How to get early signups for sports events in Australia

If you are an event organiser, you know that vendors don't wait until your event is over before they collect payment for their services. This causes friction: as an event organiser, you receive most of your money closer to the event, sometimes even less than 24 hours before it starts. If this sounds familiar, here are two strategies that you can implement today that will help you to secure cash flow early on in your ticketing lifecycle.

1. Early bird pricing
2. Target previous entrants

Early bird pricing#

If you aren't familiar with the term, early bird pricing is a strategy that provides a discount to entrants that purchase tickets before a certain date. Some events open early bird pricing 12 months in advance of the event day. The incentive is that entrants receive a discounted price, and you receive cash flow to secure critical vendors.

It is a win-win scenario. Early bird discounts will vary from event to event, and to make it worthwhile for you, set the cut off dates just before you need it most as you will see an up tick in ticket purchases at the end of each early bird cut off date. Here is an example of an early bird strategy:

• 6 months out: 15% off
• 3 months out: 10% off
• 1 month out: 5% off

This scenario gives entrants a sense of urgency as the cutoff nears, and provides you with a healthy amount of cash flow at each stage. But who would purchase tickets 6, or even 12 months in advance? That brings me to my next strategy: targeting previous entrants.

4TY2 allows you to create custom early bird pricing for your event, allowing you to take advantage of this cash flow strategy. Another bonus is that 4TY2 makes you the merchant of record by default, meaning the revenue generated from your tickets goes directly to your bank account. We don't hold your funds! Early bird pricing is automatically highlighted and displayed on your event page, with savings comparisons and countdowns to help you secure early cash flow.

Targeting previous entrants#

If you aren't marketing directly to previous entrants, you are missing out on a big opportunity to secure early cash flow. Previous entrants are more likely to purchase an early ticket to your event because they already know what to expect, and won't need as much convincing to sign up again. It is also likely that they have already decided whether or not to participate in your event again, and a gentle nudge with early bird pricing might be all they need to purchase a ticket.

There are several ways to target previous entrants. If you have a record of contact information from prior events, you can send marketing material about your new event, with special offers like early bird pricing included in the content. It is also worthwhile having your offer publicly available on your website or 4TY2 events page so that entrants have a sense of urgency just before offer cut off dates. If you have a "goodies bag" given to participants at the end of each event, you can also use this as an opportunity to add promotional material like special savings for repeat entrants. This gives the entrant a sense of loyalty and appreciation toward your organisation while still helping you benefit from the increase in cash flow.

4TY2 offers free broadcasting to your prior entrants and page followers, so you can secure early entries without managing long lists of contact information yourself.

Summary#

Early bird pricing and targeting previous entrants are just two ways to secure early cash flow for your event. This can help you to secure vendors early, and provide cash flow months before the event start date, rather than dealing with high surges just days before the ticket cut off.