Take Control: Driving Optimal Results with Effective Ticket Management

At TicketManager’s Partner Summit in New York City this fall, sports and brand marketers joined a panel covering multiple aspects of implementing, executing and optimizing a ticket management process. Below, you can find the full panel video and highlighted remarks from the discussion.

On the topic of ticket management goals and objectives…

Jan Liebchen, Senior Vice President, Head of Brand, Advertising and Sponsorships, M&T Bank

We describe M&T Bank as a “community bank at scale.” All of the things we do speak to that ethos. We have a large sponsorship portfolio, including some NFL relationships, most prominently the naming rights partnership with the Baltimore Ravens.

Our ticket management strategy is attached to how we see sponsorships as a whole. We look at it from a holistic activation model, seeing each of the elements that make that model come together, including brand, advertising, product, and client engagement. Client engagement is where ticket management comes into play.

Stew Huntley, Senior Vice President of VIP, Fanatics

We tell our customers they are VIPs and they say prove it. We have to have a lot of ticket assets to meet their expectations and the experience has to be free of mistakes. So ticket management is all about making sure that works, that we have a system in place so that every customer who has been told they are very important to our business gets a flawless experience.

Terina Perry, Senior Director of Experiential Marketing, Lucas Oil Products

We are a manufacturing business that specializes in oil and additives and has operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Mexico. We have salespeople throughout those regions selling to retailers such as NAPA, AutoZone and c-stores. We market heavily in motorsports and have moved into the NFL, MLB, NHL and other major sports. We also have a new initiative in country music.

We use our sponsorships to bring awareness to the brand and set ourselves apart from our competition. Once people see the brand, we have activation and an education component about what we do, where to get our products, etc., that happens at the venues.

Tickets are essential to us, as is using TicketManager to maximize how we are using our tickets to grow our business. The data allows us to know in real time when we are using our ticket assets properly or when we need to shift and be more strategic with those assets.

On the topic of compliance and performance assessment…

M&T Bank

With ticketing and gifting, we have rules we have to follow regarding who uses the tickets, what’s the approval process, etc. For example, with public officials there are very strict rules that dictate what the quantity and value of those gifts can be. We have to be able to show and report who has given what, who has approved what and who has consumed what. Ticket management plays a critical role in doing that and allows us to be compliant.

If a particular client or guest has restrictions on them, you cannot move through the ticket management process without providing that information. If it’s a public official, you have to certify that that person’s review has been done by the compliance department and you have to upload the document to prove it, otherwise you can’t order the ticket. We use the system to make things easy or less easy to get the outcomes we are looking for.

In terms of performance management, there are two parts. First, once we have committed to a partnership that comes with tickets, such as our relationship with the Bills or Ravens, we want to make sure we generate the most impact we can, both to broadly impact our client portfolio so that the same user doesn’t get tickets over and over again, and also that the most highly valued customers sit in those seats.

Second, when we are negotiating contracts with our asset partners, we want to be informed by how that particular part of the contract has performed. Should we get more tickets? Less? Should we buy other assets instead? So we want to have usage data to inform our next steps.

Fanatics

We spend a small fortune on hospitality for our customers. For every customer that sits in a seat at an event, we know what the uplift is from the point we have the conversation with them about whether they would consider going if they were invited, through the confirmation that they are definitely attending, the day they travel, and the three days they are at the event. We even know the deficit if we take them out of state to somewhere where they can’t continue gambling.

We know the stickiness, the steal of wallet and from an acquisition perspective, that if I want to get a customer who I know gambles but hasn’t signed up with us yet, the best way to do that is to sit next to them at a game. Being able to get all of those timestamps and log them with TicketManager to pull out each point in time and measure the uplift is massively important because when I got to my boss and ask to continue to spend that huge amount of money, they are going to ask that question.

On the topic of what sponsorships and partners need to deliver….

M&T Bank

Sponsorships for us are the discussion between the property/rights holder and its naturally attracted audience. By discussion, we mean in the broadest sense. It can take place in person, at a game, digitally over whatever channel you have, etc. What we are looking to do is join that discussion in a way that is authentic to who we are as a bank.

We don’t have the privilege of being a natural part of the game, like shoes, clothing or a piece of equipment or electronics, so it can be difficult. We also need to add value. So we look at all of the assets. That includes community engagement. We are very deliberate about how we show up with our partners so that our ethos and the ethos of our partners is the same.

It includes employees. It is a huge advantage to use sponsorship to recruit top talent. It includes products. How do we create exclusive products that make sense? How do we generate direct sales for every business unit that we operate, whether it’s a consumer product or our commercial or wealth clients? We look at how do we connect the different assets to each other—can we use ticket assets to promote social media activity and behavior? Can we use signage assets to tell a story that may help us spend less money somewhere else in out-of-home advertising?

As a result, if you look at some of the research, we are doing really well in outpunching some of the more well-funded partners of the teams. That is because of how we are able to get the parts to play with each other.

On the topic of the benefits of streamlining the ticket management process….

Lucas Oil

We use Salesforce for our CRM system and we have integrated it with TicketManager from the beginning, training our entire sales team on how to use it and bring everything into one space. So the platform that they see every day, that they sign onto to go to work has TicketManager integrated into it. They can use it all day, every day on one dashboard.

We also rolled it out to employees, both the online system and the app version as well, to request tickets. It has allowed us to put policies in place for code of conduct and other things. You see all of that messaging when you sign onto the platform.

With as many partnerships as we have, we manage over 23,000 tickets a year. The 24/7 access and support we get from TicketManager has been a huge lift for our team and our employees, especially when it comes to weekend work. Games happen on weekends and you can’t just turn off the service, so TicketManager is a huge help for that.

On the topic of the importance of internal buy-in….

M&T Bank

You have to manage the change management process. The human is the problem. If you don’t address that, you will not be successful in your implementation of the system.

We actively looked at what the new system would require in terms of behavior change. With the help of the TicketManager team and the training, the fears of the system were softened. Despite what was a thoughtful process, there are still some growing pains. People resist change, but ultimately when they get over the initial hump and see how the system is better, it works very well. Adoption has grown, the quality of the data that is inputted is better and we are better able to use the resulting data that the system generates.

Anyone thinking about adopting ticket management should think about who the users are and how they will have to change their behavior. If you have change management as a department, leverage them and be open to the idea that there is a learning curve.

Fanatics

What really sells it to the C-suite is reporting. Going to them and saying we are going to give you visibility on what we are doing with all of these assets is how I get my internal sales pitch in.

On the topic of resale….

M&T Bank

There is a level of nervousness around resale, especially among those who are charged with using the asset. For example, for someone such as the events team, the availability of an asset has high value for a last-minute request or change. If you set parameters that you will sell something that isn’t used a week prior to an event, that may generate nervousness. What changed that for us was the check we received from TicketManager for the tickets! You can create a great revenue source to augment or fund some of your existing expenses, whether it’s the TicketManager fee or drinks and food in the suite.

Particularly if you have a long history of data and, for example, you know that on average 78 percent of your tickets are used, you know that selling off 10 percent is being conservative.

Fanatics

We have stayed very far away from resale because of our contract terms that prohibit it. Going forward, teams should take a look at changing that, because it is stopping us from buying assets. If we feel we are only going to be able to get 60 percent of the value—for example if we buy a suite at an arena, there are lot of events our customers have no interest in—that’s a lot of waste.

If we know we can resell those assets, we are more likely to go in deeper on the contract.