Here are 5 ways that online ticketing can assist your church with outreach:

1. Online ticketing reduces costs and frees up money for outreach
 Online ticketing cuts costs by reducing postage fees to mail tickets. Participants can simply print out their tickets at home. In addition, online ticketing reduces the administrative burden of selling tickets. This releases more financial and personnel resources to utilize in other areas of your ministry.

2. Fewer volunteers in the box office
 Online ticketing can reduce the need to have as many volunteers on-hand to sell tickets. This allows them to help in other ways, including meeting and greeting the guests.

3. Follow up
Another great aspect of using online ticketing for outreach is the follow up capabilities your organization has once someone has purchased a ticket. With TicketU™, patrons enter their email address when purchasing tickets and check a box if they are interested in other events. This gives churches another way to communicate with people in the future.

4. Reserved seating encourages guest attendance
Reserved seating eliminates the hassles of finding a seat or meeting a friend. This makes guests feel much more comfortable and more likely to attend your event.

5. Flexibility
Many guests may not feel comfortable going to the unfamiliar church office to purchase a ticket. By offering online event ticketing, your guests can order tickets from the comfort of their home.

Learn more about how TicketU can make your church box office management easier—and increase  ticket sales and outreach.

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Why we made these changes
In addition to updating and modernizing the look of the interface, we made these changes to enhance the overall usability of My.ServiceU.com. The improvements to the user interface yield “lighter” pages that will load faster in browsers. These changes will also provide better support for a wider variety of web browsers. Many elements have been improved to provide better readability and usability, including the Home page, Search Events pages, as well as buttons and other graphics throughout the system. This new design will also enable us to provide a better and more consistent display of errors and warnings.
Here’s a look at some of the updates at My.ServiceU.com:
• Smaller, faster pages – Improvements to our interface make pages load faster than before.  In addition, we have significantly reduced the size of each page making faster load times for you!
• Clean, visually appealing pages – You may have noticed the new look for the www.ServiceU.com website. We wanted to bring that fresh, updated modern look to the My.ServiceU.com interface as well. We hope you enjoy the fresh new look.
• New calendar and Home page – The main calendar page has also been updated with new visual styling.  Also, the Home page has been decluttered to make it a much more visually appealing Home page.
• New Popup Calendar - Gone is the old browser popup window for selecting dates in the system.  The new, unobtrusive calendar slides in under the date textbox and allows for fast access to date selection.  It no longer triggers popup blockers or hides behind the current window.  This small change greatly improves usability.
• New Newsletter Editor - One of the greatest improvements in usability is on the newsletter creation page.  We have replaced the editor with more functional, efficient editor.  Unused options have been removed, and the new editor works on all browsers!
• Better browser support – The changes and updates we’ve implemented have allowed us to take a major step toward the site becoming more consistent across all browsers and operating systems.   By implementing current web standards, we will have the ability to use innovative features in new web technologies (CSS3, HTML5) in the future.  The site has been tested with Internet Explorer (6,7,8), Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari.  While the supported browser list hasn’t officially been updated, we hope users of the unsupported browsers will have a much better experience.  While Internet Explorer 6 is still supported, we would encourage users to upgrade to a more secure browser for the best experience possible.   Some visual aspects of the site will not be supported in IE6.

So, what do you think?
 We hope you enjoy and benefit from these changes and updates. We absolutely value your suggestions for improvements and new features. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions via email at support@serviceu.com.

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While it may feel that the Christmas season has finally wound down, for many churches and organizations that put on an Easter performance or spring production, the holiday “hustle and bustle” is just beginning.

Now is the perfect time to consider TicketU for your online and onsite ticket sales, while you still have a few weeks to go before opening day. This edition of the UNews is dedicated to helping you better understand how TicketU can streamline the entire ticketing process for your staff members and volunteers, while increasing ticket sales and outreach.

For example, have you ever considered the many ways in which online ticketing can help your church with outreach? If not, be sure to read this article: 5 Ways Online Ticketing Helps with Outreach story.

In addition, I’m very pleased with the new and improved My.ServiceU.com interface that we unveiled recently. Now that you’ve had a few weeks to use the new interface, we would appreciate your feedback. Simply send your comments and suggestions to support@serviceu.com. Read more about the enhancements.

