to learn how data replication can get your software together.”
Posted in CRM, Email, Technology, Web & SEO
Apr
9
For all those waiting for a new version of the Quick Post Plugin, it’s coming. My plugin makes extensive use of the jQuery JavaScript library. With the release 2.5, Wordpress uses jQuery extensively. So I am rewriting my usage to use the packaged libraries, there by keeping the code cleaner and less redundant.
Plus, one of the most requested features is the ability to upload images. Since the new WP uses an instance of TinyMCE that supports media libraries, I’m hoping to use that code to simultaneously update TinyMCE and provide this much needed feature. Plus, I’d love to have the full screen mode in my plugin. So the new version of Quick Post will not be backwards compatible, sorry.
What all this means is a pretty extensive refactoring of code. I’m working on it, but it will take a little bit of time. Thanks for your patience.
Posted in Blog, Social, Web & SEO
