Upselling merchandise and other products
Merchandise and additional products
When setting up an event, you may want to market and sell additional items as well as your tickets. This can also apply to a season pass, or a live stream or Video on Demand event. These additional items or products can be created under Ticket types, and you can sell them directly on your event page or you can attach them to tickets as upsells. Remember to apply the correct Category for your merchandise/products when setting up your item types.
Why upsell?
You may want to ask your customers whether they are interested in your additional products once they have already selected to purchase a ticket. Examples include:
👕 Offering your customers the chance to purchase a club t-shirt when they buy your season pass
📕 Asking your customers if they also want to buy a programme for your live streamed theatre production
🎥 Upselling some backstage access-all-areas Video on Demand content for your concert
You can upsell items in a few of different ways on the TicketCo platform. You can either use the upselling setting under Ticket types or you can use the Sharing tab. This article will take you through how you can use these features in order to upsell your products and merchandise in the best possible way.
Please note that you cannot use both features on the same item (if an item is registered as an upselling item under Ticket types, it will not be visible in the Sharing tab).
Purchase journey
When you set up an upselling item via each of the four ways outlined below, the purchaser will not necessarily see the upselling item on the event page (as in the image above), but rather, they will be shown a page like this after they have already selected to purchase another item:
The customer will be able to select the amount they wish to purchase before proceeding to the order summary and checkout.
If you have multiple upselling items, they will be arranged alphabetically on the page, and then sorted according to price.
Upselling items under Ticket types
This is perhaps the easiest way to set up an upselling item. The best application for this is if you are wanting to set up an upsell as a one-off, meaning that there is a specific product you want to upsell for a specific event. If you are just creating the upselling item for the one event, and are unlikely to upsell the item in various different contexts, then this is your best bet.
How do I set this up?
Find your event, and click Ticket types. You can now either set up your item if you have not already done so, or you can edit an item type you already have. Note that you may want your upselling item to be set up in another capacity so that you do not reduce your ticket capacity - more on ticket types and capacities here. Select Make upselling item and tick the tickets/items you want to connect your upsell to.
In the above example, we are essentially saying that we will upsell our item, "Club Scarf" every time the item "Adult ticket" is selected for purchase. You can then slick Save, and use Preview under Event Details to test out how the purchase process looks for your customers.
Note that when an item is marked as upselling on the ticket level, it will not appear on your main event page.
Upselling items under Sharing
If you are wanting to upsell the same item on various different events and ticket types, then you should use the Sharing feature. This saves you setting up multiple new item types in each of your events. You can use this feature to upsell any item that is already set up under Ticket types on any event.
You could set up a hidden event specifically in order to create a series of products ready for upselling. This is particularly useful for sports clubs, who will likely be selling the same merchandise to various different matches throughout the season. You can think of this upselling event almost as an online merchandise shop.
Sharing with tags
Once you have created the item that you want to upsell under Ticket types, let's say it is a scarf, you can select the Sharing tab.
Next, select the item you have set up, and then click Share with tags. You will then be able to input a key word which you will use to tag different ticket types which you wish to associate or "share" the item with.
- Enter the tag you want to use to identify this upselling item e.g. "clubscarf".
- Click Save.
- Navigate to the event and ticket type you want to connect this item with (or set them up if you have not already done so).
- Under the ticket type settings, go to +Tags and enter your tag, "clubscarf".
- This means that every time an item with the tag "clubscarf" is selected for purchase, the user will be offered the chance to purchase the Club Scarf item.
This can be very useful if you want to upsell different sizes/styles of item according to ticket type. If you have a kids t-shirt you want to upsell, you could use the tag "kidsshirt", and then every time you set up a new kids ticket in a new match or season pass, you can simply add "kidsshirt" under +Tags and your upsell will be ready to go!
Sharing items with events
Alternatively you may want to share a certain item with all ticket types on another event. This can be used to upsell tickets to upcoming events you currently have on sale.
To do this, head to Sharing and select the relevant item type, then you click Share with events.
You will then be shown a list of your current published events, and you can use checkbox on the right of each event to share your item with all tickets on the event. You can also select all events automatically by using the Share for All Events toggle. Click Save when you have selected all the events you want to share your item on.
Sharing items with ticket types
This works very similarly to sharing with events, except that you select Share with specific item types under Sharing.
This will show you a list of your published events and the item types on those events. You can then specify which specific items you want to upsell on. Maybe you only want to upsell the behind the scenes footage on your VIP tickets for example (although note that you could also do this via tags).
Reporting
You will find a summary of all purchases, including tickets and other merchandise or products under Report on the event page. These will also be reported as sales in the main Report tab, and on your organiser Dashboard. When selling food or clothing, you might need to ask you audience some questions e.g. food allergies or size, and you will find more about that here.
Preview
Once you have set up your upselling items, either under Ticket types or under Sharing, don't forget to preview the customer journey by using the Preview button under Event Details.
Congratulations! You can now start selling and upselling your merchandise!