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Performing Arts Festivals
An Integrated Experience
Modern performing arts festivals are presented with a host of challenges; one of the larger ones being providing a completely integrated experience for your company, patrons, participants and partners. Different solutions provide pieces to this vast puzzle, but trying to get them all working in concert usually requires an IT department, a resource not usually available to us.
This is why we built Stagey. When we launched our first festival there were no tools that provided a single login to manage tickets, registrations, applications, ads, patrons, venues, press, and volunteers. And the tools out there were generic and not designed for our industry.
After over ten years of improvements and responding to the needs of a very active festival community, we are happy to share the fruits of our labor with you in the hope that you can benefit from the success that helped us succeed in a complex, digital landscape.
Manage Festivals
Stagey provides the top level insights so your tech solution isn’t just a bunch of shows created on a generic ticketing platform, it’s an integrated relationship of shows, patrons, participants, venues, sponsors and volunteers all centered around the festival you are producing right now.
Everyone involved in your festival will use a single login to access all the tools and resources you want to provide. You can empower stakeholders with their own suite of tools. Venues can handle booking, Participants can handle pricing, Admins (that’s you) can monitor all from a set of dashboards and set the rules governing your event.
Stagey makes this all possible and we are here to support you through every step.
Manage Registrations & Applications
Whether you charge a registration fee to participate, charge an application fee to be considered or some combination of both, Stagey can fit your model of festival. Stagey supports multiple festival models including open access, curated, lottery, bring your own venue, managed venue and hybrid venues.
Empower Participants & Venues
Stagey’s unique model allows you to pass on the administration of your festival to your venues and participants.
Participants can optionally manage performances, prices, press releases, discount codes, price levels and more. Participants will also be able to run their own reports, view feeds of data, control reviews, upload media, control marketing text, manage casts and production teams, communicate with patrons and so much more.
Venues can accept applications, book shows, manage schedules and box office, manage production teams, post marketing text and media and much more.
But it’s more than a simple list of features, it’s the feeling that your festival is a cohesive, branded whole with all stakeholders working in concert. This is how your event grows and thrives: multiple parties all working around the same goal.
Virtual Performances
In these uncertain times, your tech solution needs to support streaming solutions as a hedge against unforeseen events that directly impact the performing arts. Stagey supports both Venue-based and Virtual ticketed performances.
Our Virtual framework works with all the major streaming providers. Your patrons will be alerted when a streamed performance is about to begin and pass through your site to confirm a ticket was purchased. You can even see who actually attended a stream show with virtual box office reporting.
Simultaneously streaming a performance in front of a live audience? Stagey supports that, too.
Sell Tickets & Control Your Own Money
Stagey offers a suite of tools to sell and market tickets for your shows: manage pricing models for each performance, create discount codes, price levels, comps and more to attract patrons.
All money collected is added to your Stripe Account; there’s no middle person between you and your funds. You can even add your own service fees on top of the pricing to raise additional cash from your ticket sales.
All your money is automatically transferred directly to your company’s bank accounts via your Stripe settlement.
Schedules
Events large and small need to present a schedule of events. As your event grows, you need to provide more and more tools to make your offerings discoverable.
And tools we have! Patrons can browse shows by category, reviews, venue, tags and filters. Our favorites feature allows patrons to save the shows they want to see.
Our branded mobile app to provide even more “on the ground” resources for your patrons to find shows they’d like to see. What’s near and next? That’s a big question for larger festivals; this is where our mobile app shines.
Memberships
You have the ability to sell memberships through your website that provide discounts on services you provide. For example, anyone who purchases a membership to your festival could receive $1 off all tickets (you set the amount). You can also sell a membership that allows a member to purchase as many tickets as they like.
Additionally, you have the ability to provide your members discounts on ads sold through your site.
Certify Press
Members of the press can submit their credentials to your company. Once certified, they are added to your press list and can receive various benefits that provide them access to cover whatever you are producing. You can publish press releases for each show you produce.
Reviews
Many participants join festivals to build up their arsenal of reviews; “pull quotes” are what help your artists thrive as they move on from your event. Especially in larger events, your patrons need help determining which shows match their taste or mood.
As an optional feature, Stagey has a robust review system that prompts patrons to share their thoughts about a given show. As a performance ends, an email will be sent out asking patrons to submit their reviews through the website. Reviews can be tagged with words that the patron would use to describe the show.
And to ensure that valid reviews are front-and-center, some reviews will be marked as “certified”. This means that the reviewer purchased a ticket through the website; this separates valid reviews from spam or reviews from an admiring family member hundreds of miles away.
Show administrators have the option of manually certifying reviews if the patrons purchased a ticket at the door of the venue.
Reports and Patron Relationships
To be successful, performing arts festivals need to keep audiences coming back and foster a community around the events you present. It isn’t just about that one show their friend was in, we want to hook them into enjoying all the offerings we have in store. To achieve this goal, you must first know who your audience is and what they like. Enter Stagey’s reporting tools...
Stagey includes a suite of reports to provide you with the intelligence you need to make key decisions. Some examples:
- Unique landing pages for each patron so you know exactly the many ways any given community member has interacted with your company
- Downloadable reports with special tools to track who attended what performance, show, season or event
- Show, Performance and Festival Metrics to track tickets sold, performances produced, revenue earned and business insights on who attended what.
- Pie charts, Line charts, graphs and tables that provide a visual dashboard that can drive decision making.
Sell Ads
Ads are a unique source of additional income that can be a big revenue generator for your festival. Many festivals have had great success providing its participants with special ad pricing to attract patrons to their shows.
Stagey provides a framework to create and present online ads. Levels can be created for Online ads that represent the amount of “impressions” the user is buying. An impression is a single view of an ad on your site; online ad owners can view how many times a given ad was viewed or clicked. Renewals emails are sent out when the number of impressions is running low.
© 2022, Stagey, LLC