Tommy Karr asked a question I think a lot of us share at least in part… Anyone successfully developed a flex/choose-your-own subscription offer and made it available for purchase online? We’d love to offer something like what Woolly Mammoth offers online. To add to the complication, Tommy’s packages cross multiple venues.
I’d love to hear other people’s ideas and experiences, but there are a couple of options I’m aware of depending on an organization’s specific package structure. and as always, I would highly recommend any user exploring a package solution to reach out to Artsman with their specific needs to help find the best solution. The devil (or angel) is in the details!
• Passes as flexible subscriptions - What’s nice about these online is that a patron can easily purchase a package as one pass and then redeem based on any variety of pass setup options. Doug showed us how to put simple html into the external notes of passes as well, which makes redeeming them online very patron friendly. We literally link to the webstore show pages for qualifying events so a patron can see what shows they can pick from right on their pass page. And once the pass is used for payment, it will apply whatever sales rules discounts you have attached to the pass. Great multi-venue choice if your discounting works into a single sales rule structure, which is pretty flexible.
• Optional events in a subscription module - You can choose to make certain events optional within a subscription module AND also set a minimum number of required events. So online (or within the desktop app), all shows would be initially booked, but the patron can then simply uncheck the ones they don’t want. If they unselect too many to meet the minimum, they won’t be allowed to proceed to payment. This could be a little less flexible for multi-venues if all those venues have reserved seating and favorite seats, but for general admission or two venues that could have comparable favorite seats based on best available number or something like that, I think it could be a lovely interface option online. From a marketing standpoint, the opt-out of optional events versus opting into optional events is a powerful psychological way to softly drive more sales or even just more adventurous try-something-new buying.
• Custom plugin - Artsman can build specific plugins for your venue if your setup doesn’t fit into a pre-packaged option. This costs, of course, but if your structure is similar year after year after year, you may find the cost well worth it.
What other options can people think to try out?
We’ve come to really depend on ours - worth the cost. And both Doug and Darwin are great about asking the right questions to help structure the setup in the right way for long-term use. You’ve got plugins for something else at Warner, right Randale?