Many restaurants host various events – business breakfasts, business dinners, or parties. And they always face two different tasks. The first is to make ticket sales as convenient as possible and to save money. And the second is how to gather people for events.
Usually, restaurateurs go one of two ways. The first is either getting a link to a payment service like Stripe and then manually preparing guest lists, finding them at the entrance, and checking them off. This slows things down significantly and doesn’t look very good. Or the second option, for larger events like parties, they turn to ticket sales aggregators. However, they have a significant drawback – they take a percentage from 5 to 15% of the ticket sales, even if they only provide the platform and not the buyers.
Therefore, the most ideal way to sell tickets is to sell them on a website and through a messenger bot. At 7loc, we solve these problems, making it very convenient to create different types of tickets like regular items in a store and set up processing rules so that the buyer automatically receives an electronic ticket via email on the portal or even in their favorite messenger.
At 7Loc, we don’t charge percentages for used or purchased tickets. Businesses only have a subscription fee, significantly reducing the budget.
Now let’s discuss the more important task of gathering an audience for this party. First and foremost, I’ll start with a small technical thing: our customers, on a daily basis, are not, roughly speaking, on the internet. They mainly live in messengers. So if you’re selling tickets, give them a very convenient tool, right in the same messenger where you communicate with your guests, the opportunity to buy a ticket and, if possible, deliver it directly to the messenger, bypassing emails.
This is very convenient for the buyer. It opens up absolutely new possibilities for how you can gather an audience. The key here is always two factors. The first is how to gather an audience now and how to gather an audience for future events, which is significantly more important. Therefore, the best option is when we gather an audience in a way that we can communicate with them. In the modern world, this can only be done in messengers.
Buyers can share your events with friends in messengers, and if their friends buy tickets and use them, they immediately receive some cashback. Cashback can be in the form of bonuses that these same people can use at your restaurant or when purchasing future tickets. Essentially, it remains a marketing tool and does not require any special action on your part, in terms of legislation or taxation.
In my practice, I’ve used two referral schemes. One is when we build a multi-level marketing system, where a buyer recommends your establishment to another buyer, and that person recommends it to their group, and everyone gets a part of the check amount from each person in the recommendation chain. For example, a buyer gets 10% bonuses when ordering at the restaurant, but if they just spent 100 euros, the person who recommended the restaurant to them will also get a part of their check, and their recommender will get a part, and so on in the chain, typically up to three levels, although I’ve seen cases where businesses went up to seven.
Payments can be limited by time or the number of checks. They can be percentages of the check or simply fixed amounts. From my point of view, the most important thing in implementing this scheme is not the amounts given to buyers, but the fact of instantly informing everyone in the chain that they received money and the ability to check their wallet. This whole system works very well in messengers. You’re at home, and suddenly you receive a message that you just earned 1 euro because your friend on the second level bought a ticket.
The second type of recommendation is usually used when planning a marketing campaign for a specific event or occasion. Coupons are often used for this purpose, which can be shared with friends, and if they use that coupon, the person earns. Technically, the buyer has a link directly in the messenger or a web link that they can share with a single click. It’s very convenient to do this in a messenger. They share not their individual coupon but an advertising link. Each new buyer will receive their own unique coupon, which can then be tracked in the accounting system. However, this provides an easy way to build an audience. “Dear buyer, you are our VIP guest, and we give you a 20% discount for this party. But you can share this coupon with your friends, and if they come, for each person who buys using your coupon, you’ll receive an additional 5 euros.”
The third scheme used in practice in some nightclubs is a scheme where at the event, there is an opportunity to buy something or acquire drinks, products from different suppliers, or get certain services, like a workshop. Then you can do a very interesting thing – consumer accounts. That is, at the moment they buy a ticket, they can top up their account, and inside the exhibition, they can only spend from the buyer’s account. This will be very convenient for you because you can set a percentage for your partners that you earn from these transactions. Secondly, you consume the buyer, spending more while keeping the money with you as an advance account, roughly speaking, using their money as credit. And thirdly, you establish immediate contact with the buyer for future events.
Global experience shows that some large networks, for example, Starbucks in America, do not allow payment by card but only from the buyer’s account, and this is not an obstacle if it is done conveniently. And we provide such an opportunity.