Ticketfly, a leading social ticketing platform, announced major upgrades to its social sharing tools, purchasing process, and mobile delivery options including Apple Passbook integration. The release further demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing the most user-friendly ticketing experience possible and helping venues and promoters easily reach fans.
“Today’s consumers are fed up with outdated ticketing practices,” Sean Porter, chief technology officer for Ticketfly, told TicketNews® via email regarding the increasing importance of social sharing in the ticketing industry. “They increasingly use social media, entertainment sites, and apps to find out about upcoming events and to inform their friends about their plans. We saw a huge opportunity to remove barriers to discovery and purchase by bringing the full ticketing experience to all the different places fans find out about events. You can buy tickets to a show at a Ticketfly venue without ever leaving Facebook or needing a separate login, and then seamlessly share it with your friends. Anything else feels like a step backwards for the connected audience that drives the most ticket sales,” Porter added.
According to an October 30 press release, Ticketfly’s new social sharing options allow fans to RSVP to events on Facebook, automatically post events to their Timeline, and share purchases with specific friends by name. An update to the purchase confirmation page allows ticketbuyers to “like” artists’ and venues’ Facebook pages and share events via Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.
The latest update also includes a redesigned purchase process that maximizes conversion and social sharing with the goal of providing an even more streamlined buying experience. The upgrade enables fans to complete their transaction faster. Ticketfly clients who participated in the pilot program, including Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon and Chicago’s Congress Theater, experienced a 13 percent increase in transactional conversion rates.
Ticketfly also offers Apple Passbook support, which give venues and promoters yet another way to easily and quickly deliver tickets. The update enables iOS users to add tickets to Passbook by simply clicking a link in a confirmation email. Ticketfly already offers mobile-optimized sites, mobile purchasing, and an iOS Scanner app. Android and other users without the Passbook support can still benefit from Ticketfly’s email based mobile tickets.
Ticketfly has focused on mobile ticketing since the company’s launch in 2008. For fans, the latest update will help save time and make discovering and sharing events easier. By providing venues and promoters with ways to streamline the purchasing process for fans, clients have seen five times the yearly sales growth of competitors who do not use Ticketfly to reach fans. A recent study by Ticketfly showed that electronic dance music (EDM) clients have harnessed the power of social marketing and have discovered that social sharing results in six times more ticket sales for EDM shows over other genres.
“We will definitely see more fans promoting events via their social networks moving forward,” Porter told TicketNews®. “With Ticketfly, we encourage social sharing through the event discovery and ticket purchase process, most recently by adding the ability to highlight specific Facebook friends in a wall post after buying tickets. Our advanced analytics capabilities allow venues and promoters to pinpoint how many of their ticket sales originate from social media referrals, their website, Ticketfly’s affiliate network of entertainment websites, and more. At some point down the road, legacy providers will probably start to catch on and offer similar features.”
Several upcoming events are already taking advantage of Ticketfly’s updated features including Lynyrd Skynyrd at Congress Theater, Comedy Jam at Visalia Fox, Kenny G with Elko Concerts, and Michael Bolton with Elko Concerts.