To start selling tickets to your experiences to customers, you’ll need to set up Events and Instances in Spektrix.
This article introduces you to the concepts of Events and Instances in Spektrix. It is a general overview with use cases and examples to help you further understand things you’ll need to consider when setting up your organization’s Events and Instances. For further information on setting up, editing, updating and selling tickets to Events and Instances, follow the links provided in this article.
Before reading this article, make sure you’re familiar with:
VIDEO: If you're new to Events and Instances, take a look at our Events and Instances concept video.
What are Events and Instances?
In Spektrix, Events are the unique experiences your organization provides for your audiences to enjoy. Instances are the dates and times these experiences occur.
For example, an Event would be “The Book of Will” by Lauren Gunderson and the Instances would be the Friday 7pm performance and the Saturday 2pm performance.
About Events
An Event can be thought of as a “run,” “show” or “production” but can also be a post-event talk, members’ drinks reception, a workshop, a class or gallery entry.
An Event contains information such as Name, Description, Financial Target and Seat Target.
About Instances
An Instance can be thought of as a single performance or occurrence of the Event.
Each Instance contains information about its date and time. It also holds information about the tickets you’ll be selling to these specific occurrences.
This includes:
- Overall maximum capacity and how many tickets to make available for sale
- If there is reserved seating or the event is general admission
- The price of tickets and if they range by customer demographics, seat location or other factors
- When and where you can buy tickets and how they are delivered
About Events and Instances
An Event can have one or more Instances. For example, you might put on an open mic night every weekend for three months or host a one-day festival.
Instances across an Event can have the same or different details. For example, for a theater running an Event with several Instances can:
- Designate a few evening performances to include American Sign Language/British Sign Language interpreters or closed captioning
- Set different ticket prices for all matinee performances
- Host a member’s only performance with tickets that can only be purchased when calling the box office
- Sell tickets to a post-show dinner for the closing night
TIP: In Spektrix, you can link Events and Instances to other Events and Instances. These are known as Supplementary Events. Supplementary Events are upsold specifically to the main Event and Instances they are linked to.
For example, you can create a post-show dinner as a Supplementary Event. This will let you manage capacity and pricing separately from the main performance while also only suggesting this event to customers who purchase tickets for this specific instance.
Considerations for Setting Up Events and Instances
How you set up your Events and Instances is entirely up to your organization. When thinking about how you'd like to set up your experiences, consider the buying experience of your audience and the reporting requirements for your organization.
This section is designed to help you think about the different ways you can configure Events and Instances in Spektrix. We’ve included examples of different types of events and the considerations to be made when setting them up.
For example:
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Art Gallery
If your organization is an art gallery, daily admission can be set up as a single Instance by day or multiple Instances by each hour.
While creating Instances with admission by the hour may help manage capacity for popular exhibitions, daily admission may be better managed with daily Instances.
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Travelling Show
If your organization tours across multiple venues in a city, you can create separate Events for each venue or create a single Event with Instances for every performance.
However, a customer may find it easier to select their preferred show by venue first, which may be better managed with separate Events for each venue.
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Weekly Open Mic Nights
If your organization hosts open mic nights every weekend, you can set up each open mic night as its own Event and Instance or as a single Event for the season or year with all open mic nights as separate Instances under the Event.
Your organization may want to report on event revenue by the season and so you could create a Fall-Winter Event and Spring-Summer Event, adding each open mic night as an Instance to the corresponding Event. This will let you list open mic nights by season but will also let you report on each Instance separately.
Selling Tickets to Event Instances
Tickets are sold at the Event Instance level. A customer online or Sales User in Spektrix must select an Event and an Instance before purchasing a Ticket.
TIP: There are different ways you can streamline the buying process. For example, recommending similar Events at checkout, including a Supplementary Event, designing your website to instantly add more tickets to the Basket/Cart with a click of a button and/or using Spektrix’s built-in audience loyalty features, for example, Offers and Subscriptions.
Audience Loyalty Features
While setting up your Events and Instances determine how single tickets are purchased, your Event and Instance setup can also determine how tickets can be sold through Spektrix’s audience loyalty features.
For example, you can:
- Specify certain Events as eligible for Multibuy Offers, where customers can get discounts when buying Tickets to multiple Instances
- Select a group of Instances for use with Ticket Subscriptions, where customers can prepay for Ticket Vouchers and redeem them at a later date
- Choose specific Events and Instances for a Fixed Series Subscription, where customers can purchase Tickets and hold Seat rights for each Instance in the series
Getting Started with Events and Instances
Events and Instances are interdependent. You cannot sell Tickets to an Event without setting up an Instance.
Some information required for setting up an Event or Instance is mandatory.
This next section will introduce you briefly to the elements that are needed to complete setup and start selling. Some of these elements are created and set up before setting up your Events and Instances.
TIP: Some elements, for example, Seating Plans, are created and set up before setting up your Events and Instances. Seating Plans can be reused across several different Events and Instances.
Tickets and Pricing
Instances hold information about tickets and pricing.
Spektrix offers the flexibility for your organization to assign a range of prices for each Instance. For example, you may want to charge a higher price for Premium Seats or charge less for customers over the age of 65.
