Understanding Your Event Ticketing Reports and Stats

When you first dive into your event ticketing reports, you may see some strange language. Between phrases like Box Office Distribution and Marketing, it can seem more like an alien language than a report stuffed with helpful statistics and info.

Don’t worry! It’s perfectly normal to get a little confused when you see these words for the first time. Today, we will break down all of those strange words and get to the point.

This is Event Ticketing Reports Demystified.

Distribution reports

Distribution is the process of making something available to those who need it. So, for event marketers, distribution is how you are selling your tickets. You’ll often see this described as a “distribution channel” — which is referring to a single method of distribution. So, your front doors are a distribution channel.

And your website is another distribution channel. Most event marketers have a few different distribution channels that they leverage to sell tickets.

When you look through stats or reports, you’ll likely see this referencing how well specific channels are doing. So, if online distribution is doing 71% better than in-person distribution, you know to funnel more money to your digital campaigns.

Metrics (or KPIs) related to distribution:

• Registration by ticket type: This helps you track which ticket types are selling the best (adult, VIP pass, group tickets, etc.).
  
  
• Return on Investment (ROI): This is simply how much you sold in tickets vs. how much the entire event cost you. Remember, you’ll need to include sponsorships.
  
  
• Gross revenue: How much money did you make in ticket sales?
  
  
• Number of customers acquired: This is your total number of customers acquired from these sales.
  
   

Guest lists

Most of you probably know what a guest list is. It’s merely a list of all the people you have invited to your event. 

Tracking your guest list helps you understand several critical things. First, it helps you track targeted ticket sales. Second, it gives you insights into how many comp tickets you gave out and how many people to expect at-the-door.

Metrics (or KPIs) related to your guest list:

• Event check-ins: You can compare your guest list to your total number of check-ins. Why? Big discrepancies between the two usually signify something is off. If you have lots of registrations on your guest list, but many of them aren’t showing up, you have an issue. You’re losing people somewhere between registration and the front doors.
  
  
• Total registrations: Your guest list is all of the people you invite to your event. You can compare it to how many people register. This will give you an idea of how strong your buyer’s persona is.

Tip: If you have a Purplepass account, you can use your guest list for easy ticket giveaways to boost ticket sales and other marketing tactics. 

Box office stats

Your box office is the place where you are selling tickets at-the-door of your event. Now, some of you may not have a box office. We always recommend allowing purchases “at the gate,” but that’s completely up to you. There are tons of metrics that accompany your box office. It’s your last line of defense and your Hail Mary.

Tip: Make sure that you’re keeping everything organized at the box office for quicker admissions!

Metrics (or KPIs) related to your box office:

• Total tickets sold: Your box office + your pre-sells are your total number of tickets sold.
  
  
• Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI): Alright. You don’t really know how well your marketing campaigns went until you get that total number of tickets sold. Once you have that, you can calculate your gross revenue and ROI from each distribution channel and compare it to your spend in each channel.

Attendance rates

This is the number of people that are showing up for your event. So, if you invited 500 people, but only 250 showed up, you have a 50% attendance rate. And that’s not as rare as you would think. Free events often see attendance rates that hover around 50% because there is no commitment. 

Your attendance rate is huge. It’s a good measure of the overall non-financial success of your event. After all, an event with only half of its seats filled probably wasn’t your goal, right?

Metrics (or KPIs) related to attendance rate:

• Number of returning attendees: Once you’ve calculated your attendance rate, you can start to see who showed up and why. Look for those return attendees; they’re great assets.
  
  
• Overall marketing success: This isn’t a hard metric. But, your attendance rate can give you insights into how well ALL of your marketing strategies are doing. Marketing isn’t just about the sales; it’s about the nurturing.

Audience geography reports

Geography simply refers to where your attendees are coming from - most people can put that together.

This will give you insights that will help you improve your marketing campaigns in the future in regards to knowing who to target. If you notice you have a ton of people from Nebraska, it may be worth targeting more Nebraskans.

Metrics (or KPIs) related to geography:

There aren’t any hyper-specific KPIs relating to geography. Instead, you can use it to create heat maps and do geolocation/geotargeting marketing (learn more below).

Marketing reports

Your marketing reports are filled with data to help you analyze your marketing campaigns.

So, if you want to know how well your Facebook campaigns are doing (how much you’re spending vs. how many new customers you’re getting) you can get a marketing report to give you those insights. These can be as complex or as simple as they need to be. It will depend on your goals and current running campaigns. 

Metrics (or KPIs) related to marketing reports:

• Social media engagement: How many people are engaging with your brand and ads on social media? These are likes, comments, mentions, etc.
  
  
• Social media mentions: How many people are specifically mentioning your brand? This is a good indicator of social success and buzz. 
  
  
• Cost to revenue: How much are you spending on marketing and the event itself vs. how much you are making in revenue. You can granularize this by saying marketing cost vs. marketing revenue.
  
  
• Marketing ROI (MROI): This is simply the ROI for your marketing campaigns.

Tracking coupon codes

Your coupon codes are definitely something you want to track. Who used them? Where did they use them? And how did they get the coupon code?

It gives you huge insights into your marketing campaigns. And, if you put coupons out, you’ll have a variety of customers using them. 90% of consumers use coupons. And 40% of consumers actually feel smart when they find a coupon.

Metrics (or KPIs) related to coupon codes:

• Revenue by promo code: This lets you track each promo code’s ROI. And it shows you where customers are using them — giving you marketing insights.
  
  

Learn more about the benefits of offering coupon codes for your event and how to create them using your Purplepass account below.

Ticketing and event management reporting

Purplepass offers a full range of reporting options to give you complete feedback on your event ticketing. 

• Ticket Sales
• Distribution 
• Marketing
• Social Marketing 
• Geography
• Attendance
• Coupon Codes
• Guest List 
• Box Office
• and more! 

You can also build your own custom reporting, full accounting, charges and event statements, as well as real-time sales alerts. To learn more about the different event management reporting options, you can request a free demo here.