If your church offers a holiday performance or program, chances are, at some time in the past, you may have been knee deep in the ticketing process. You may have struggled with making sure people have paid for their tickets and reserved the correct number of seats. Let’s not even discuss reserved seating—what a nightmare!
Have you thought seriously about online ticketing? Say what? Yes, ServiceU offers its own online ticketing solution, TicketU. In this article, we’re going to demonstrate just how powerful online ticketing can be for your Christmas outreach events, as well as other ticketed events your church holds throughout the year.
Before TicketU, First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida struggled to manage the process of ticketing for their annual Christmas outreach event: The Fort Lauderdale Christmas Pageant is the fourth largest ticketed event in South Florida and has sold over 48,000 tickets in past years. To manage the process before online ticketing, the church employed nine full-time volunteers to handle the process. Last year, they partnered with ServiceU to implement a new online ticketing system that would effectively reduce staffing needs while increasing the efficiency of the church’s entire ticketing process.
Minister of Community Involvement, Toni Hamilton had been using EventU to handle all the church’s scheduling needs, and soon noticed that TicketU could greatly assist them with their Christmas pageant as well as smaller events throughout the year.
“With the Christmas pageant growing rapidly, we knew that there was a definite need for TicketU,” commented Hamilton. The production has won regional Emmy awards, numerous creative awards and plays all around the world with the sale of DVD’s and videos. The pageant had become so huge that the church desperately needed a solution to the administrative work involved with putting on a production of this magnitude.
ServiceU’s CEO, Tim Whitehorn, seized the opportunity to communicate
how effectively TicketU could solve so many of FBC’s ticketing concerns.
ServiceU’s support team was then able to walk the church through
the many benefits that TicketU had to offer. It was just the answer
that they were looking for.
To get TicketU up and running, Whitehorn met with the pageant volunteers who were able to give him all of the parameters that they wanted to incorporate.
Hamilton remarked excitedly, “We simply provided them with the information that they needed and ServiceU did all of the set up for us.” This is especially convenient because the church staff only has a very small percentage of their manpower working on the pageant. The majority of the pageant is put on by volunteers. “Everything from food, logistics, and make-up to ticketing is voluntary.”
Using TicketU has resulted in a two-thirds reduction of manpower to support this event. Hamilton noted, “We used to have nine people working on the ticketing process, now there are three. The load has shifted out of the office and into the homes of those attending the pageant.”
The church also credits TicketU with creating a significant reduction in the postage costs associated with the event. Additionally, financial processing difficulties or charges due to bad credit have nearly been eliminated.
“Whether your organization offers small or large events, with TicketU, you will be able to present your customers with a much more professional ticket with little help and not as much effort as the end product would make you think,” remarked Hamilton.
Moreover, because of the way TicketU captures data and downloads
it to the user’s computer, it has the potential to increase the
size of a church’s prospect database. “We obtain peoples names and
number and are able to communicate with them regarding future events.
We can even enter their email address and designate if they’d like
to be on our mailing list and e-mail newsletter list,” adds Hamilton.
“Outreach comes as a result of using online ticketing—it’s that
simple.”