The range of prices is found on a Price List in Spektrix, a chart that determines a Ticket’s base Price based on two elements: Ticket Types and Price Bands.
These elements determine the price at which tickets are sold:
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Ticket Types: Ticket Types are categories for your Tickets. They are often distinguished by audience demographics and can determine the channels that Tickets are sold through and how the Tickets can be delivered.
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Price Bands: Price Bands are how you group your Tickets based on pricing levels. In a reserved Seating Plan, Price Bands also offer a visual indicator of different groups of pricing.
- Price Lists: Every Instance has one Price List which determines the Price of each Ticket sold. A Price List is a chart where all available Ticket Types and Price Bands for the Instance are listed on each axis. On the chart, the point at which the two elements intersect is the Ticket’s base Price (including taxes but not including fees, commissions, or added Donations).
A Price List can’t be created without selecting your Ticket Types and Price Bands first. The combination of both Ticket Type and Price Band determine the price of each Ticket.
The exact Price a Ticket is sold for depends on:
- The assigned Price Band of the Seat the customer selects
- The Ticket Type the customer selects for that Seat
For more information on tickets and pricing elements in Spektrix, read Introduction to Tickets and Pricing.
Seating Plans
In Spektrix, a Seating Plan refers to the capacity of an Instance along with several factors that may affect your audience’s experience of both purchasing tickets and attending the Instance.
For example, this could look like a floor plan that displays:
- How many seats are actually available and their location
- The pricing levels of each individual seat
- If any seats are locked or held for specific customers
A Seating Plan should always have the maximum capacity available. Additional factors are determined by Seating Plan Overlays which are applied to the base Seating Plan.
There are three main configurations for a base Seating Plan:
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Reserved: A Reserved Seating Plan holds the maximum number of available Seats on a single screen, called an Area. These Seats are arranged visually to match your seating map or floor plan.
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Unreserved: An Unreserved Seating Plan holds the maximum number of available Seats but without a visual seating map or floor plan. This plan has a single screen, also called an Area, where a customer can specify the number of tickets they’d like to purchase.
- Multi-area: A Multi-area Seating Plan holds all available Seats across several screens or Areas. Each of the Areas can be either Reserved or Unreserved. A Multi-area Seating Plan can be multiple Reserved Areas, multiple Unreserved Areas or a mixture of both. This configuration is often used for large venues, general admission with different pricing levels and capacities or mixed general admission and Reserved Seating.
For more information, read Introduction to Seating Plans.
Seating Plan Overlays
After a base Seating Plan is selected for an Instance, you can select Seating Plan Overlays for each Area:
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Layout Overlay: A Layout Overlay manages the available capacity for the Instance. For example, you can use a Layout Overlay to hide seats if you have reconfigured your theatre to remove the front row for a specific show.
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Price Band Overlay: A Price Band Overlay assigns the pricing level, or Price Band, to each individual Seat or Ticket, which together with the Price List, is used to determine its Price. In a Reserved Seating Plan or Area, different colors are applied to the Seats to represent the Price Bands. An Unreserved Seating Plan or Area can only have one Price Band in its Price Band Overlay.
- Lock Overlay: A Lock Overlay assigns Locks (also known as holds or kills) to specific Seats. In a Reserved Seating Plan or Area, a Lock icon may be placed on these Seats and may prevent ineligible Customers from buying them. In an Unreserved Seating Plan or Area, the Lock Overlay allocates a number of Locks.
Other seating elements and Seating Plan Overlays include Seat Attributes, View from Seat, Info Overlay and Best Available Overlay.
For more information, read Introduction to Seating Plan Overlays.
Updating Instances
At the time of setup, there are certain details and information that are required to start selling Tickets to your Events and Instances. However, you can edit and update your Instance without creating a new one at any time.
You can edit and update Instances individually or in bulk by using the Bulk Instance Updater Tool (if the updates are the same across the Instances).
Be aware there are certain updates that can affect current and future sales of your Events.
Rescheduling and Canceling Instances
There may be times where you may need to reschedule or cancel an Event or Instance. Spektrix provides guidance on how to reschedule Instances and cancel Events, which includes information on disabling sales, communicating with customers, regenerating tickets, issuing refunds and/or reporting on losses.
Take a look at the following articles:
Additional Considerations for Setting Up Events and Instances
We understand that there are lots to think about when preparing to put an event on sale.
For example, you may also want to:
- Add extra information about Events and Instances online or to Sales Users
- Set up Instances to be available on your website
- Recommend or upsell tickets to related Events
- Sell subscriptions to multiple Events
- Communicate with customers who’ve booked multiple tickets
- Report on Event revenue
It’s important to consider these aspects at the time of setup as how your Events and Instances are set up can affect other parts of your Spektrix system.
For more information, read the following articles:
- Introduction to Attributes
- Introduction to Web Integrations
- Global and Local Segments
- Introduction to Reporting
What's Next?
This article introduced the concepts of Events and Instances as well as other related concepts in Spektrix.
We recommend continuing learning about these concepts in detail before setting up your Events and Instances:
If you’re ready to set up your Events and Instances, take a look at: