This is a guest post from the verified resale platform and honest event marketplace Tixel. Check out Tixel’s eventbrite integration and Marketplace App.
Frederick, Maryland, might not be the first place you’d expect to find a slice of the Caribbean. But that’s exactly where you’ll find it when Linganore Winecellars brings music, food, and arts from across the region to their sell-out reggae festivals.
Hosting events for more than 40 years, the winery has become a true festival destination and draws legions of fans from surrounding states. Eventbrite organizer and festival director, Morgan Kilduff, says that post-pandemic, their crowd is diversifying and interested in more VIP and unique experiences. To meet these expectations, the winery is prioritizing fan engagement and experience above growth.
Verified resale has cut out frustration and fraud
The fan experience for buying festival tickets is simple with Eventbrite, but if plans changed and someone could no longer use their ticket, things got complicated.
Linganore Winecellars has always had a no-refunds policy in place for festival tickets, referring people to their Facebook group to sell any spare tickets. But then came the scams.
“The scams were getting outrageous, and there was no way for us to verify the tickets,” explains Morgan. “We had to stop encouraging people to list them because it was getting crazy. They would show up with invalid tickets, and there was nothing we could do for them. We realized it was time to look into some sort of resale option.”
Safe and verified resale lets fans buy and resell tickets without the risk of scams or scalping. This has not only reduced fraud and scams but also customer frustrations if their plans change.
“Tixel has really improved our communication around refunds. It’s so user-friendly, and we’re getting less-frustrated customers who may have felt like they had no options if they couldn’t use their tickets. Having a very easy, very attainable option has been incredibly helpful. I would say most people who use it do end up reselling their tickets, so they get their money back, and someone else can come. It’s a win-win.”
Morgan Kilduff, Director of Festivals and Public Events, Linganore Winecellars
Eventbrite + Tixel are a great pairing
We all know a great fan experience starts with a smooth entry at the gate. The last thing you want is to get off to a slow start with a complicated process. In 2022, Morgan tested out another resale platform that didn’t support Eventbrite integration, which created headaches at the gate.
“Everything was manual,” says Morgan. “We had to create a separate event for resale tickets, which made scanning at the gates very convoluted as we switched between the two. We also had to cut off resale a week prior to the event, so that everything could be manually transferred.”
In 2023, that changed when they switched to Tixel. Whenever a ticket is resold, the original ticket is cancelled, and a new barcode is issued within Eventbrite with no manual intervention needed.
“We needed resale, but I was not doing that again!” laughs Morgan. “Eventbrite recommended the Tixel integration, which has been spectacular. From the get-go, it has just worked phenomenally. It’s immediate, and we can keep the resale option open the whole time because it’s integrated into the one event. It’s been great.”
Bottling the buzz with festival waitlists
Data is an essential ingredient for strategic event planning and efficient marketing campaigns. “As a business, we have started to focus on targeted marketing,” says Morgan. “It’s simply not functional to send everybody the same content because it’s not applicable to everybody.”
Eventbrite ticketing collects attendee data from primary ticket sales. But by adding Tixel, Linganore Winecellars can now bottle the buzz of a sell-out campaign, capturing demand from people who want in but don’t have tickets.
As an event that regularly sells out, this unlocks a whole new range of actionable insights into everything from demand to what people want to pay for their festival experience. In 2023, Linganore Winecellars added almost 4,000 new profiles to their marketing database from would-be attendees.
“When I saw the Tixel dashboard I was, like, ‘My gosh, this is just the best!’” says Morgan. “Because we can see everything and have total visibility on our waitlists and demand. It’s made it so easy to answer questions from our customers, and, internally, we can see how many people still want to come (and who they are) once we’ve sold out. We wouldn’t normally have that information. It’s been wonderful.”
