MasterChef 

Food is a multicultural social glue that binds communities together. Masterchef fundraisers are perfect for supporting an upcoming local restaurant or any other cause. Gather all your foodie friends and family to participate with an entry fee. It could be a food fest too if the nearby food joints sponsor and let teams participate in cook-offs based on their popular menu items. 

Musical Fundraiser

Benefit concerts are a great crowd puller. Whether you live in a small town or a huge cultural hub, a musical evening coupled with food and booze will guarantee a heavy footfall. Also, you never know which record label might turn up scouting for raw talent. Invite your local bands to rock out those riffs while the other participants have a go at the karaoke section. Keep the fundraiser open to a wide spectrum of genres. 

Casino Royale 

A bit of a posh affair, a black-tie affair themed around the British spy requires a lot of effort. With precise planning, a Casino Royale fundraiser offers dozens of ways to raise funds including poker tournaments, individual sponsorships, corporate sponsorships, and ticket sales. Keep these events high priced to keep the guest list exclusive and attract a wealthy roster. 

Movie Night 

With different genres to choose from, you can alternate your movie screenings based on the demography. All you need is a comfy location, inflatable movie screen, film rentals, and projection equipment. Setting up a private movie screening at a theatre that serves food and beverages also works wonders. Make sure you use Yapsody’s ticketing platform to streamline the process and get a FLAT 50% rebate. 

Trivia Night 

This one works well with smaller groups as a monthly affair. Hosting a trivia night for the history and sci-fi aficionados at your local pub or a pizza joint won’t pinch you financially as an event manager. A fundraiser like these harbors community building and brings a lot of business for the pub or restaurant which they can contribute to your cause as well. A win-win. Take our quiz if you’re a whizz-kid. 

Book Sale 

Another fundraiser that strikes a chord with the intellectuals and doesn’t demand strong finances. This fundraiser should bring together those who are cleaning out their bookshelves with those who like to read for a bargain price. Connect with your local authors, coffee shops, schools, and colleges to collaborate on the fundraiser. A book reading and signing should do the trick. 

Get Artsy 

Not every artist gets visibility for their work which is why these fundraisers work in their favor. Have an art opening where people buy a ticket to attend an auction of different art pieces. To make it more engaging, allow participants to try their hand at painting, pottery, calligraphy and so on. 

Go Green 

The need of the hour is saving our planet. A fundraiser in the form of a flea market that sells plants, organic and solar-energy products, seeds, and re-usable shopping bags are in demand. The proceeds should be directed towards planting more trees in environmentally sensitive areas. 

Gamers Unite 

You can start a general fundraiser or rally your fellow gaming brethren to launch a support campaign through an annual competition where a portion of their winnings is given away for charity. Approach gamers, YouTubers, and techies for these events for marketing it. 

Junk Donation Fundraiser

An old school trick that is relevant right now. Gather a group of volunteers that have the time and tact to go from door to door and round up unused junk like scrap metal, newspapers, and plastics. Bringing them to the recyclers will get a few extra bucks and make the community clutter-free. 

If you are an NGO or a non-profit company planning a fundraiser, you can avail 50% off on your ticketing fees with Yapsody's ticketing system for a streamlined process.
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The post 10 Themes That Will Inspire Your Next Fundraiser appeared first on Yapsody.

Planning
Planning a theater event can be a pretty complex task if not planned early. To make it easier, start planning 6-8 months in advance. Define your budgets, keeping in mind the payments you need to make to the actors, the costumes, the set, regular refreshments and other logistics. Finalize your actors and check their availability to ensure you don’t miss out on the best performers. Book the theater well in advance to ensure your event doesn’t coincide with another popular drama event.

Right Ticketing Tool
From convincing the best actors to finding a great story writer for your drama, you already have a lot going on. Reduce your stress and go for a simple and easy to use event ticketing system. At Yapsody, we offer transparency with the best features at unbelievable prices. Whether you host your theater event in Mexico or France, you can easily choose from our 15 prominent languages and create your event. Collect payments directly into your bank account through our multiple payment gateways.

