Here at Tangopolix, we are always working hard to help Argentine tango keep growing. We like to innovate to bring new and efficient solutions to typical challenges that the tango community faces. We originally started by greatly improving how people discover events and plan their tango agenda, and now we have just kicked off a revolution in how tangueros sign up for those events. Tangopolix event management software is a game changer that brings a lot of benefits to both participants and organisers of tango events. Here’s our vision.
A revolution for tango participants
To clearly illustrate the benefits that Tangopolix event management software brings to tango participants let us start by describing how it tends to work now when you want to go to a tango event, before introducing our solution into the equation. That way it will be easier to understand later how much this process improves.
Today you browse through the Tangopolix website and find an event that you like and suits your agenda. You visit the event’s website to get a better feel and once you decide that you want to go then you head to the registration section of the website. In some cases they ask you to send them an email or if you’re lucky they have a comprehensive registration form. And once you submit that form…the vacuum…uncertainty kicks off.
A few days later (in our experience tends to be between 4 and 7 days on average ) you get an email saying that they have received your details and that you should pay for your tickets by doing a bank transfer to a certain account number. What?! Doing a bank transfer to a complete stranger’s bank account? Normally advertised events are legitimate and organisers are honest so there tends to be no problem with this. However, in case of troubles and if the recipient does not want to cooperate with you, you will never see that money again since a voluntary transfer to somebody else’s bank account cannot be claimed to the authorities. Anybody remembers the Tango Experience Berlin Festival that never happened the summer of 2013? Well, surely the event organisers had the best intentions but at some point they lost control and that Festival got cancelled last minute, so everybody who had already paid lost their money. And think again! How difficult is it to set up a website to advertise an event and then request money to be transferred to a bank account? Sounds like a very easy way to abuse people’s trust, get their money and disappear…
Continuing with our example, let’s assume everything goes well and after a week or two of biting your nails you get an email saying they received your money and are looking forward to receiving you at the tango event. But hold on, where are your tickets? The day you arrive at the event you have to wait for a long time in a queue because it takes 5 minutes per person to find them in a long paper list. Eventually, you get your tickets or the “always flattering” wristband, and you’re advised not to lose them because otherwise you’d be in real trouble. What?! Don’t they have a quick and easy way for all members of the organising staff to check what tickets anybody bought? And then the inevitable happens, you’re so into your preparations to look good for the milonga that when you finally arrive at the door you realise that your ticket is in the hotel room. So the person at the door have you waiting for a long time because he has not an easy way to check what you bought, you have not an easy way to retrieve your ticket and you both need to wait for somebody with more authority that can decide what to do.
Do you think we are exaggerating? Well, you should know that all this has happened to us and many people we know, including losing money in the Tango Experience Berlin Festival. In fact, these are the main reasons that motivated us to roll up our sleeves and find a solution for these troubles, there had to be a better way!
The great news is that the better way is here, is ready, it is already being used by smart Tango event Organisers and it makes the process of signing up for tango events so much easier, quicker, trouble-free and especially much safer.
So let us explain how the story improves once Tangopolix Event Management Software gets introduced into the process.
Once you decide to buy the tickets for an event you click on the register button and immediately you are presented with a very clear and simple product catalog where you can just simply tick the milongas and workshops that you want to attend. You can do it directly from your smartphone since the product catalog adjusts automatically to the size of your screen, so you don’t need to switch on your computer. After entering your personal details, which will be saved to prevent you from having to do this again in the future, you are in a position to pay. Isn’t that great? You register and pay at the same time, no need to wait a few days to get the payment details from the organiser and then having to switch on your computer again to trigger the transfer via your internet banking. One less thing to do, but the best is that you will be able to pay with your credit card which greatly increases the security of your payment. First, Tangopolix never handles or stores any credit card information, this is directly done by our financial partner which complies with all EU financial regulations and security requirements, in other words, your credit card details are protected by the highest bank-grade standards. And second, as you probably know, in addition to your country’s consumer legal protection, Visa and Mastercard support a chargeback scheme that enables you to get your money back should the seller not provide the product or service that was sold to you. So this way, if there are any problems with the booked event, you don’t rely on the organiser’s honesty and on his agenda to get your money back, you can just contact your bank and request a chargeback. And no need to mention the importance of this if the advertised event isn’t legitimate. At Tangopolix, we take the security of your payments very seriously so we don’t allow to sell tickets over our platform to anybody who has not properly identified himself and who is not advertising a real tango event.
But the improvements don’t end there, intermediately after your payment is accepted your tickets are emailed to you and they also become available at your Tangopolix account. So in just a few seconds you have saved weeks of back and forth emailing with the event organisers to confirm your registration, having to sit down a second time in front of the computer to pay via online banking, and there is no need to queue anymore when you get to the event to get your tickets because you have them already. In addition, you have access to your tickets from any smartphone with internet access, you just need to log into your Tangopolix account and there they are. So even if you forget your mobile phone in the hotel room when going to a milonga ( by the way, when does anybody forget his mobile phone nowadays?) you can use your friend’s mobile phone to open your tickets. Isn’t it cool?
