Not all events and not all tickets are supposed to be out there in the wild, available for anyone to buy. Shotgun offers several tools for you to filter who can access your event and buy specific tickets.
1. Publication Visibility: Private events
When you publish an event, you can select among 3 distinct publication visibility:
Smartboard
- Public: everyone will be able to access your event. It will be listed on both the app and the website. Searching via Google, your organiser’s page or Shotgun’ search bar will expose your event.
- Private: Your event won’t be listed on the app nor the website. People won’t be able to find it by searching via Google, your organiser’s page or even Shotgun search bar. Customers will need the event url to your event to access it.
- Public page only: Your event won’t be accessible from Google search or Shotgun search bar. But users browsing on your organiser’s page will be able to access it (app or web).
2. Event Password protection
Furthermore, when you publish an event in Private, you can restrict the access with a password: customer will need both the event url AND the password to access the event.
Smartboard Customer POV
3. Tickets Visibility: Hidden tickets
You might want to create early bird, regular bird, and late bird tickets that are visible to everyone, and in addition, offer a VIP deal or a partners-only deal that is hidden from regular customers.
Regardless of the event’s publication visibility, you can control the visibility of specific tickets.
You can choose where this ticket will be visible:
- Shotgun app & website: This ticket will be visible and accessible to anyone visiting your event page.
- Xpress Door page: This ticket will be visible and accessible via your Xpress Door checkout.
- Promoters: A promoter’s tracking link will redirect to the event page, allowing access to this ticket (if you have activated any promoters for the event). Learn more about promoters here.
You can also control who sees the ticket by hiding it:
- Private link: This ticket will not be listed on the event page by default. Customers will only be able to access it via a private URL that redirects to the event page and displays the ticket.
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Access code: This ticket will not be listed on the event page by default. Customers can only access it by entering a code you have set, which will reveal the ticket on the event page.
4. Order Manual validation
URLs might get shared online and end up in the hand of people you wish they didn’t have access to the event or the ticket in the first place. if you really want to control who is buying ticket to your event, you can set a manual validation at the order level.
This is defined in the “advanced options” when creating a ticket
Every time a customer create an order including this ticket, you will have to manually validate or reject the order (within 7 days, otherwise the order expires).
- If you validate the order: the customer is charged, and receives the order confirmation email with his ticket attached
- If you reject the order: the customer is not charged, and receives an informative email
5. Segment Restriction
Finally, you can restrict access to tickets to specific segments of your community. For example you most engaged community, people who attended more than 5 of your events, etc.
Customer that are not part of this segment won’t be able to buy this ticket.
Learn more about segments here
This is defined in the “advanced options” when creating a ticket