The Virtual Box Office
Once you sign up with Yapsody, you can access our “Virtual Box Office”. Start with setting up your payment gateway, select your preferred language and your currency. Using this dashboard, you can access our event wizard, real-time sales analytics, reporting and a lot more. Create multiple performances easily using the event wizard tool. Also, once your event is created, you can copy it and use it to create your future events rather than creating a new one right from scratch.

Online Ticket Store
As an event presenter, you’d love to display all your theater events on a single page. Using the virtual box office you can create your online ticket store. When your attendees buy the tickets from the online ticket store, they get to see your subdomain, giving them the impression that they’re on your site. You can personalize your store with your brand colors, design, creative images and your brand logo. This is where you display all the performances of your theater event along with the venue, date and information about your company. Make sure to add external links to your social media pages.

Seating Arrangement
You don’t want your attendees running for the best seats the moment the door opens. Save them from the nightmare and offer reserved seating. Let your attendees book their tickets in advance, so they can arrive at the event stress-free and you don’t have to be a referee in a bull’s fight. Create unlimited ticket categories including VIP tickets and executive tickets so your attendees can choose from multiple options.

Offers
Like drama, people love discounts. Imagine the smile on your attendees’ faces when they are about to book their tickets for their favorite show and you give them an offer. It’s a great way to attract people to your theater event and sell tickets quickly. Roll out unbeatable offers like early-bird discounts, buy one and get one free and group discounts to attract drama lovers. Promote these offers on social media to get maximum exposure to your event. Meanwhile, we’ve got something for you. We’ve launched our holiday season offers that’ll give you a straight 25% off on your event ticketing fees. Check our offers page to see all the offers.

Set up the Ticket Price
Once you’ve booked your venue and estimated the number of attendees, you approximately know how much you can spend. Set up your ticket price by adding an extra margin to cover any emergency. Do not overprice your tickets, Your attendees may love you for the best theater event you created but don’t ruin it by overpricing the ticket. If the thought of event pricing gives you a headache, read our blog on how to price your event in 3 simple steps and perfect your pricing technique.

Ticket Customization
With theater events, you can be creative and customize your tickets according to your play. For example, Let’s say your play has to do with pirates. Using Yapsody’s ticket customization feature, you can design your tickets with a ship and a big black flag with a skull face on it. Wow your attendees with creative designs and personalized tickets.

Promote your Event
If you’re aiming for a full house on the opening day, you need to promote your event well in advance. From influential marketing to promoting your theater event on social media, use every medium to market your event online. At Yapsody, we believe in sharing the load. We promote your event in 3 ways:

• Premium event listing – Wherein, we post your theater events on our website for free.
• Share on social media: We share your theater events on our social media profiles, which you can share on yours.
• Blogs: We feature your theater events on our blogs along with a buy tickets button, so your attendees can instantly book tickets from your online ticket store.

Sell Tickets Online
People love drama. After all the promotion you’ve done, people will look for ways to buy your theater events. Considering most people shop online, selling theater tickets online is an opportunity you can’t afford to miss. Apart from robust reporting and quick validation, it saves time for you and your attendees. With QR code technology, there’s a slim to no chance of finding fake tickets and duplicate entries. You can integrate Google Analytics to track the performance of your marketing campaigns in real-time.

With our step by step guide, you’re sure to sell out your theater event in minutes. So, if you’re planning one, skip the drama and create your event. To avail our holiday season offer, use the promo code HOLIDAY25. Sign up NOW!

The post Why You Must Sell Tickets Online For Your Next Theater Event appeared first on Yapsody.

Social Media
A full house on the first night of your drama is every event presenter’s dream. To achieve it, create a buzz about your drama on social media. You can create a small video introducing the performers of your drama and add it to Instagram and Facebook stories. Or, simply create a trailer of your drama as they do it for movies. Roll out contests, offer freebies and discounted tickets using our discount feature on social media platforms. You can share the same video on multiple social media platforms to reach out to new audiences. At Yapsody, we share your events on our social media profile so that your event is visible to our audience, helping you get more attendees for your event. Create your event with Yapsody, we’ll share your event right away. You simply have to fill up our form with your event details to get started.

