Before you announce
- Lock the venue and the date before the page goes up. A moved date costs you more goodwill than a late announcement.
- Decide your refund policy honestly. Write the one you will actually honour at 2pm on the day, not the generous one.
- Get one genuinely good photograph. It is the single asset doing the most work in every listing.
- Buy and refund a ticket to your own event. Five minutes, and it finds what reading the page does not.
Pricing the room
- Price for the room you have, not the room you want. An empty premium tier reads worse than a full cheap one.
- Early bird is a deadline, not a discount. Its job is to convert the people who were going to come anyway, early enough to tell you whether this is working.
- Absorb fees on your cheapest tier if you can. That is where a few percent changes minds.
- Watch the first 48 hours. They predict the shape of the whole sale better than anything else you have.
While it is on sale
- Give every channel its own promo code, so you learn which ones actually sell.
- Announce in waves. A second tier opening is a reason to post again without repeating yourself.
- Do not extend early bird. Doing it once teaches everyone that your deadlines are decorative.
- If it is not selling, change something visible — the image, the headline, the price — rather than posting the same thing again.
The night itself
- Brief the door before doors. Who scans, who handles problems, who calls you.
- Test one real scan while there is still signal.
- More battery, more chargers. Every time.
- Guest list through the guest list, not a 100% promo code.
Afterwards
- Message ticket holders within a day, while it is still fresh. Thank them and tell them what is next.
- Compare tickets sold against people scanned. The gap between them is your real no-show rate, and it should shape the next capacity.
- Write down what broke while you still remember it.
- Ask for reviews from the people who came. They are what convinces the next room.