The Studio Owners’ Ultimate Guide to Dance Recital Ticketing

Planning a recital is both a challenging and exciting task for dance studio owners. On the upside, you get to determine the elaborate costumes, sets, music, and lighting to help your dancers shine and showcase their talents to family and friends! At the same time, the recital planning process can be tricky and complicated, especially when figuring out your ticketing system.

To help you overcome this obstacle, we’ll explore the ins and outs of dance recital ticketing by covering the following topics:

• Common Dance Recital Ticketing Challenges
• Features to Look for in Your Dance Recital Ticketing Software
• Our Top Choice for Dance Recital Ticketing Software

With these tips, tricks, and ticketing software solutions in your dance studio’s toolbelt, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to manage your most successful recital season yet!

Common Dance Recital Ticketing Challenges

In a perfect world, you would only have to tackle a few small marketing and managerial tasks before throwing open your doors, rolling out the red carpet, and hosting a sold-out recital performance.

Unfortunately, the reality is (as usual) a bit more complicated, and there are a handful of pain points that you’ll need to overcome to maximize recital revenue, attendance, and engagement.

In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for these hurdles:

• Having little time to prepare. Dance studio owners are busy running their studios, so setting up the ticketing process often gets pushed to the last minute. This lack of ample time can lead to underdeveloped or disorganized ticketing systems that confuse, frustrate, and discourage potential attendees from purchasing tickets online or in person.
• Recruiting volunteers. Volunteers are an invaluable resource when selling tickets in person, managing online sales, or promoting your upcoming recitals. They’re on the front lines, manning the ticket booth or locking and loading marketing blasts so your event succeeds. However, it can be difficult to effectively recruit and manage dance recital volunteers without the right systems in place.
• Promoting your recital. Even the most well-organized, thrilling dance recital performances will suffer from poor audience turnouts if you don’t spread the word about your event. Strategize and launch a multichannel marketing campaign to ensure members of your local community not only know about your event but can’t wait to attend.
• Setting up pricing for different sections or rows. If you’re selling your recital venue’s nosebleed seats at the same price as seats in the front row, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to generate more revenue and better engage with customers. Configure your ticketing software to assign the appropriate costs for high-value seating areas, standard seating, discount seating, and even special VIP sections!
• Keeping track of ticket purchases. Jumbled ticket records not only reflect poorly on your business but can also lead to mix-ups in audience seating arrangements, detract from the recital itself, and leave your studio without accurate audience turnout data. Rather than manually typing or scribbling sales down on a spreadsheet, use dance studio management software to track and organize these details automatically.
• Organizing attendees upon entry. When attendees filter into the recital venue, it’s easy for all chaos to break loose. With the right recital ticketing software, volunteer ticket scanners can confirm attendee seating arrangements, allowing volunteer ushers to direct them to the right seats and minimize confusion as attendees settle in for the upcoming performance.

If you’re overwhelmed by these pain points, don’t panic—you’re not alone! Every ticket-based event organizer has to confront many of the same challenges. Luckily, these issues have created a strong market for event planning and ticketing software that solves problems you and other organizers may face.

Dance recital ticketing software streamlines many logistical hurdles leading up to your event—like cutting down the time needed to organize a ticketing system and seamlessly tracking critical attendee information. With the right tools, much of the pre-event management you’re probably dreading will be easier and more effective.

Features to Look for in Your Dance Recital Ticketing Software

Now that you understand the need for dance recital ticketing software, look for a solution with these standout features:

Ticket Sales Management

Ticket sales are attendees’ first impression of your recital. Create an impeccable ticket-buying experience and easily customize the ticketing process to your studio’s needs with these stellar software capabilities:

• Ticket purchase controls. The last thing you want is to open your ticket sales without any control over what’s happening. Instead, your ticketing system should give you power over the process by allowing you to limit how many tickets each person can buy.
• Convenience fee options. Customers should be able to use their favorite payment method when buying tickets without your studio suffering extra processing fees. Opt for software that lets you offload extra costs via convenience fees.
• Tiered pricing. By offering tiered pricing for VIP, standard, economy, and other kinds of seating, you can better serve customers and increase your profits!
• Seating maps. How are attendees supposed to pick the seats they want when they have no idea where they’re located in your recital venue? Minimize seating frustration and impress customers with ticketing software that offers seating maps.
• Ticket sales tracking. With ticket sales tracking, you can monitor your sales and collect important ticketing information to remember for future recitals.
• Ticket scanning. When ushers scan tickets before the performance, they can direct customers to their assigned seats and generate useful event attendance data.

You shouldn’t be at the mercy of a barely functional ticketing system! Find a solution that hands over the reins and lets you configure the entire ticketing process to your studio’s needs with minimal restrictions and maximum customer satisfaction.