So that’s how much easier, quicker and safer it is to sign up to tango events when using Tangopolix. If you want to start enjoying all these benefits and drive the revolution forward get in touch with your local and known tango event organisers and tell them you want to sign up to their events via Tangopolix. We have a ton of benefits for them as well as described in the next point.
A revolution for tango organisers
So you have just seen how Tangopolix event management software helps participants to sign up for tango events. And helping people to sign up and pay for your events quickly and confidently is a huge help for you as well as an organiser since it will greatly improve your conversion rate. What is your conversion rate? It is the percentage that represents the number of people that end up paying for your event out of the total number of people that gets to know about it. For example, if you get 200 participants out of your standard audience of 10,000 people that get to know about your events, then your conversion rate is 2%. So if you wanted to increase your event participation to 400 people you would have to make sure your marketing initiatives reach 20,000 people, which will double the amount of time and/or money that you invest in publicity. On the other hand, if you are able to increase your conversion rate to 4% you will get the same 400 participants without having to increase your 10,000 people audience. That’s why conversion rate is so important and can have such a big impact. And this conversion rate is highly dependent on how easy, professional and safe your registration and payment processes are perceived by your audience. Tangopolix revolution is all about helping event organisers improve these processes so you will be able to not only raise your conversion rate but also get the time you need to focus on what really adds value to your event instead of doing endless and sterile administrative tasks.
We are not saying it is easy but we are here to help. We know very well how much hard work tango events require and the big financial risk involved in assuming all the costs without knowing how many people will respond to your proposal. And a big chunk of those costs needs to be paid upfront before the event starts. We know of events that got a drop in participation from one year to the next of up to 40% without organisers seeing it coming. In the case of Festivals, it is very rare that more than 50% of bookings are made in advance, and in the majority of cases this percentage does not go over 25%. So the way it is done today, the majority of bookings happen at the door, which means the organiser only knows the event is not going to break even when the event is already ongoing. And you know very well that tango associations and organising teams are not big business that can accommodate loses, if sales don’t meet the budget somebody does not get paid.
But Tangopolix is here to change that scenario completely and put event organisers back in the driving seat, providing more information and control that they have ever had before. Our software completely automates all the administrative tasks and unifies what tends to be separate independent systems (registration, payments, notifications, guest lists) into a single one that keeps all the information completely synchronised and updated in real time. This saves you from having to copy information between systems, which is very time consuming and prone to human errors, and frees up a lot of time that you can invest in promoting your event further and analyse all the information that is being presented to you. Based on this analysis you can take quick decisions on whether you need to shift your marketing strategy and/or launch new campaigns.
Having such an agile software at your disposal opens up totally new marketing possibilities. What about a flash sale lasting only 24 hours? Since there is no delay between registration and payment is totally possible. Are you getting leaders and followers unbalance? Well, make a special promotion to compensate for that. Do you want to work with event promoters and then reward them based on how many ticket sales they bring to your event? That’s very easy with our integrated coupon system.
This way a registered participant means a participant that has paid, no more discrepancy between registered and paid listings, and no more having to spend lots of time and effort chasing people which initially registered but then changes his mind and ends up not to paying and not going.
Using Tangopolix event management software together with the right marketing strategy we are confident that advance bookings can be easily increased to 85% to 90%. This is a massive help to be able to confront advance payments and having the certainty that your event is going to be successful.
In addition, Tangopolix gives you a work methodology and a central repository of information. Different members of the organising staff can be given different access permits to different parts of the information and everybody knows how to find what they need. This increases in value as time passes since all the details about previous events are in a central place and well organised. Some of our early adopters are associations that organise periodic events but where board members change over time, which means that the next team in charge of organising the event needs to look up previous editions’ information in different places and try to understand its different formats. They quickly saw Tangopolix was a great solution for this problem.
So you might be wondering, is Tangopolix software very difficult to use? Not at all, our intention is to be able to help as many people as possible, for that reason we have decided to keep the configuration of the software under our control. That way any event organiser, regardless of their computer skills, can enjoy the benefits of using our software. In essence, Tangopolix becomes the IT department for your event. And you always keep control about what’s going on since you get access to your own dashboard where you can keep an eye on all the details and stats about your event. You have never had so much information at your fingertips.
Financially Tangopolix does not introduce any risk to you since our software only takes a very small fee every time a ticket is sold and there is no upfront payment, that means you can’t lose money with it. Additionally, there is no need for these small fees to impact your event’s budget at all. By slightly raising your prices you get to keep what you need per ticket sold and it ends up working as if every participant makes a small contribution towards a much more efficient, transparent and secure organisation for the event. Everybody benefits from it, so everybody contributes.
Conclusion
Tangopolix event management software brings a revolution in how people sign up for tango events and opens up lots of new opportunities to event organisers. It is completely a new ball game where all the parts involved greatly benefit from changing these processes.
Tango event participants get to enjoy a much simpler, quicker and secure way of registering, paying and managing their tickets.
Tango event organisers improve their conversion rate by making it easy for people to register, reduce risks by increasing the number of people that pay in advance, get the tools to implement powerful, new marketing initiatives and get their time freed up from admin work so they can focus on adding real value to their events.
Are you ready to join the revolution?
Learn more about Tangopolix event management software in our product description page: