Technology / 06.18.19
The Future Is Bright for the New Eventbrite-Powered Ticketing on Facebook Feature
Teddy Durgin
Tamara Mendelsohn
Eventbrite
Facebook’s potential as a platform to sell tickets has been talked about for years. Now, the company has teamed up with global ticketing and event technology platform Eventbrite on an initiative to make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to distribute or sell tickets to events directly via the vast social network.
The new Eventbrite-powered “Ticketing on Facebook” feature enables all Facebook pages in the United States to choose “Create Tickets” during the process of setting up events. At that point, they can add the options of free or paid tickets, which will then be prominently displayed on the event page.
Tamara Mendelsohn, VP and GM of Consumer at Eventbrite, is in charge of the company’s Consumer Business Unit. She is also among the biggest proponents of Ticketing on Facebook. “It’s important to note that this particular product … is really built for those people who are hosting small events and using Facebook Events as their primary tool to do so,” she says. “Think about a poetry reading at a local coffee shop or a tasting event at a wine store. Before, these types of creators who typically lack the most resources — should it be time, technology or events expertise — didn’t have access to the simplest ticketing functionality and relied on a patchwork of tools like spreadsheets and handling cash at the door.
“The ‘Create Tickets’ functionality baked into the event creation flow on Facebook is brand new to Facebook, and Eventbrite is the platform powering it,” she says. “With Facebook, we’re excited to offer a more sophisticated way for these casual event hosts to plan and produce their events and easily sell tickets online.”
Attendees can register for nonpaid events or buy tickets while logged into Facebook. The Ticketing on Facebook feature also includes such event-management tools as a dashboard that tracks registrations and sales, along with tools that enable event hosts to communicate directly with their attendees. For event planners, accepting free registrations or selling paid tickets will give them a better read on how many people are attending. In turn, this will help them with decisions on elements like venue size and food and drink ordering.
“Our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences,” Mendelsohn says. “For event creators, that means they need access to tools, resources and ticketing technology to do their jobs and organize successful events. For our partners, that means plugging into an open API to integrate with a ticketing solution that power millions of events across the world. For the people that love to attend live experiences, that means a simple and streamlined customer experience so they can easily discover and attend the best events.”
For attendees, the process of registering or buying tickets is safe and easy with Ticketing on Facebook. In addition, gaining entry into events is accelerated via simple scans of mobile or printed tickets. Attendees will also receive both confirmation and reminder emails as the event draws near. The big plus is that Facebook users will be able to purchase tickets without being kicked out to a third-party site.
Mendelsohn is among the many Eventbrite insiders who is pleased to see how far the two companies have come together. And she comes at the partnership with a wealth of experience, having started her career as an analyst at Forrester Research where she helped Fortune 500 clients understand and act on market opportunity in the retail and e-commerce space.
“As one of Eventbrite’s earliest hires, I have been living and breathing the live experiences industry for nearly 10 years,” she says. “Now, as the VP and GM of Consumer, my team and I spend our days thinking about the people who attend the shows and events on our platform. This includes building tools to better engage our massive audience of ticket buyers, enhancing their purchase experience through intelligent product design, and helping these fans discover the great content on our platform and attend events they wouldn’t have otherwise known about.”
“Our relationship with Facebook is not new,” she says. “In fact, it started a decade ago. We’ve hit a number of exciting milestones since the beginning of our partnership. We’ve learned how we can effectively extend the power of the Eventbrite platform to serve all types of creators.”
The two sides have stayed focused on solutions that help event creators reach more fans, sell more tickets and run more successful events. On the attendee side, it’s been about making the discovery of things to do and the purchase of tickets as easy as possible through things like a streamlined checkout process that securely stores your details for future purchases.
“Our ‘Buy on Facebook’ integration allows event creators using Eventbrite to sell tickets to their events within Facebook, without the ticket purchaser ever having to leave Facebook,” Mendelsohn says. “This is key, as every extra step within an online purchase process reduces conversion — that is, every extra click or redirect to another site increases the chance of checkout abandonment or a non-completed sale. Event creators on our platform that make use of our ‘Buy on Facebook’ integration sell an average of 20% more tickets [for paid tickets] and attract two times more registrations [for tickets that are free].”
So where would Mendelsohn and Eventbrite like to see this partnership one year from now? “Hopefully, we’ll be even better at serving all of these audiences — creators, attendees and partners — by connecting many more fans to the live experiences they love to go to and helping event creators reach new audiences. It’s no secret that making events and shows discoverable on Facebook increases reach!”
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Tags: Social Media , Mobile , Facebook , Instagram , Eventbrite , Consumer Preferences