Front Gate Tickets today announced it has released both mobile ticketing and its WordPress plug-in to the live entertainment industry. These efforts are on the heels of the Austin-based company’s first quarter launch of its geo-located portal at www.frontgatetickets.com. Clients including Lollapalooza Festival (Chicago), Higher Ground (S. Burlington, VT), Stubbs BBQ (Austin), Belly Up, Aspen (Aspen, CO), and Warehouse Live (Houston) have already started allowing its customers a quick and easy on-the-go ticket purchase via cell phones.
“Mobile ticketing is a key component to selling shows in our market,” says Michael Goldberg, owner of Belly Up, Aspen. “While Aspen is a small town, our clientele wants to buy tickets via their mobile phones because it’s timely, easy and convenient. Plus, with Front Gate, our customers can store their credit card information to simplify future purchases.”
“We’re proud to be one of the first independent ticketing companies to launch mobile ticket sales,” offers Jeff Kreinik, Director of Sales and Marketing at Front Gate Tickets. “We’ve worked with clients, such as Belly Up, Aspen, to thoughtfully optimize the purchase process for mobile devices so that promoters can market, sell, and track activity through this channel. Many of our clients are building custom iPhone apps for their clubs and festivals. We add value to that investment by extending the mobile marketing process through to the sale. Few other ticketing companies can do that let alone extend a promoter’s branding throughout the session.”
According to Juniper Research, in 2009 roughly 2 million mobile tickets were sold worldwide. While these numbers are not staggering, Front Gate is signaling to the market its commitment to innovation and industry leadership. With the release of mobile ticketing, Front Gate now enables venues, festivals, and promoters to sell tickets through five channels – online, via its toll free call center, at a venue’s box office, on mobile phones and at outlets in select states.
“There’s much more to ticketing today than even two years ago,” suggests Kreinik. “Promoters look to their ticketing company to provide sales and marketing tools that fully integrate into one solution. We’ve recently launched our WordPress plug-in for clients to use with their own WordPress websites. Those promoters are immediately able to realize the benefits of having their event details appear automatically on their website. No more duplication of effort.”
Front Gate Tickets also offers clients custom website design services that seamlessly connect ticketing operations with website management. Front Gate started offering design and hosting services to promoters in 2007 with clients such as Antone’s (www.antones.net) and Warehouse Live (www.warehouselive.com) on board today. The ticketing company recently moved to WordPress to take advantage of the platform’s flexibility, open source nature and seamless integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Other key tools that fill out Front Gate’s offering today include connection of its web-based ticketing system and websites to Google Analytics, on-demand multi-channel sales reports, web-based event building tools, automated ticket count alerts, on-demand customer data reports, stored credit cards to encourage repeat purchases, localized portal promotions at www.frontgatetickets.com, and automation with social networks. For more information about these and other services, visit www.frontgatesolutions.com or www.frontgatetickets.com
