Goldstar's Boost allows event organizers to buy prominent placement in e-blasts.
According to Jim McCarthy, founder and CEO, Goldstar, the number one challenge for the live entertainment industry is awareness. “Marketing is more fragmented than ever, making it harder and harder to get the word out,” said McCarthy. “People can’t buy tickets to something they don’t know is happening.”
McCarthy said that Goldstar’s data suggests that 80 percent of ticket buyers were unaware of the event they eventually purchased a ticket for on the discount ticket-buying platform.
Goldstar’s events are listed organically, based on an algorithm that uses previous purchase data. The service sends out emails on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on the preference of the customer. In that email, 15 events that are in proximity of the receiver are displayed.
“In big markets there are hundreds of shows that are geographically close,” said McCarthy. “The top 15 are determined by the algorithm which uses how long an event has been listed, user likes and dislikes and other factors to pick the 15 events listed on the e-blast.”
Goldstar’s new Boost product allows a client to “buy a better position in that list,” explained McCarthy. “We only boost a listing that’s already on your list. If your event is 18-down and you want to get into the 15 events we list in an email, Boost allows you to move your event up.”
It works like this: A client self-automates a boost by going onto the Goldstar platform and creating a campaign in the client portal. The supplier picks the number of emails they want to have their event boosted in, where geographically the boosts should be placed and how long they want the campaign to last. It costs $5 dollars per 1,000 boosts.
McCarthy said that boosting, much like an event organizer can do on Facebook, provides many benefits. “Event operators get prominent placement in our emails and get sent to likely buyers,” he said. “They can also target Goldstar members in additional markets, outside of the venue’s city, to suit long-term plans and tours.”
Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles, used the service to create awareness for their production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”
Goldstar's Boost product increased awareness and sales for L.A.'s Ahmanson Theatre production of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time."
“Our goal was to further increase awareness of the show which was in the middle of a successful run,” said Arie Levine, senior marketing manager, Center Theatre Group. “We wanted to finish the run on a high note and thought we’d try out Boost as a way to get there.”
“We determined a budget internally and picked how many days we wanted to run the boost. Setting up the boost was super easy,” she said. “Results were impressive. We saw sales go up dramatically the first day we did it and they continued to go up everyday we ran the boost.”
Goldstar also shared data with Levine. “We were featured in 302,291 emails; pageviews increased 45 percent during the boost and unique visits increased 31 percent.”
“At the end of the day, we sold more tickets compared to days without the boost,” she said. Center Theatre Group was so impressed with the results from their first boosting experience that used the system for their next four shows.
“We definitely see it be a positive return on investment,” she said. “It’s a valuable tool.”
The Boost product was rolled out in August. McCarthy said that while Boost is still relatively new, “the revenue generated from the product is substantial already” and he expects that given time to create awareness of the product, and after proving the results to suppliers, he expects the revenue to be “a significant part of our future business.”
Goldstar has 5,000 venue partners. Their headquarters is in Pasadena, Calif., and the
15-year-old ticket discounter has about 100 employees.