New Revenue from a New Source

Local media learn to leverage the power of local ticketing to expand existing partnerships and build new relationships that increase business.

The Jacksonville Challenge

Jacksonville Magazine sought a way to expand its community building through making new connections, establishing new partnerships, and strengthening existing partnerships. As a lifestyle magazine that is highly involved with publicizing events in Jacksonville, especially for nonprofits and fundraisers, the publisher was well aware that traditionally, audiences discover events from their local media—but then to purchase tickets, they are redirected to a national ticket sales provider.

Using Evvnt, Jacksonville Magazine now offers tickets to their readers, just like the national companies—and they didn’t have to develop their own software or figure out a successful process. They keep the ticketing process in the local community. And they keep the fees.

Plus Jacksonville Magazine has been able to collect email addresses of readers, building engagement with its audience.

Jacksonville Magazine Results to Date

• 174 New clients (organizations and events using ticketing services)
• 14,000+ New emails equating to 350% increase
• 194,000 New users online

“There are huge benefits of creating and building these partnerships and long-term relationships with these organizations through the 904TIX portal. Even if an organization decides not to use the portal, we continue to work with them on some other level, such as advertising, for example. So the Evvnt solution has been a boon to our community involvement and extending the reach we already have.”

—Mandy Niesen, Event Coordinator/904TIX, Jacksonville Magazine

The MyNorth | Traverse Magazine Challenge

MyNorth Media had been a print/digital media company for 28 years when 2008 hit. The company’s strategy included increasing efforts in both print and digital, and launching several new products in an effort to find new advertising streams. At the same time, founder and President Deb Fellows, took a look at the audience the company was still attracting and the content it was still producing and asked, “Could we sell our audience something directly that they intend to buy and are buying from someone else?”

MyNorth | Traverse Magazine built its successful local ticket division with one customer support/social media person who is paid $37,000 per year, and about 40% of an existing salesperson’s time, who gets 10% on ticket fees.

MyNorth produces absolutely the same content, although ticketing has opened doors to new events. The customer service staffer meets weekly with the web editor and calendar editor to be sure upcoming events are getting exposure online, in newsletters, in print and more, with Buy Tickets Now buttons on every piece of relevant content.

In three years Traverse Magazine built MyNorthTickets to 180 organizations, 145,000 tickets sold per year, over a quarter million dollars in brand new revenue annually, two new monthly ticketing/event newsletters worth about $70,000 annually and 53,000 new email addresses (that we were actually paid to get). And it is all centered on selling the value of its brand, its products and its audience.

MyNorth | Traverse Magazine Annual Results

• 180 Organizations Ticketing per year
• 145,000 tickets sold per year
• 53,000 New email addresses
• $250,000+ in new revenue annually
• $70,000 New ad sales, primarily with two new email newsletters

What’s the Opportunity Beyond Traverse City and Jacksonville?

Local ticketing has been so successful for MyNorthTickets that in the fall of 2016, MyNorth began approaching other local media companies around the country, as Evvnt.

Now in 50 cities, Evvnt is partnering with local media companies around the country to help local media use their audience, content and brand to open a huge new market. Local ticketing is rooted in the local media company’s brand and mission and each sale opens up opportunities beyond ticketing with local organizations.

Unlike many of the opportunities offered to local media companies, local ticketing does not require local media to sell other companies’ products (such as Google) for a small piece of the sale and in the process, build someone else’s brand. Ticketing also collects an email address, allowing local media to start a conversation with their audience, instead of chasing them around the Internet, far away from their brands, hoping to connect.

In addition to sharing the MyNorthTickets best practices, Evvnt built a community of local media companies participating in ticketing and sharing what works in their markets with each other. The result is the successful implementation of new ideas nimbly, nationwide, benefitting every Evvnt partner.

Local ticketing allows local media to have a successful relationship with a customer, make money doing it and end up with an email address to start a dialogue.