Promote i'll go! to Your Patrons

Dropping in for an update on the popularity of i'll go!

Almost 300 people have added the application already. That's not a bad number, but guess what: 60 of them are my own friends. It's time to start telling your patrons about i'll go!

If you've entered your events, what are you doing to promote them? I'm not going to name names here, but I know there are a few organizations who have taken the time to sign up for an i'll go! account, create discounts and enter events in i'll go! -- and then they've sent out Facebook Page Updates talking about the events without linking to i'll go! at all.

Let me remind you: if a patron buys a ticket to your event through i'll go!, they're automatically telling all their Facebook friends about it! Don't miss the opportunity to take advantage of that free viral marketing.

If you're not sure how to link to your events in i'll go!:

• Go to the Find Events page
• Search by Presenter for your organization
• Link to the URL for the Presenter page (it will look like this: http://apps.facebook.com/iwillgo/presenter-page/####), or directly to any of the individual events.

Link from your Facebook Page, link from your e-mails, link from your Web site -- anywhere you're asking people to buy a ticket.

...and write to me if you have any questions!

i'll go! is live!

Congratulations, everyone: We launched i'll go! today with almost 200 events from 35 organizations.

(If you haven't signed up yet, you should! If you have signed up but haven't entered events, you should!)

Here's the main application page on Facebook. Click on the button in the upper right corner to add the app and start finding events.

Organizations, it's time to start promoting this to your patrons! I'll be writing a post with some suggestions for how to do this... stay tuned.

Offering Restricted Discounts (to students, or by age)

BIG IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you're offering a discount on i'll go!, you should offer that discount to ALL i'll go! users.

To list your discounts on i'll go! you shouldn't require that people be students or seniors or anything else besides just a Facebook user. The price you offer can be the same, the method of purchase can be the same, but you should include a discount code and it should be available to everyone.

Part of the reason we created i'll go! was because there are lots of young people who aren't students anymore but still live on a limited budget, here in NYC -- and not every organization offers an under-30 discount program.

If you're asking for a student ID because you're concerned about the discount code getting passed around outside of Facebook, why not require people to show up at the box office with a printout of their Facebook profile instead, to "prove" that they got the code through i'll go!?

Offering Multiple Price Levels

Question:
"We’d like to post a discount code for three different seating sections (and three different price levels) at our next performance. i'll go! only allows us to put in one price level…which is a little misleading. Is there a way to post all three prices and three discounts?"

Good question! This first version of the system isn’t set up to deal with multiple pricing levels for one event, though it's absolutely on our suggestion list for version 2.0.

So until then, here's what to do:

In order to offer three different pricing levels, you'll have to enter them as three separate events.

So you would enter the first event, and click submit – then go to “Clone Events” and choose that event from the dropdown – all the fields will pre-populate – then just change the pricing info for the new event and click submit. You can either use the same event title for all of them, or you could do something to distinguish them like “[Event Name] – Price Level One” if you’d prefer.

Then, if you want to make sure that people know about all three options, you can include a sentence about it in the description field. Some options might be “There are other seating options for this event. To see all available choices, search for [Event Name] on the ‘find events’ page.” Or “To see all available seating/pricing options, click on the ‘[Organization Name]’ link above” (which will take them to your main presenter page and a list of all your events.)


After we launch and we have some stats about how successful various offers are, I'll be back with another post about price levels. Are i'll go! users more interested in super-low prices on already low-priced sections, or very high-percentage discounts on premium seats? We'll find out!

Using "i'll go!" for Offline Ticket Sales

One question I've heard from a few organizations so far:

"What do we do if we can't sell discount tickets online? Can we ask people to order tickets by phone or in person?"

The buy tickets field in i'll go! is set up so that it MUST be a URL for a Web page - but it's up to you what that Web page is. For member organizations who don't sell tickets online, we recommend that you create a page on your site that lists all the methods of ticket purchase for the particular event you're offering.

For example, if you were offering an i'll go! discount to a particular performance, I'd suggest you set up a page that says something like,

"To buy tickets for this event using your i'll go! discount code, call THIS number [or e-mail THIS address or go to THIS location]"

...that is, do everything you can to make it as easy and intuitive as possible for people to make their purchase for the event they want.

(Relatedly, here's a bit of a plug: Patron Technology now offers a simple online ticket reservation system, PatronManager. Click here if you're interested in learning more.)

Blogging from 38,000 feet

Hi everyone -- I'm Michelle, the project manager for i'll go!.

I'm taking a break from singing along with in the inflight movie, Mamma Mia, to write you an update about our i'll go! "deadline".

First: barely a week after announcing the application, already over 30 organizations have signed up as i'll go! members! (If you're reading this and haven't signed up yet, now would be a great time to get started....)

If you have signed up: thank you! Have you started entering your events yet?

Our planned launch date (when the Facebook-using masses will be able to access the application) is Monday, November 17. That's why we've set the “deadline” for Wednesday the 12th -- we want to make sure there's an impressive amount of great offers in the system so that anyone searching is sure to find something that interests them.

(Of course, you’ll be able to continue to add events at any time after we launch, too.)

So take this as a little nudge from me to get started -- and of course, contact me if you ever need anything. I'll be back later this week to answer some questions.

Welcome!

Welcome to the official i'll go! blog!

i'll go! is a new marketing tool from Patron Technology. It enables New York arts organizations to take advantage of the power of social networking by listing their events and offering exclusive discounts to Facebook users.

You can click here to visit the main i'll go! Web site.

We'll be using this blog to give you the most up-to-date info about i'll go!, and also as an additional FAQ page for i'll go! members -- we'll post some of the questions we've received from member organizations that we think are particularly relevant or helpful.

Feel free to comment here if you have questions or comments, and you can always contact us directly, too.

Thanks, everyone! We can't wait to work with you.

-Michelle