Premium Event Listing
With increasing competition in the theatre industry, you have to constantly look for ways to stand out of the crowd. Whether it is through a unique story or using a different method to promote your event, set yourself apart. List your theatre events with Yapsody through our premium event listing feature. This feature lets you display your theatre events on our website, so our site visitors and loyal audience get to know about your theatre events. If you’re targeting a sold-out status, we can together deliver better results for your theatre event through our premium event listing.

SEO
With the event industry digitalized, everything is available on your fingertips. SEO makes finding all the information about your shows easy. To ensure your events show up before your competitors, you need to use SEO hacks and tricks. It means optimizing the content on your website, so your event is displayed when your target audience is looking for upcoming theatre events in their area. The three main SEO parameters to focus on are the title, the meta description and the content. To get displayed on the first page of google search engine results, you need to add keywords that people use to search theatre events. To know more, read our blog – “Get your Event Ranked First on Search Engine”.

Email Marketing
If your drama has a beautiful story, go on and promote it using our MailChimp integration. With email marketing, you can personalize your emails and send them directly to your attendees’ inbox. Send out your performance-related details in the form of an invite to your attendees. For a change, you can also connect with your audience with a background story and a few images of your act so you create an urge and excitement to see the drama. This excitement is sure to lure them to visit the theatre and witness the magic. One disadvantage of email marketing is that if you don’t use the right email marketing strategy your emails can land up in the spam or trash. To know more, read our detailed blog on effective email marketing tips.

Blogs
Blogs are a great way of promoting your event. They give your audience an idea about the artists and what your drama is all about. If you want to attract more attendees, you could either write your own blog about what the performances offer the audience. You can also have a professional blogger write about the artists and a little history about your company. We at Yapsody, feature your theatre events on our blogs, so the visitors can view your events and book them through the buy tickets link we offer. This link leads them directly to your landing page. If you want your theatre event to get featured, all you need to do is sign up with Yapsody and create your event. Our blogs are shared on different channels online like Pinterest, Medium and Tumblr, so your theatre events can become popular and reach out to a larger audience. See how your events get featured in our blogs here. “Top 20 Holiday Season Events Across the US in 2019”

Flyers

Despite the digitalization in the events industry, people still prefer traditional methods of promotion due to its effectiveness. If you have multiple performances lined up, you can give out informative flyers of the theatre event at the end of the current event. Before you give out flyers, remember not to use a blanket approach for all theatre events. Let’s say, for example, if you’re hosting a romantic drama and your target audience is between the age group of 18 to 45, you can give out flyers outside the college, theatres, and cafes. To ensure your flyers don’t end up in the trash, you can mention a coupon code that your attendees can use while booking the tickets online. Here’s an example of a flyer, we used for our holiday season offers.

Banners
Do you want the occasional attendees to become regulars at your theatre event? Get their attention through banners. They are large and easily visible to people while traveling to work or going shopping. Place banners of the performance across the city on public transport like buses, trains and metros so people see it everywhere. You can also play drama trailers on the big screens of the skyscrapers highlighting the storyline of your drama. that way, your drama is on their mind and they can attend it with their friends or family on the weekend or on a romantic date.

Radio Ad
People listen to the radio while traveling to the office, gyming or during a jog. An interview with the director and the artists of drama on air before the actual event can make a lot of difference to your sales numbers. Alternatively, you can go for radio ads as they are very effective in attracting new attendees. The radio jockeys know exactly how to create excitement and get potential attendees to watch your drama.

Whether you promote your events on social media or through email marketing, plan an effective marketing strategy to drive attendees. Are you looking to promote your event and sell tickets online? Create your event with Yapsody now and avail our holiday season offers to get a flat 25% off on your event ticketing fees. Sign up Now!