Are you interested in winning a ServiceU “Serving Others Simplified” T-shirt? If so, check us out at www.Facebook.com/ServiceU. Each week, we’ll post a question for our “fans.” The question might seek your “tips of the trade,” ask you to share a link to your event, or ask other fun questions to generate an online conversation. Simply post a response, and we’ll select one lucky person (or more) to win a ServiceU T-shirt!

As always, I truly appreciate the opportunity to do business with you and to help your organization serve others.

Sincerely,

Tim

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Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn., has been putting on its Memphis Passion Play since 1991. Bellevue’s Passion Play has been instrumental in reaching many people with the Easter message, many of whom may not have heard it before.

For the last three years, Bellevue has utilized ServiceU’s TicketU to sell performance tickets online and onsite to its members and the community. The simplified ticketing process is easier for their staff and volunteers to manage, and it allows them to focus on the outreach that accompanies an Easter performance that draws in crowds from the community.

“TicketU has made it easier for our members to invite guests, which helps with our outreach to those who may not have a church background,” says Candy Phillips, church hostess for Bellevue Baptist Church. “Last year, our Easter Memphis Passion Play drew more than 25,000 people. Although we still sell tickets at our box office, more than 50 percent of the tickets we sell are sold through TicketU via online sales.”

“And, TicketU is convenient to use,” states Phillips. “Attendees no longer have to stand in line before the performance to purchase tickets. They just go online to our website, choose where they want to sit and purchase tickets…all from the comfort of their own home.”

Simplify the ticketing process for your staff and volunteers

In addition, TicketU simplifies the ticketing process for the church staff and volunteers, and makes the ticket sales easier to manage.

“Prior to using TicketU, we were using a very outdated DOS system to track and sell tickets to our Easter event. The system was very slow, difficult to use for our staff members, and it was hard to fix when difficulties arose.”

Three years ago, Bellevue switched to TicketU and has been ecstatic with the results.

“The ‘ticketing ladies’ just love it,” she adds. “Since it is web-based, in just a few ‘clicks’ we have entered the person’s information and printed out their ticket(s) to the event they want to attend. Even ‘editing’ information is easy as it is, ‘just a click away.’”

Training new employees on the TicketU system has also been a “snap” according to Phillips.

“It takes just a short period of time to train new staff and our events registration group is up and running,” notes Phillips. “TicketU has indeed made our lives in the ‘ticketing world’ at Bellevue a lot easier.”

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Patty Weaver is the director of operations for both SBEC and Broadway Baptist Church. She says in order to keep the scheduling straight for the elementary, middle and high school, as well as the church and daycare, a strong system needed to be in place.

“Not too long ago, everything was scheduled via paper,” says Weaver. “If a teacher wanted to schedule the church sanctuary, they would walk over a request to me or the principal and then it would usually be a couple of days before they would know if their approval was granted or denied. In addition, if there were questions, those too could take days to answer. All in all it was a very tedious system. Those days are long gone now thanks to ServiceU.”

Weaver, who has worked for the school and church since 1996 and through most of its growth, says ServiceU has streamlined the entire campus.

More Efficiency
“What ServiceU through EventU has done is make our entire process more efficient,” she says. “Our department heads now have immediate access to planning and changes that before would take days. EventU has expedited our entire calendar process.”

One example Weaver noted was the scheduling of the gymnasium for practices and events.

“We have four elementary teams and four high school teams all using the same gym,” she notes. “With EventU, our coaches can simply pull up the calendar and see exactly what is available. If the date or time they want is taken, they know right away they need to find an alternate. If it is not taken, they can book their event immediately on their own computer, without delays. In addition, our high school or elementary athletic director can OK the process very quickly.”

In the same way, Weaver uses EventU to schedule all of the campus’ transportation needs. “What used to take days now can take literally minutes or seconds,” she says. “A teacher or coach can request a vehicle and the response can be sent back to them at their computer terminal or Blackberry. It has been a huge benefit to our entire staff to be able to do everything electronically.”

Weaver adds that ServiceU staff was very helpful with the initial set up; however, the process is so easy to use, she hasn’t needed much help.

“I am by no means a computer guru,” she notes. “However, EventU is so easy to learn and use, if you have a very basic computer background, it will come very easily to you. Additionally, if you are church or school looking for a way to expedite all your calendar and approval processes, while still keeping control of the scheduling process—EventU will not disappoint. And, because it is web-based, it can be accessed from any computer, whether you are at home or on vacation, you will always be able to access exactly what you need. I would never want to go back to the days before EventU.”

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