Jacob Levine (CEO, Chorus Connection) and Paul Miller (Marketing, PatronManager)

Implementing tech is an investment.

Keep in mind the COSTS, and BENEFITS…

Digital forms:  Survey Monkey, Google Forms, WUFOO, goformz, nestforms.  These have online and offline/mobild options.

This was suggested by someone in this session for polling during a concert and two people said it worked well for them within a concert:

Integration tools:

When something happens in one tool that you are using, something else will happen in another tool.  These third-party platforms integrate all your apps together (gmail, mailchimp, trello, constant contact, Google Calendar, DropBox, SoundCloud, Google Sheets, DocuSign, ticket selling apps with donor databases)

Zapier:

easy to set up, wide app compatibility, mostly free to use (with some limits) – there are “zaps” set up for many of the possible combinations of apps, so that they can talk to each other, there are literally THOUSANDS of combinations/possibilities that have been set up

IFTT:  If This, Then That

another option for free integration – one person has used this to upload videos on YouTube which then also posts automatically to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Built-in Integrations

Eventbrite:  programs like this are FAR MORE powerful than the free ones, but they also cost more.

QuickBooks can integrate with PayPal – this works as a free integration with Zapier, but you can also get a better, more powerful integration by paying for it.  Retrieve sales data, review PayPal transactions

Tessitura and Mail 2 (Tessitura is a ticketing app)  – someone in the session mentioned that they used a free integration system to coordinate these two apps

All-in-one systems

These provide full CRM management (Customer Relations Management, which is ticketing, contact into, payments, engagement and prospecting info

Downside – these tend to price out smaller organizations, particularly those that don’t do your own tickets.  Worth the investment and the time if you spend a lot of time in Excel and MailChimp.

Patron Management Software – costs more, but gives you a 360 degree view of all your data by being able to produce integrations:

Vendini

Arts People

Audience View

Seat Advisor

Choir Management Systems