We are thrilled to announce another Washington organization that has joined the Saffire team, the Kitsap Rodeo Cowpokes of Bremerton, WA! The mission of this committee is to promote and raise funds for the Kitsap County Stampede. The Cowpokes will be using their new Saffire site as a means to generate enthusiasm, sell tickets, host … Continue reading “Welcome Kitsap Rodeo Cowpokes!”
We are thrilled to announce another Washington organization that has joined the Saffire team, the Kitsap Rodeo Cowpokes of Bremerton, WA! The mission of this committee is to promote and raise funds for the Kitsap County Stampede. The Cowpokes will be using their new Saffire site as a means to generate enthusiasm, sell tickets, host VIP events, increase membership and ensure that this rodeo is one of the best around.
We are thrilled to announce our latest update Saffire 2.3! We think the features we’ve added to the Saffire platform will make life that much easier for our clients as well as help their customers enjoy their experience on their website even more. Check out the new features we’ve added below! SaffireScan is now available, … Continue reading “Saffire Updates: Version 2.3”
We are thrilled to announce our latest update Saffire 2.3! We think the features we’ve added to the Saffire platform will make life that much easier for our clients as well as help their customers enjoy their experience on their website even more. Check out the new features we’ve added below!
As always, you can check out our YouTube Channel – SaffireStudio to keep up with this release. If you have questions on any of these new features or items we’d love to fill you in or catch you up on the quick-paced evolution of Saffire! Give us a call at 512-430-1123 or email us at info@saffire.com.
Whether you just wound down your event or only beginning the hard work preparing for this year’s, today is always the day to be thinking about e-commerce. If your event just ended, you might be able to capture extra merchandise sales that help capture the memories. If you’re just ramping up, start thinking strategically about the … Continue reading “5 Tips to Drive E-commerce Sales for Your Event”
Whether you just wound down your event or only beginning the hard work preparing for this year’s, today is always the day to be thinking about e-commerce. If your event just ended, you might be able to capture extra merchandise sales that help capture the memories. If you’re just ramping up, start thinking strategically about the best time to start selling tickets and this year’s signature items. To jump-start your efforts, we’ve pulled together 5 tips to help you drive more revenue with e-commerce.
Create special bundles of items or a limited-time discounts, so you can tap into your customers’ sense that they may be missing out on something if they don’t take action (e.g., for a limited time, offer free parking with event tickets). Use retail as your guide here. They often have repeated sales, sometimes with a little twist, to keep eyes on their offerings. These don’t just happen. Create an editorial calendar that includes promotions throughout the year.
Use your smartphone or tablet to purchase something from your website. How was the experience? Would you buy from your site? Make sure you have a touch-friendly user experience. Get rid of the Flash and minimize how much the customer has to type. Consumers must be able to easily interact with your site no matter where they are. If not, consumers will lose patience and you will lose a sale. Picture it this way – we use computers during the day, tablets on the sofa in the evening and we always have our smartphones on us. Internet Retailer reports that M-Commerce sales were up 82% in 2012 and they will rise another 56.5% in 2013. Even though mobile doesn’t represent a huge percentage of sales now, it’s only going UP!
Thank them for being your customer in 2012, and highlight anything that is new this year, potentially including a promotion to reward their loyalty (e.g., special pre-sale privileges or discounts). Train your customers to know they will get the latest and best info by signing up for your email. Facebook and Twitter are also obviously important ways to get information out, but don’t spend all your time there at the expense of email, which will create your highest revenue days of the year.
The audiences you get in your online store are active on social networking sites. (Nearly everyone on the internet is on some social platform.) They use social media to share and recommend things they are currently excited about, including things they buy. And for most, if they are making a purchase, then they’ve gotten excited enough to open their wallets. Consider posting exclusive promotions just for your fans or followers. Encourage them to interact by posing questions to get the conversation started.
You’ve optimized your website for the best experience, insured that your site works great on mobile, streamlined purchasing to make it as easy as possible, and added social links to encourage sharing.But how do you deliver tickets? Make it just as easy to get tickets as it is to buy from you by allowing your customers to print their tickets at home. Not only do you “Wow!” your customers and give them instant gratification on their purchase, you’ll save money. Fulfilling advanced ticket orders in-house, whether by mail or will call, can be expensive and time consuming. In addition to hardware and paper stock expenses, fulfillment requires your event to devote staff resources to print, sort, and mail tickets to each of your customers. Leary of fraud? With the right application and bar-code scanners (like SaffireScan just introduced from Saffire), you can verify not only the validity of a ticket, but also eliminate counterfeit tickets by including a unique code on each ticket.
Each of these tips can make its own impact, but as you use them together, you’ll have the best chance of increasing online sales.
Most events have board of directors. And boards have meetings. Some of them are tough. The tougher they are, the more important it becomes to end meetings well. So even though Saffire specializes in online marketing, today we’re stepping away from the computer and sharing 6 tips for what to do when the meeting’s over. … Continue reading “Happy Endings: After the Board Meeting”
Most events have board of directors. And boards have meetings. Some of them are tough.
