Newcomer Mobile Ticket App (MTA) is making the secondary market more smartphone-friendly than ever.
Launched in 2009, MTA works in conjunction with TicketNetwork brokers and partners to design and brand apps for their companies, available for both iPhone and Android users. The company also offers Mobile Ticket Websites, also compatible with mobile viewing, for its brokers. MTA staff manages the approval process through Apple or the Android Marketplace, and will also add any updates to the app as necessary. Users pay monthly subscription fees with rates based on the number of products purchased. To date, MTA has designed and launched over 40 apps for the iPhone and Android.
Mobile users can download these free apps onto their mobile devices, where they can then browse for and buy their tickets. Using the smartphone’s GPS locator, the app automatically lists events local to the mobile user, or alternatively, the user may search for events nationwide. Once they’ve decided to purchase tickets, buyers may opt for automated checkout through the TicketNetwork checkout screen or instead may call the broker directly from the purchase screen.
These apps are social media ready as well, with the goal always to increase exposure in the market and increase sales.
“If you are using the app and show your Facebook friends you bought some tickets…using the app, hopefully that will get other people to check it out and download it,” VP of Sales Mark Hunter explains. “It’s a great marketing tool for [brokers] at no additional cost, so when they’re asleep or doing other things, taking orders, hopefully the app is marketing for them.”
Brokers are also free to use the app’s social media tools to showcase particular events or musical artists on their own Facebook pages.
Business seems to be brisk at MTA, which currently boasts more than 110,000 app downloads supporting upwards of 400,000 sessions. And on January 6, the company announced a partnership with Ticket Platform, a site which provides customized websites for ticket resellers. Stressing the benefits of the collaboration in its January press release, MTA noted that the arrangement would provide quality, affordable, and easily managed apps to those brokers already using Ticket Platform sites. MTA will power Ticket Platform’s apps already in use, and will in return be able to sell Ticket Platform’s Power XML and Plug In sites.
“We’re a relatively new company, but we’re growing quickly. The amount of activity we’re getting on our apps is growing tremendously,” Hunter said. “For some of our brokers that have been using the app for a while…over half of their sales are coming from the apps.”
He is looking forward to spreading the message about the power of mobile marketing at this July’s Ticket Summit. “We want to ingrain ourselves into the minds of the people in the industry [and help them understand] that mobile apps are the sales tool of the future.”
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