Ticket Reminders

Tamara Christensen

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone has set up reminder emails for timed-entry tickets.

In Connecticut this summer, we have a program that provides free admission for all children and one adult. We are getting a lot of reservations throughout the whole month and I would like to send reminders out so people remember to come or can cancel if they can't actually come on their date and time.

I was going to do this through an appeal mailing but I can't figure out which merge fields to use. I would love to send the receipt grid, but that is not an option in mailings (I think).

I could just send a generic reminder that they have a reservation in the next few days and not include merge fields, but would that be weird?

If anyone is doing this, I would love some tricks and tips!

Thanks,

Tamara

Regina Holten

I am following this…on my member end I have SO many member no shows! I'd love to send them a reminder….

Tamara Christensen

Hi Regina,

One way that we can do this is to run it every day. (We already do this for our Visitor Survey at the end of the day.) It would be generic - just something like Dear Name, We look forward to seeing you today! Please let us know if you can't attend, etc...). The query would just be pulling people who have reservations for that day. It would be nice if we could send the receipt grid that goes out in the online order acknowledgement, but it might not be there as Mailings use constituent records and not revenue or sales order records. If I have time next week, I may try chatting with Altru to see if they have any ideas.

Thanks,

Tamara

Regina Holten

I'm going to experiment with this reminder on my member end…thanks!!!

Tamara Christensen

Hi Regina, We started sending reminders yesterday. After they went out, we had a couple of emails canceling their tickets! We are going to be tracking no-shows and would really like to keep them to a minimum. We are sending them out the day before about their reservation “Tomorrow.” So the query is for everyone who has tickets reserved for the following day. The only merge field that I am using in the mailing is their first name. I wish I could attach the receipt grid, but still don't think that is an option. Good luck! Tamara

Regina Holten

Where do you find the date of visit? I'm having a helluva time. Sales order queries are not my forte

Tamara Christensen

It is buried pretty deep: sales orders\\sales order item\\sales order ticket\\program events\\start date.

Just remember to make it a constituent query if you are going to run it through a mailing.

I'm attaching my query. I have it looking for the start date of tomorrow and we run it the day before so that there is time for people to let us know if their plans have changed and they are not coming so we can put the tickets back.

John Ryan

These are the parameters I used in a query to pull all ticket reservations for one of our buildings for “this week.” I gives date and time of visit, name of ticket holder, ticket type, number and price, membership status/level, etc. You could easily have it run for a longer period if needed. It's a sales order query but you could download it to excel to create an email merge.

Breanne Leach

For you and anyone else that comes across this, I recommend voting for the automatic reminder idea too. We would love to be able to select “send reminders” at the program and/or event level at our institution.