The tougher they are, the more important it becomes to end meetings well. So even though Saffire specializes in online marketing, today we’re stepping away from the computer and sharing 6 tips for what to do when the meeting’s over.
It’s not so much about ending the meeting. It’s what to do when the meeting is over.
(We were originally inspired to cover this topic by an article in Entrepreneur, but we had thoughts too, so we made it our own.)
In February we took a trip down to Edna, TX and visited with the Brackenridge Recreation Complex where we fell in love with the serenity and beauty of the outdoors, lake and wildlife of this wonderful facility. This complex is a home away from home to rodeo, music, camping, and lake-goers from all over, … Continue reading “Welcome Brackenridge!”
In February we took a trip down to Edna, TX and visited with the Brackenridge Recreation Complex where we fell in love with the serenity and beauty of the outdoors, lake and wildlife of this wonderful facility. This complex is a home away from home to rodeo, music, camping, and lake-goers from all over, and with their new Main Event Center they offer every amenity you could need for an indoor or outdoor event. What really helps put on the charm of this park is a little old chapel you can find nestled among the trees. So quaint!
Saffire would like to welcome the Trinity Valley Exposition as one of our newest clients this week! With over 100 years in existence it is an event steeped in tradition, and owes all of its success to the hundreds of volunteers who make it happen every fall. With its youth livestock show, professional rodeo, carnival and … Continue reading “Welcome Trinity Valley Exposition!”
Saffire would like to welcome the Trinity Valley Exposition as one of our newest clients this week! With over 100 years in existence it is an event steeped in tradition, and owes all of its success to the hundreds of volunteers who make it happen every fall. With its youth livestock show, professional rodeo, carnival and plenty of social events, this is one week you won’t want to miss in Liberty, Texas!
If you know me, you know I (Kendra Wright) love music. No, I LOVE music. I’m not biased as to genre. I love country music – Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, Randy Travis, Darius Rucker… I love crossovers like Zac Brown Band more than I can express. And, I love many other kinds of music, including … Continue reading “Building an Event Brand: Lessons from an Unlikely Source”
If you know me, you know I (Kendra Wright) love music. No, I LOVE music.
I’m not biased as to genre. I love country music – Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, Randy Travis, Darius Rucker… I love crossovers like Zac Brown Band more than I can express.
And, I love many other kinds of music, including artists like Kanye West and Justin Timberlake. (Somehow I can separate out behavior from musical talent, in case you noticed that several of the artists mentioned have exhibited less than exemplary behaviors at times.)
But I digress.
As events, we ARE entertainment. So when I see musicians promote themselves well, I feel there is something to be learned. Justin Timberlake’s recent release of his 20/20 Experience album was admirable, no matter what you think of his music.
I often talk to events about building up to a fevered pitch (and doing this as early as possible with strategically-timed, pre-event announcements). JT (you don’t mind if I call him JT, do you?) did this brilliantly, by doing these four things incredibly right:
Continue reading “Building an Event Brand: Lessons from an Unlikely Source”
Last week we welcomed the Bell County Expo Center of Belton, TX to the Saffire family. This venue is home to two of our favorite client events, the Belton 4th of July PRCA Rodeo and the Central Texas State Fair! Not only does the exposition center house two exciting Texas events, it also hosts ceremonies … Continue reading “Welcome Bell County Expo!”
Last week we welcomed the Bell County Expo Center of Belton, TX to the Saffire family. This venue is home to two of our favorite client events, the Belton 4th of July PRCA Rodeo and the Central Texas State Fair! Not only does the exposition center house two exciting Texas events, it also hosts ceremonies of all kinds, including; graduations, church events, horse club meetings, gun shows, high school proms, and even a city wide garage sale. We are thrilled to bring the Saffire platform to an organization that has events year-round and truly uses it’s website to reach and entertain an expansive community (all of central Texas)!
We are so excited to announce one of our newest clients, Crabtree Amusements! As a company that already partners with so many of our Saffire clients, we knew we were joining forces with “good” people! Safety is their top priority and we look forward to helping them get that message across to the event industry … Continue reading “Welcome Crabtree Amusements!”
We are so excited to announce one of our newest clients, Crabtree Amusements! As a company that already partners with so many of our Saffire clients, we knew we were joining forces with “good” people! Safety is their top priority and we look forward to helping them get that message across to the event industry via their online marketing efforts. It’s organizations like Crabtree Amusements that remind us how lucky we are to be involved with such a FUN industry. Welcome to the family!
Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the fast pace of changes in the social media world. This week we thought we would let you know about a few that are here now and some that are in the process of rolling out. Vine Twitter has inspired us to creatively speak in 140 characters or … Continue reading “The Ever-changing World of Twitter and Facebook”
Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the fast pace of changes in the social media world. This week we thought we would let you know about a few that are here now and some that are in the process of rolling out.
Twitter has inspired us to creatively speak in 140 characters or less; now they have launched Vine which is teaching us to deliver creative looping video with only 6 secs! My first reaction was like most: “How can you show anything in 6 seconds?” Well remember that it’s pretty exciting and a lot of things can happen in the 8 seconds a cowboy is riding a bull. I don’t believe this will replace your efforts with YouTube content, but there will likely be a growing amount of times where just a little video shows things off better than a photo. It can be quirky, fun and offer little windows into your event and life in the event industry. The service has taken off among celebrities, actors, comedians and Twitter iOS users who share clips, skits, stop-motion and increasingly creative videos.
To get started:
1. Download and install the Vine app from iTunes for your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Sorry, no Android support yet.
2. Create a Vine account using your Twitter profile or email address.
3. Find people to follow by going to your profile and clicking the People icon at the top right of your screen. You can also go to your settings and use the Find People option under Friends.
4. Connect your Facebook account to share videos on Facebook as well (personal profiles only).
5. Click the video camera icon to start recording videos. Tap your finger on the screen to record and release to stop recording. 6. When you’re finished, click Continue to share your video on Vine, Twitter and Facebook.
As of March 31, you can even embed the video into your blog or website easily from the app.
Try it out – deliver quick experiences, build excitement, and share the moments of your event.
https://vine.co/v/bDVpIUFww9r
This is the Easter Name-That-Tune Contest Vine that Dorito’s ran. (Mouse over it and click it to get it to start. You’ll need to click the speaker icon to turn on sound. By default, Vines load with the sound off the first time.)
Graph Search is Facebook’s new way to let you search for connections to people and places. In other words, Facebook has taken all of the data that people have entered and put a searchable context around it. Previously when you entered a search term in Facebook, it would show you any Pages for that term, People with the term in their name, any Places that’s name was that term, and then offer to search the web. Now you will have the ability to add some context to your searches with terms like: “Friends that like,” “People who like,” “Photos of.” Basically you can use natural language to search with rather than specific terms.
As this grows and Facebook improves it, this feature will become more and more important to local businesses since you will be able to quickly search for a type of business and see which of your friends like it and any other feedback on the business. It certainly places a new emphasis on building Facebook profiles for all of your business’ brands and locations; adding to that the importance of enticing your customer base to ‘like’ you on Facebook. To prepare and improve your event for Graph Search there are a few easy steps to take: 1) Add key information to your About, Mission, and Company Description sections Make sure you include your URL and a good description of your event. Include important keywords that search engines like. Include your phone number and physical address in the Basic Info section.
2) Customize your Facebook URL By default, Facebook will give you a URL that includes a number. It will look something like this: facebook.com/pages/yourbizname/123123123. You need a minimum of 25 Likes to before you can change it to something like: facebook.com/yourbizname. To make the change, go to Facebook Username. 3) Encourage Sharing Not a new concept, but insure that your posts, photos, video, contests, etc. are things that your customers will want to share. The more that things are shared, the further that your site will spread across the “graph” and be found by others. Just as before Graph Search, remember that Facebook is all about connecting with people. The update has been rolling out for about a month or so; some people have it and others are still waiting. It will be interesting to watch how customers adapt to searching in Facebook.
In the next few weeks, Facebook will be releasing a new look to your News Feed. The revision will make the News Feed cleaner, emphasize photos, and allow Facebook users greater control to customize their experience. Photos and mobile are the emphasis for Facebook since 50% of News Feed posts now contain a photo; up 25% from 2011. As mobile phone’s cameras continue to improve, sharing photos and videos are become even more of the focus on people’s Facebook posts.
Today you have the choice of viewing your News Feed by Top Stories or Most Recent. You can setup a few limited separate feeds for Close Friends or Friends from your college, but with very little customization. With the new revision, you will have much more control over what you see. They liken it to a personalized newspaper. Like a newspaper, the News Feed will feature a prominent ‘front page’ divided into a variety of new sections. Featured, in a menu, will be the option to filter your feed to receive content only from specific sources. These options include: All Friends, Music, Photos, Games, Close Friends, Following and any of your Interest lists. The Following sub-segment is what is most interesting for events. This is where people will be able to access information from pages they are following; which is mainly business pages, celebrity pages, and news.
The ability for the user to view just the news updates from pages they are following should give events and businesses more visibility. It will also place more importance on creating content that is engaging. Failure to keep the users engaged will result in the limited use of the ‘Following’ sub-segment of the News Feed and will result in dramatically less visibility and consequently traffic to event pages. With the better quality and highlighting of images, images will become more important to garnering user attention and generating traffic. This change will favor events able to create enticing, striking images able to better grab attention. Additionally, with the segmentation of News Feed, sponsored stories may become more important and more targeted as people will be able to navigate to specific News Feeds based on any of their interests.
Even with all the changes, the basics of social media with Twitter and Facebook really haven’t changed – deliver content relevant to your audience, use photos and videos to encourage engagement and sharing, and continue to realize that these are tools in the marketing toolbox that can be leveraged across your various efforts. Events, by their nature, have an advantage because there are so many things that people enjoy and experience when they are there in person and crave seeing when they are online. Now you have a few new tools to deliver those experiences online.