Eventbrite Shares New Research on How to Turn Social Sharing into Sales

PYMNTS.com: How does Eventbrite enable payments?

TAMARA MENDELSOHN: Kevin Hartz, our Co-Founder and CEO, has always been interested in facilitating transactions. He was an early investor in PayPal, and he later went on to found Xoom Corporation, an international money transfer company, servicing more than 30 countries worldwide. In keeping with this fascination with payments, Kevin built Eventbrite to offer friction-free payment processing for event organizers of every type and size. Whereas an organizer of a yoga class may have originally collected registrations by e-mail and collected checks at the door, now Eventbrite makes it easy for that organizer to collect payments by credit card online. We offer organizers the ability to use PayPal, Google Checkout and our own in-house credit card processing.

With Eventbrite, anyone can create an event page, tap into social media for promotion, sell tickets and collect RSVPs. We offer custom analytic tools that help event organizers gain insight into attendee behavior. And Eventbrite makes check-in at the door easy with a free entry management app for the iPhone.

PYMNTS: What types of events drive the most payments and purchases, and why?

MENDELSOHN: What’s great about Eventbrite is how flexible it is. We are literally working with organizers who are bringing together handfuls of people, while at the same time, ticketing events that bring in tens of thousands of attendees. Kevin and Julia founded Eventbrite with the goal of democratizing the ticketing landscape, which means offering the same powerful tools to organizers of events big and small.

What we documented in our most recent social commerce report is the differences in sharing habits across verticals, and the ticket sales that those shares drive. While we found that attendees to professional events and conferences share the most, we also found that shares for concerts generate the most additional ticket sales – an average of $12 per share.

What are some of the meaningful differences between social network platforms, especially when it comes to driving payments and purchases?

We found that a Facebook share drives the most transaction value. We believe that this is a reflection of the strength of connections on Facebook and how closely they mirror real world relationships. You are more likely to attend and event if you know a friend is going to be there. That said, this does vary across different events. Event organizers should identify where their audience is engaging – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere and make that the target for their efforts.

What other payments-related initiatives, social commerce and otherwise, will Eventbrite be pursuing in the near future?

We will continue to test, track and iterate on how we integrate social media into the ticket discovery and purchase experience to maximize sales for event organizers and help people discover the great events that are happening around them.

We will also be exploring how to help event organizers easily collect credit card payments on the day of their event from walk-up attendees.

How was Eventbrite’s approach to social commerce crafted, and why has Eventbrite decided to make social commerce a focus point?

MENDELSOHN: In 2008, we began to see Facebook popping up in the list of referring site traffic. We realized that this was caused by event organizers copying their Eventbrite event details into Facebook events with a link back to the Eventbrite page to register and inviting their Facebook friends to attend. People were clicking on the link in Facebook and coming to Eventbrite to register. We also saw that more and more people were posting to Facebook the Eventbrite events that they had bought tickets to and encouraging their friends to join them. We accelerated this behavior by integrating social sharing into the Eventbrite platform and testing and optimizing the implementation and call to action. We’ve found that the result is true and measureable social commerce: transactions that are driven by sharing through social networks.

By fostering social commerce on Eventbrite, we’re tapping into a natural desire that attendees have to share event information (as opposed to prescribing a new habit). By building social sharing into the product, we’re making it easy for people to invite their friends to join them when they go to an event. And our customers stand to benefit from this meaningful, organic promotion. What our analytics allows us to do is track the results of this sharing at an exceptionally granular level.

When we take a look at different types of sharing, we can actually ascribe dollar amounts to the ticket sales that each share generates. Here are those stats:

 

–    Facebook aggregate share = $2.52 in ticket sales

–    Tweet = $.80 in ticket sales

–    LinkedIn = $.90 in ticket sales

–   A Facebook “like” drives an average of $1.34 in ticket sales

Over the last six months, we found that sharing through Facebook was 10 times more likely to occur on the order confirmation page (post-purchase) than on the event page (pre-purchase). This tells us that the motivation to share is higher once the purchase is made, and the attendee is committed. Not only is the motivation to share post-purchase higher, that share is more meaningful than a pre-purchase one. A post-purchase share on Facebook drives 20 percent more ticket sales per share than a pre-purchase one.

PYMNTS: What are some of the meaningful differences between social network platforms, especially when it comes to driving payments and purchases?

MENDELSOHN: We found that a Facebook share drives the most transaction value. We believe that this is a reflection of the strength of connections on Facebook and how closely they mirror real world relationships. You are more likely to attend and event if you know a friend is going to be there. That said, this does vary across different events. Event organizers should identify where their audience is engaging – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere and make that the target for their efforts.

PYMNTS: What other payments-related initiatives, social commerce and otherwise, will Eventbrite be pursuing in the near future?

MENDELSOHN: We will continue to test, track and iterate on how we integrate social media into the ticket discovery and purchase experience to maximize sales for event organizers and help people discover the great events that are happening around them.

We will also be exploring how to help event organizers easily collect credit card payments on the day of their event from walk-up attendees.

Bio: Tamara Mendelsohn, Director of Marketing

Tamara loves live music events and tech events focused on positive social change. She leads marketing for Eventbrite; focusing on customer acquisition, retention, and branding. She is passionate about spreading the good word for Eventbrite and the magic of bringing people together through events. She is equally obsessed with the power of social media and believes that technology changes everything.

Prior to Eventbrite, Tamara was a senior analyst with Forrester Research, an independent technology research and consulting firm. As an expert on eCommerce technology, multichannel retail, and trends in how consumers integrate technology into shopping, Tamara authored research reports and worked with both retailers and technology vendors to help them shape their strategies. She spoke regularly at industry events, sat on the advisory boards of several industry associations, and has been quoted in top newspapers and journals.

Tamara is a graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management and received her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and economics from Wellesley College.