Bacon Theatre: Vibrant Events in a Unique Venue

In addition the theatre is available to hire for local community groups and providing a full programme of professional events. As a school based theatre, Bacon faces some unique challenges. We chatted with Bacon Theatre about their move to Ticketsolve.

What prompted you to review your ticketing solution?

We felt our previous system was outdated and inefficient, and our online booking facility was ridiculously expensive. We needed a way to offer a modern, online booking facility to our customers at a reasonable cost to us. As a professional venue running in conjunction with the school calendar, meant we needed a fully functioning, modern system - at an affordable cost with no minimum ticket sales imposed.

What features attracted you to Ticketsolve?

Our first impression was how current and user friendly the interface was, providing all the functionality we needed, as with other professional box office systems, without the fee guarantee. We could comfortably recoup our costs via reasonable booking fees to our customers.

What features/elements have you found to be particularly beneficial - specifically as a school based theatre?

As a school based venue, the ability to provide an occasional online box office facility to the school with no extra charge to us is a huge asset. The Ticketsolve system works efficiently and effectively and our customers are, very impressed. We are also able to analyse data a lot more accurately and, thus, make our target marketing more immediate. Equally, there is no need to manage our e-marketing mailing list because it is already integrated into the Ticketsolve database. We are also extremely happy with the selected e-marketing with MailChimp.

How has working with Ticketsolve impacted on your overall sales?

Since April 2013 our online sales have increased. August 2013 our online sales were 42% and in August 2014 these had increased to 53%.

Final Thoughts?

I couldn’t recommend Ticketsolve to other venues enough, especially school venues whose event calendars are likely to be more sporadic. They can experience the same quality ticketing solution and yet not be financially penalised by a the need for a monthly guaranteed fee.

It’s affordable, accessible and raises the quality of the booking experience for our customers, as well as our internal clients within the school.

I would be happy to speak to other school venues considering Ticketsolve as a future investible product.