How Kansas Used Social Media to Boost Ticket Sales

I am excited to introduce Chris Lansdell--he is the Director of Gameday Experience at Kansas University. Follow him on Twitter @chrislansdell. I asked Chris to write a guest blog about an innovative program KU uses to promote ticket sales via social media called "KU Web Wednesdays." Hope you enjoy. Leave a comment below and let him know what a good job he did!

Our most successful effort to sell tickets via social media was the “KU Web Wednesdays” promotion. The promotion was designed as a series of one-day only offers promoted through Facebook, Twitter and our weekly email newsletter. At the time, the combination of the three platforms gave us the ability to reach approximately 85,000 potential customers. Fans were directed to use a promotional code, KUWW, on our online ticket office to take advantage of each week’s offer. Between August 2009 and February 2010 the promotion generated 14,665 single game ticket sales. Below are a few tips to be successful with this type of promotion.

1. Get People Talking

Before the first KUWW promotion we posted messages to Twitter and Facebook such as, “It’s Coming! . . .#KUWW” and “Less than 24 hours to go . . . #KUWW”. This may seem a little hokey but it got people talking about the promotion before we officially launched it. Posters on Facebook and Twitter spent several days guessing what KUWW meant. One fan started a thread on a popular KU message board about the promotion. This led to a response from another poster that said, “probably something to do with fan appreciation day, but they’ve got you wondering and posting so they’ve already won the marketing battle.” The poster was wrong about fan appreciation day but was right about our motive!

2. Make it Exclusive and Limited

As mentioned earlier our reach was about 85,000 people, not taking into account any duplicates among the three platforms. But the offers were still pretty exclusive considering that Facebook, Twitter and the email newsletter were the only place we posted details of the promotion. The only way to access the offers from the online ticket office was to click the promotions button and enter KUWW. Each offer was valid only on Wednesday from 9:00 AM to 11:59 PM local time.

3. Offer a Variety of Deals

We started by offering discounted tickets to non-conference football games for the first few weeks. Moving forward we expanded our offerings to several sports. For example, buy a single-game ticket to one sport and receive a ticket for another sport free and three game packs for a discounted price.

4. Look for Opportunities

One of the keys to the success of the promotion was looking for tickets that could be sold in this manner that we may not sell otherwise. Excess basketball tickets when students who normally fill the arena were out of town on winter break were a great source for KUWW promotions. One neutral-site Saturday basketball game was presenting a problem with lower and mid level seats being sold out but third level seats not moving. With hardly any sales for the $30 tickets for over two weeks leading up to the game we offered them for just $10 on the Wednesday before the game. In the 15 hours that the promotion was active we moved over 1,000 tickets ensuring a full arena for the game.

5. Be Interactive

No discussion on social media is complete without stressing the importance of being interactive. When you see someone responding to your message on Facebook or Twitter with excitement about scoring tickets to a game be sure to take the time to thank them and wish them an enjoyable experience. People get almost as excited about being recognized and replied to as they do about getting the actual tickets.