Are you ready for a long-term relationship? The hard-working team at HoldMyTicket has added some more features to help you keep in touch with those special ticket-buying someones in your life.

Event Messaging

The Event Messaging tool allows you to contact everyone who has purchased a ticket for a given event and keep them updated on news, promotions or anything else you feel they need to know.

Newsletters

The Newsletter tool gives you everything you need to create customized newsletters to your past patrons. We've packed in quite a lot of features in this one - it's a whole application in itself. You can create your list of recipients by entire venues, but you can also bring together customers from entirely different places by sorting your contacts by tags - the search terms you use to categorize your events: by genre, style, series - or in many other ways.

If you're ready for these features, please call your customer rep at our number: 505-886-1251 (And if you don't have a customer rep, ask us, and we'll set you up with one!) Click the links in the paragraphs above to read the details but, above all else, dive into your account and start rolling out the e-mails - just remember to email responsibly by following the CAN-SPAM Act!

As always, stay tuned on this blog or our Facebook page for more updates - more is always on the way.

Desert Rocks Music Festival

June 7-10 2012, Green River Utah

In less than a week, HoldMyTicket's Ticket Bus will be making its way to Green River, UT for the 2012 Desert Rocks Festival, and we are getting psyched! More than just a showcase of bands, Desert Rocks is a 4-day confluence of performance and visual art, lectures and workshops on consciousness issues and sustainability, film, small gatherings, even a 5k - the list goes on and on. Obviously this is not your average festival.

On top of that, this year's festival is going to be held at the Jenk Star Ranch, a 40-acre, 100%-solar-powered village of mixed-media art installations devoted to the same raised-awareness and creative themes of the festival. It seems like a perfect fit. The ranch, run by Salt Lake City's Solar Saucer Cosmonauts, is set up for large gatherings and performances, and festival-goers will have access to their permanent art installations and media laboratories, too.

You can't forget the music, of course, though it would be hard to miss it: there will be well over 100 bands playing on 4 stages. We're not going to list them all here, but we've got The Wailers Band, Brother Ali, RJD2, JGB and Govinda making appearances, to name a few. There are quite a few groups, such as Lucent Dossier Experience and Beats Antique, that combine music, dance and performance art in a single mind-expanding show. Unfettered creativity is the decided flavor of this event, so expect a large variety of different media, ideas and melodies to mix pleasantly across the festival grounds.

When the whole idea is the collective expansion of human consciousness, there will be less emphasis on a monolithic, stage-audience dynamic and more of an open, multifarious, hive-like buzz of activity. Expect to meet all kinds of new people to mingle, dance and wax philosophic with. Fun will abound, but we highly recommend this festival for those who like to dig a little deeper into their experiences, push their boundaries and come away from their experiences with a little shared wisdom to go with their good times. If you are cast from this mold, you'll want to check out the lectures and workshops Desert Rocks will be hosting. Speakers and workshop leaders include Mitch Schultz, producer of the film The Spirit Molecule, Jonathan Talat Phillips, author of The Electric Jesus, and Charles Shaw, of Exile Nation fame.

Check out the video below for a closer look into the rhythm and color of past festivals.

Reserve your tickets if you haven't got them, and we'll see you there!

Did you know that HoldMyTicket will provide you with the scanning equipment necessary to validate your tickets? Based on the volume of ticket sales you have, we provide you with the tools needed to efficiently validate tickets.

Here's how it works:

Not only can you print out an old-school will call list, HMT provides various forms of electronic will call lists. The will call list in your HMT account can be used on a laptop, tablet or smartphone to validate entrants. Or you can download our free iPhone app, Swarm, which includes an interactive will call list. All check-ins on electronic will call lists are tracked and reported for you, just like they were scanned in with a scanner.

A Mophie® modified iPod Touch comes with Swarm installed on it, allowing you to scan the QR codes printed on E-Tickets using the iPods's camera. These scanners include a built in extra battery, ensuring hours of worry free scanning.

The Linea Pro® modified iPod Touch also comes with Swarm installed. It has a laser for super-fast scanning of ticket barcodes. This feature, in conjunction with Swarm, is the fastest form of ticket validation in the industry. The Linea Pro® also features a credit card swiper, allowing for both door sales and credit card validation. Happy Scanning!

To request scanners for your events contact the help team at http://holdmyticket.com/help. We'll set you up.

Got a Facebook album that you know would look great on your HMT-Powered website?

We have a way to turn these albums into slide shows you can display on any page you choose.

