[Projectleiding] MCH2021 ticket sales timeline

[Attilla de Groot]

Hi Juerd,

> On 28 Dec 2019, at 22:19, Juerd Waalboer <juerd at tnx.nl> wrote:
> 
> Looks fine, and I'm enthousiastic about the coupon concept. Let's hope
> our visitors like it as much as we do.
> 
> Attilla de Groot skribis 2019-12-28 15:11 (+0100):
>> - April 2020 (day tbd): Start selling coupons
>> — Terms & conditions ready
> 
> Just to make sure: the things *under* time point, are dependencies that
> need to be done first, right? So T&C first, start selling after that.

That is indeed the intention. Also because of the remarks below, we need to be clear on the conditions of the coupons before starting selling them.

>> - Mid-December 2020: Start ticket sales
>> - From January 1st 2021, increase pricing bi-weekly with to be
>> determined value
>> (...)
>> - Raising ticket prices after sales starts will, hopefully, incentify
>> visitors not to buy their at the last moment
> 
> Although I generally like the concept of increasing the prices (a
> similar thing with "early bird" rates worked well for HAR2009 iirc),
> I think bi-weekly is rather gradual. Wouldn't larger steps give a greater
> sense of urgency?

We can look at that, it isn’t set in stone of course. The price increase should be higher when the steps are larger, but then I’m afraid that this will create a rush before these exact dates. I assume that people can use a calculator to see what the price will be at a given point in time (or we can just list it in the ticketshop).

>> - Selling coupons gives us, hopefully, necessary cashflow. It will
>> also give visitors the possibility to “save” money for a ticket if we
>> provide a ticket guarantee.
> 
> This "if", does that selling coupons without a guaranteed option to buy
> a ticket is also on the table? If so, why, and how would that work?
> 
> How do we deal with unused coupons? Given a guaranteed ticket, this
> could mean a visitor spot is reserved but only a fraction of the money
> is paid. Given a non-guaranteed ticket, it could be that someone has
> paid a part of a ticket but has no chance to buy a ticket when the event
> is sold out. Will we need to issue refunds? Should there be a
> coupon-only phase before the regular ticket sales? Is there a deadline
> for buying your guaranteed ticket?

I thought about the “if” part after I wrote the e-mail. I think this is something we need to think about, because you’re quite correct about this. 

We can make a coupon valid until a certain date (simply not valid and no refunds after date x), however if we then sell 5000 coupons, we can’t sell any other tickets until this time since people might claim a ticket with their coupon if we guarantee a ticket. On the other hand, this might also be a nice problem to have of course…

Do you perhaps have a suggestion on this?

> 
>> - Having a fixed value increase would still provide the possibility to
>> give discounts for specific reasons (e.g a discount voucher at EH or
>> another event) 
> 
> HAR2009 had discount codes, that were nice for statistics too. (Everyone
> got the discount for HAR, even they didn't have a code.) I wonder if
> these stats are still available somewhere, as it may give some insight
> into the more successful marketing efforts.

Maybe Brainsmoke has something around, but I doubt it will be very useful from a statistical standpoint.

— Attilla