The post 8 Smart Marketing Strategies to Promote your Theatre Event appeared first on Yapsody.

LinkedIn is synonymous to networking in professional spheres. You see how this Events feature was actually making it really easy for event presenters to build connections and promote their event through LinkedIn, but since it wasn’t advertised a lot, not a lot of people were aware of this feature which eventually led to its shutdown. Is there any other way to build connections with your potential attendees and promote your event amongst them on LinkedIn now?

CONNECT

If you really want to build a network, make sure you’re proactively adding existing contacts and connecting with people on LinkedIn after every meeting. Also, develop a habit of using the Status Update box at least twice or thrice a week. This will ensure that every time a user belonging to your network signs in, you will appear on their timeline.

RESEARCH & INSIGHT

While LinkedIn allows you to create a group solely for your event discussions, you could actually get some valuable insight and do good market research through existing groups that are relevant to your niche. There are numerous groups only targeted towards event planners, and by engaging in a few that might be significant for you, you could expand your database.

Suppose your upcoming event has event planners living in Texas as the target audience. If you’re an active presenter, you might be having your own email database, but if you wish to expand it, you could try out this approach: Join a few groups and turn on LinkedIn’s Advanced Search option to filter out members living in Texas. Once you’ve done this for quite a few groups, you can rank them based on number of members fitting your criteria. Also, carry out a parallel assessment of these groups – how active they are, what is the criteria to post something on it etc.

Now that you have a select list of groups that can serve as good platforms for your event, start participating in discussions and also start your own discussions. Don’t bluntly promote your event; instead, make people aware of your event through your subtle comments and discussions. Instead of a one-way promotion, interact with your audience.

InMail

Apart from refining groups, you can also use the Advanced Search tool to filter out individuals who fit your criteria. For example, you could look for people who’ve listed their profession as ‘Event Planner’ or ‘Event Organizer’, or their industry as ‘Event Planning’ or ‘Event Services’ in Texas. Browse through the profiles appearing in the search results and send personal invites using available contact details or LinkedIn’s InMail service, which is available for paid members.

We hope these tips help you to continue using LinkedIn for interacting with your potential audience and promoting your event. If you know of other ways to use LinkedIn’s features to help out event planners, do post them in the comments below!

The post Ways To Grow Your Network On LinkedIn For Event Marketing appeared first on Yapsody.

1. Social Media Influencers

Of course, Social Media is a default sub-heading in all event related blogs. Want to sell event tickets? Social Media! Want to make your event popular? Social Media! Want to attract guest speakers? Social Media!

But what is it about the Social Media that actually makes a big show of your event?

Even if you don’t have a gargantuan budget for online promotion, you can do wonders if you just get in touch with people who are already popular on the Social Media. Find out bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and Facebook pages that belong to your niche and have a huge list of followers, and collaborate with them. This way, your event will be recommended by highly trusted personalities to a potential audience of over a million, and that will definitely make it stand out.

2. ‘Live’ in The Moment

Marketing 101: Using numbers and statistics in a statement makes it sound 92% more convincing. I just made THAT one up, though.

Coming to the point (and these numbers are real, mind you), 86% of buyers would appreciate interactive media content, and 76% of people regretfully accept that browsing through a friend’s pictures of an event or a place they vacationed in makes them want to go there, too. So, keep your live feeds going at a full speed, click pictures of photogenic locations and areas in and around your event, record small video clips (or vlogs, as they are called) and keep posting them on your event’s Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube channel, website, blog etc. to create a more interactive environment with your audience.

3. Share The Love

Whenever you receive attendee feedback about your previous events, or if anyone across the web has posted anything positive about the same, you should share them on your profiles to add a pinch of, or maybe I should say a mound of credibility to your firm. Your potential attendees will heavily rely on the past experiences of your previous attendees instead of self-promoting statements made by your own company. So, make sure that you glorify good reviews and use them to make your event stand out.

The post Outstanding Ways To Make Your Event Stand Out appeared first on Yapsody.