Say you are planning to organize an event. It could be a party, seminar, movie show, or formal ceremony. And you want to ensure a safe and secure experience for your guests.
And ever since the pandemic, making the arrangements as contactless as possible has become important.
After all, it ensures maximal protection against the spread of disease by limiting human contact. It does not only help you ensure the safety of your guests but your team members too.
So you’re looking forward to creating digital tickets for one of your events. Well, what if you could use the digital tickets to do more than just authorize event entries?
Yes! From contactless distribution and guest validation to ensuring social distancing and getting event attendance, digital tickets can do it all.
In this article, we’ll see what benefits digital tickets offer and how to create them.
A. Digital tickets—a one-stop solution
Tools such as Ticket Generator help you create QR code-based digital tickets for your events.
You probably know what QR Codes are. For the uninitiated, QR Codes are square-shaped 2D barcodes that can store a lot of information. And they are easy to scan. All you need is your smartphone to do the job.
To understand how it works, you can check out this video:
We’ll now see what perks can these tickets offer you:
B. Event processes that are made better with digital tickets
1. Get contactless event registrations
It’s common for any event to need the audience to register for it. And it’s great if you can get registrations while generating tickets against them at the same time.
And to do it, Ticket Generator’s feature called Event Registrations comes in handy.
This feature creates a mobile landing page with a registration form. Once created, you can share its link with your target audience. You can even choose whether you’d want the registrations to be approved automatically or manually.
Once registration is approved, the guest receives the ticket in her email. In short, this process is contactless, efficient, and time-saving.
2. Digital ticket distribution
Since you want to ensure your guests’ safety, you’d probably avoid paper-based tickets. Hence, you’re interested in digital tickets.
Here, professional service such as Ticket Generator has got you covered. It can help you send tickets via email, SMS, or both. When guests arrive, they can just show these digital tickets at the entry gate, get them validated, and enter the venue.
Hence, no need for guests to get them printed.
3. Digital ticket validation
Ticket validation is the most important process at an event. Traditionally, the guests would arrive with a copy of the ticket. This was then manually verified by the coordinators with their details in their database.
But this is a tedious process for both the guests and the staff.
Here, QR Code-based digital tickets have got you covered. These tickets come with a QR Code having a unique ID. Your event coordinators can scan the QR Codes on the tickets with their smartphones to check whether the ticket is valid, invalid, or duplicate.
And the good news is—there is no need for any expensive hardware installation to do the same. Impressive, right?
4. Contactless Queue management
You know how the pandemic has changed the paradigm of event management. It has put a great emphasis on avoiding long queues and crowding.
Thus, it is your responsibility to ensure no long queues for the people waiting in queues to get an entry for the event.
And QR Code-based digital tickets help you do it with their fast scanning ability. It doesn’t take more than 2-3 seconds for a coordinator to validate each ticket using the smartphone.
The shorter the validation time, the smaller will be the queues. That means a safer environment and a better experience for the guests.
5. Contactless bulk generation of tickets
Since you are organizing an event, you’d need several tickets. They could range from hundreds to thousands in number. And you’d want a tool that allows you to generate contactless unique tickets in a matter of minutes.
Ticket Generator helps you do it easily. In fact, even while you create the tickets in bulk, you can still add unique information to them. For example, guest name, row number, and guest ID
And the best part is—the more tickets you generate, the lower cost per ticket you incur. Isn’t that amazing?
6. Preventing unauthorized entries
Trespassers are a pain for any event organizer. They are not only a risk for the guests but also your business’s reputation.
But with digital tickets, this issue no longer remains a problem. These tickets are impossible to duplicate.
As discussed earlier, each QR Code has a unique ID. When scanned, the event coordinator can see this ID along with a prompt status showing if it’s a valid, invalid, or duplicate ticket.
Hence, a strict no entry for the trespassers.
7. Tracking event performance
You know how important it is to track event performance. It helps you draw valuable insights about event performance. These include information such as the event attendance, peak time, and the number of tickets validated per coordinator.
With this data, you can optimize your future events more efficiently.
C. How to create QR Code-based tickets
Now you know why it makes sense to use digital tickets. The next question is—how to create them?
As mentioned above, you’d need a professional service provider. And Ticket Generator has got you covered.
1. Generate digital tickets for your guests in bulk
Using Ticket Generator, here’s how you can generate QR Coe-based digital tickets:
a. Go to Ticket Generator and sign up to create an account
Here, you won’t have to enter card details while signing up. And after signing up, you’ll receive ten credits for free. Each credit allows you to create one ticket.
B. Now, go to Create Event section followed by clicking on the Bulk button. Here, create an event by adding event details such as description, time zone, and venue
Once done, proceed ahead.
