A discount code sounds like giving money away. Used well, it does the opposite. It gives people a reason to buy now, rewards the people who bring others along, and tells you exactly where your sales are coming from.
Good reasons to use a discount code
Rewarding your community. Past guests, members of a club or alumni of your programme are more likely to buy and to bring friends. A code just for them makes them feel valued.
Tracking partners and promoters. Give each performer, influencer or partner their own code. When sales come in, you can see which codes were used, so you know who actually sold tickets, not just who had the most followers.
Groups and students. A code for students, a staff group or a company sending several people lets you offer a lower price to specific people without lowering it for everyone.
A final push. If sales are slow a week before the event, a short, limited code can bring in buyers who were waiting.
Reasons to be careful
A code that ends up everywhere becomes your real price. If people learn that there's always a discount, they'll wait for it. Give every code a purpose, and limit it.
How discount codes work on revel
You create codes from your event's Discounts tab, and they're free on every plan. A code can take a percentage or a fixed amount off, and it can apply to all your paid tickets or just some of them. You can also set dates and a limit on how many times it can be used.
The discount comes off the ticket price. The service fee stays the same as it would be at full price. A 100% code makes the ticket itself free, which is useful for guests, press or partners, but buyers still pay the service fee if you've chosen that buyers pay it.
You can share a link with the code already filled in by adding ?code= and your code to the end of your checkout link. That's useful for a partner's story or a message to your mailing list, because buyers don't have to type anything.
Setting limits that work
Limit the uses. "The first 50 people" creates urgency and caps what it costs you.
Set an end date. A code that ends on Friday gives people a reason to buy before Friday.
Limit the tickets. Apply a code to your regular ticket but not to VIP, or to a single ticket type you want to sell more of.
Name codes clearly. A code like TOLU10 for a partner called Tolu, or ALUMNI for past guests, makes your sales report easy to read later.
Measure the results
After the event, look at which codes were used and how many tickets each one sold. A partner whose code sold 40 tickets is worth working with again. One whose code sold none might be better suited to a different kind of event. Over time, that tells you where to spend your promotion budget.