Point of Sale System

Ticket sales aren’t the only way to bring in money during your recital. Boost your event revenue by selling a variety of extra items during the ticketing process, like:

• Branded recital or studio t-shirts
• Flower bouquets for performers
• Recordings of the performance

Of course, you’ll want to manage these payments through an online store. With a comprehensive dance studio management system that includes both an online store and ticketing software, you can promote and sell these goodies while customers pick out their seats.

More robust dance studio management and ticketing systems (like Studio Pro!) will even offer extra customization features for customers to choose the perfect products. For instance, you can:

• Add a variety of sizes and color options for t-shirts. Customers can access convenient dropdown menus to choose the right clothing dimensions and colors to suit their tastes.
• Offer to personalize t-shirts, flowers, and other memorabilia. For an extra fee, customers can order personalized items that commemorate the occasion or send a special message to the ones they love.

These options can significantly increase your profit margin and ensure attendees leave your recital with long-lasting reminders of the event and your studio!

Marketing and Promotion

Get the word out about your event and push for higher attendance rates by leveraging your ticketing software's marketing and promotional features.

For maximum convenience, look for recital ticketing software with built-in marketing widgets. In a few clicks, you should be able to share ticket sale links across your various marketing channels, including:

• Your main website
• Your recital’s event microsite
• Your newsletter
• Social media pages
• Email blasts

Additionally, the best solutions allow you to take things a step further by selling tickets through a parent portal. This feature enables you to engage your studio’s audience more effectively, giving dancers’ families an even more convenient way to purchase tickets.

Our Top Choice for Dance Recital Ticketing Software: Studio Pro

If you’re eager to sink your teeth into recital ticketing software that revitalizes the way you run your sales, let us introduce you to the best dance recital ticketing system on the market: Studio Pro.

Studio Pro offers a comprehensive suite of recital management tools fit for any studio. Its standout features include:

• Recital ticketing. Studio Pro is the ultimate dance recital ticketing solution, allowing you to sell tickets on desktop or through the Portal App, set custom ticket limits, add convenience fees, offer tiered pricing, provide detailed seating maps, sell ad space on printable tickets, track ticket sales, and scan tickets for entry using a QR app reader.
• Recital Wizard. In addition to ticketing, our recital management tools empower you to organize every aspect of your recital. With Recital Wizard, you can define acts, assign classes and students to different performances, create a recital playbook, generate a Quick Change Warnings report to facilitate costume changes, assign stage and act managers, and develop a stage grid system that makes it easy to tape.
• Costume Console. With so many different performances in one recital, managing costumes and quick changes can be difficult. Costume Console makes it easy by empowering you to assign and track costumes for each act and class, sell costumes from your integrated online store, organize costume names, vendors, item numbers, and product images, add student measurements, generate costume size recommendations for popular costume vendors via Robo-Sizer™, and track and distribute costume orders.
• Point of Sale system. From flowers to t-shirts, our Point of Sale system facilitates the sale of extra keepsakes so you can earn more and create lasting memories of your recital. Offer a seamless purchasing experience by adding a variety of product sizes and color options, providing item personalization options, accepting multiple payment methods, and allowing customers to place orders and post the fee to their accounts for later payment. Additionally, manage sales by reviewing open and processed orders and generating real-time inventory reports and details.
• Team and volunteer management. Your staff and volunteers make your recital possible. Use our dance recital management system to update user permissions based on different roles and keep your recital team on track.
• Communication tools. Recital season can quickly become chaotic without an efficient way to share important updates and information. Studio Pro makes communication easy, allowing you to create group chats by act, class, or other groups, send recital-related emails and text messages, segment messages by acts, automate and schedule-send recital promotional messages, and add attachments like PDF files, images, and videos.

No matter your recital needs, Studio Pro is here to take care of the logistics and make your upcoming recital a smashing success. Plus, once you’ve used our solution for your recital, our reporting features make it easy to analyze past recital data and improve future recital management.

Wrapping Up

To properly commemorate and prepare for your dance recitals—among the most anticipated events on your calendar!—you need ticketing software to keep pace with your goals and optimize the customer experience.

Using a comprehensive dance recital ticketing and management system, you can keep all recital processes under one roof, brand your ticketing process to your organization, and gather valuable data.

If you’re ready to transform your recital management process, sign up for a free 30-day trial of Studio Pro today!

Want to explore other best practices to strengthen your dance studio and recital? Check out these valuable resources: 

• How to Create a Dance Recital Program: Top Tips and Template. Explore how to create your own dance recital program that includes all important recital information and engages your audience.
• Dance Studio Marketing: 12 Ideas to Attract New Students. Get your name out there and build up support for your business with these phenomenal dance studio marketing ideas.
• Dance Recital Ticketing and Management. Learn more about Studio Pro’s dance recital ticketing solution and how it has set up other dance studio owners for success.