Design the tickets
c. Now, comes the part where you need to design the tickets. Here, you can either go with the Upload Own Design option or select the Default Design option
Upload Own Design: This option allows you to design your ticket using your own ready-made design template.
With this option, you can superimpose the QR Code and unique ID on the ticket.
Moreover, it also allows you to add variable information (which would be different for each ticket) by clicking on the + button. It could be the guest’s name, row number, seat number, etc.
Here’s an example of a ticket created using a readymade template:
Default Design: Here, you can use the Ticket Generator’s standard design to create tickets from the scratch. It gives you the option to add a logo, change the background color, or add a background image to your ticket.
Once you’ve designed your tickets, click on Preview to see how your ticket design looks.
Choose the delivery method
d. After finalizing the design, click on Done. Now, specify the Delivery method. This means you need to choose how to distribute your tickets to the guests. You’ll see the following four options to choose from:
i. Generate Form Link: This option allows you to design and share a mobile landing page to get event registrations. This includes adding images, event description, form fields, and customizing the button text
ii. Generate and Download: Here, you can generate and download the tickets in a printable format (PDF)
iii. Generate and Send: In this option, you will further see three options to choose from:
a. Send tickets by email only: This option allows you to email the tickets (up to 1,000) to the guests. To do it, you just need to upload a file containing the emails in CSV, XLS, or XLSX format. Or you can even manually type the emails in the given fields
b. Send tickets by SMS only: Here, you can send tickets to your guests via SMS (up to 1,000 phone numbers)
c. Send tickets by both email and SMS: In this option, you can send tickets both by SMS and email to your guests
iv. Generate via API: Ticket Generator API can be integrated with your own registration system. Once done, you can generate digital tickets programmatically in real-time
e. Once you specify all the details, click on Generate. All the digital tickets will be generated and you’ll be notified via email
2. Generate single tickets for contingencies
Now you know how to generate digital tickets in bulk. But what if you need a couple of single tickets too? Here also, Ticket Generator can help you. It allows you to generate and distribute single tickets to the guests. It is useful in two scenarios:
a. Having unplanned guests at the last moment
Say you are organizing an event and have created the tickets for it. But some unplanned guests have come to your event at the last moment. This is pretty common in events. And when that happens, you’d want to generate tickets for the new arrivals.
Now rather than generating a whole batch of tickets, you can simply create additional tickets in a couple of minutes. Here’s how:
i. Login to Ticket Generator
ii. From the dashboard, click on Create Tickets followed by clicking on the Single button
iii. Here, select the event for which you want to generate tickets
iv. Now, click on New Ticket under Choose Action section
v. Here, select the delivery method—Download Ticket and Send Ticket as per your choice
Download Ticket: This option allows you to generate and download the ticket.
Send Ticket: This option helps you send the ticket to the guest via email ID or phone number.
vi. Once selected, click Generate & Download (in case of Download Ticket) or click Generate & Send (in case of Send Ticket)
That’s it. A new single ticket will be generated.
b. Resending the tickets
Say you had sent the tickets to your guests digitally. But some of them didn’t receive the them. Here’s how you can resend the tickets here:
i. Login to Ticket Generator
ii. Go to dashboard and click on Create Tickets followed by clicking on the Single button
iii. Now select the event for which you want to resend tickets
iv. Under the Choose Action section, click on Resend Ticket
v. Now, you’ll have to specify your preferred mode of searching for the guest’s ticket. You can use the ticket ID to do it. Alternatively, you can also use the guest’s email address or phone number which you entered while creating the tickets
vi. Once you’ve entered these details, click Search. Now, you will see the ticket details
vii. Click on View and you’ll be asked to specify the guest’s email ID or phone number. After submitting these details, click Resend
Note that you’ll not be charged extra for resending the tickets.
Now, let’s move ahead to detail how you can validate these tickets.
D. How to validate tickets
Ticket validation is important to know whether the ticket is valid, duplicate, or invalid.
To do it, you can add your team members as coordinators to Ticket Genrator. Once you do it, they’ll get authorized to validate the tickets. That means an increase in the manpower.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Go to the Manage Event section from the dashboard
2. Select the required event for which you want to validate and click on three horizontal dots under the More heading
3. Once done, tap on Add/Edit Coordinator
Here, you need to specify the email address of each coordinator. After doing it, the coordinators will receive an email invitation. Using it, they can install and login to the Ticket Validator app on their phones
4. Next, they just need to select the event they need to validate tickets for
5. Once done, they need to click on Scan QR Code and get started with validating the tickets
That’s all you need to know about digital tickets. With Ticket Generator, you can ensure a contactless and hassle-free experience for both yourself and the guests alike.
