Beverley Racecourse
Beverley is an independent racecourse, based in the north of England with a crowd capacity of 12,000. The course only holds flat race meetings and hosts over twenty meetings between April and September with July and August being the busiest months featuring evening racing. They have three different enclosures at the racecourse – a top price Members enclosure, the mid-range Grandstand and Paddock Enclosure, and the cheapest option is the Course Enclosure. They also host various other non-racing events from concerts to the ‘Spirit of the Horse’ demonstrations.
This process was very laborious and not at all customer or business friendly, with the administration team only able to keep a note of the number of tickets sold.
As they are only a small team, they wanted to improve their efficiency and have a system that was easy to use, but without the need for complex IT support or infrastructure, a solution that would give them control over their ticketing.
Sally continues, “With ts Advance it is easy for users to manage. We are not IT experts but we can run our own reports and checks on the system. The initial training ran smoothly and we have also had some good telephone and online training sessions with ts.com Customer Service and are now using it very well. Our advance bookings have risen, especially for the more popular meetings where there is a high demand for badges.”
A few clicks to save timeThey are finding that the ts Advance system cuts down on administration. “It’s great not having to input all the details of customers who are making repeat bookings – we just find the person’s details on the system and add a new booking. We can easily double check the status of customer orders online, and another nice thing is having the ability to print mailing labels off the system rather than typing them manually. It only takes a few clicks to run the right report to get the data for the labels and saves a huge amount of time when we’re sending out badges. We can keep a closer eye on sales to date and repeat visits. The reporting side is very useful and will prove invaluable as we put in place our marketing plans for next year.”
Their sponsors are also benefiting from the implementation of the ts Advance system at the racecourse. They have been running a joint campaign with John Smiths for a ‘buy one get one free’ promotion on badges at evening meetings, with customers simply entering a promotion code online, or quoting the code when booking over the phone. The first 500 customers also receive a free Tote betting voucher. In the past they would have had to run the promotion by post with customers sending in cheques and a booking form, but the ts Advance system makes it easy to manage and importantly allows them to give John Smiths up to date data on the up-take of the promotion.
Solution : ts Advance
Customer
Beverley Racecourse, in the north of England, hosts over 20 flat race meetings between April and September. An independent racecourse with a capacity of 12,000, the course offers customers a choice of three different enclosures.
Challenge
To provide a solution that could replace their current inefficient manual process for handling advance ticket sales, which often required double entering of data, had no live credit card processing and had only limited web sales capability through a link to the British Horseracing Board website. The solution needed to be suitable for a small multi-function team with limited in house IT resource.
Solution
ts Advance the Internet delivered solution for advance phone and web ticket sales, with secure live credit card processing and branded sales pages on Beverley Racecourse website. ts Advance enables the Beverley to easily capture valuable customer data from all bookings, and integrated marketing functionality allows them to run special offers and promotions using email and other media throughout the season, easily monitoring campaign success through real time online access to reports.
Result
ts Advance has brought Beverley Racecourse time and resource savings and improved their customer booking experience. Their website was relaunched offering direct web sales. ts Advance is easy enough for them to run joint promotions with sponsors through the use of promotion codes and send email updates to race-goers. And easy online access to sales and marketing reports benefits Beverley’s business planning by giving real time access to information on who is buying which tickets for each event.