Look good to you? Well, it's pretty simple to set it up yourself!

Here's a quick start guide that will get this new feature up and running on your site:

1. Visit the Facebook album you would like to put on your HMT page and find the album ID. The album ID can be found in the url. It is a string of numbers located after the characters "?set.a" and before the next "." Once you've found it, select it and copy it.

Next, log in to your Hold My Ticket venue account, select the venue whose page you want to edit, and click on the Tools tab.

Click on Content Manager, and you'll see a list of pages. Find the page you want to edit, then click the edit button all the way on the right.

When you're in the edit screen, find the BODY field (the big one with all the white space for typing). There is a toolbar attached to the top. Click the HTML button on the 2nd row of that toolbar.

A window will appear in the middle of the screen with a lot of HTML code. Don't worry about this if HTML is not your thing. Simply click at the bottom of the text and hit enter, so you have a clear line.

Copy and paste the following code onto the empty line:

and replace all the #'s with your Facebook album's ID. Here's an example of the code with an album ID entered:

Click the Update button at the bottom left of the HTML Source Editor, and... you're done. HMT's site will automatically load a slideshow with any content (text) you might have added to the photos on Facebook. Pretty simple, no? Try it now!

Is that how the saying goes? Well, it works for us. Happy Tax Day from the staff of Hold My Ticket, your official source for making the bitter side of life's big events go down smooth! A special shout out to Dublin's Street Pub in beautiful downtown Albuquerque!

12:00 AM, Tuesday March. 7th we rolled out an updated checkout screen in our Box Office software. Here are the details: We've made some cool updates to our Box Office checkout screen. It's completely redesigned, with a slick summary of the ticket holder's info, payment method and cart. Additionally, we've added the functionality of ID Swiping, Buyer Notes, enhanced Buyer-Type Selecting and Text-Meassage Receipts. ID SWIPING This new feature allows you to swipe a buyer's drivers license to automatically enter a buyer's name and address to the purchase or it can instantly look up any tickets held on will-call under that buyer's name. Swiping IDs will save time by eliminating the process of typing names by hand, and it ensures the accuracy of your records. Also, when you get repeat customers who provide an ID for swiping, their info is brought up, including email addresses, phone numbers and notes!NOTES There is now a place under the 'Ticket Holder' section for notes. Use this for miscellaneous notes about this buyer. Swipe their ID or CC next time they return and you'll see any notes from previous purchases.BUYER TYPES If you use Buyer-Types to manage discounts in your box office, you can easily apply them to the current transaction in the new checkout screen. Simply select the Buyer-Type in the drop down list to apply it to this transaction.TEXT-MSG RECEIPTS You can now send a text-message receipt to a purchaser directly from the new checkout screen! Simply fill out their phone number and select their carrier. When the checkout is complete, our ticket ninja will automatically shoot them a text message receipt with a link to their mobile e-Tickets!

HMT has revamped our ticket ordering process for our event promoters. It is now easier than ever for our clients to order bulk tickets for their shows! Updates include a completely new ticket ordering interface, a redesigned ticket setup interface, and easier accessibility to the ticket ordering form. You can order tickets by clicking on the 'Events' tab, then 'Order Tickets' from the sub menu. Instead of having to submit orders for events individually you can now add tickets from multiple events to your order.

The user interface is straight forward - Just select the event you want to order tickets for, then set the quantity and add it to your cart. You can edit or remove any item in your cart. You can select the shipping address we have saved for you, or fill out the shipping address manually. Click 'Process Order', confirm your order, and you're done! The default ticket text will be available for every event, however if you have custom ticket text set up for the event it will show up in the preview. The ticket text is still editable in the event form, and part of this update is an improved layout for the ticket setup. Each ticket now has tabs for each of the major ticket options. Click the 'Ticket Text' tab to edit up to four lines of text. Now your custom ticket text will appear when you select the event in the ticket ordering form.

If you prefer, we can email you status updates so you'll know when your order has been received, printed and shipped. We hope you enjoy your new ticket ordering process!

HoldMyTicket has a widget that allows anyone to post an event calendar to their pages! You can filter events by name, city, genre, venue and more. The widget includes an event search function, making it dynamic and user controllable. You have the option to show or hide the search.

Customizing the widget is simple and versatile. You can change colors, dimensions and display settings to match your site design or preferences. Its fun to mess around with the settings to list the events you want the way you want. Here are some examples of different widget designs:

Once you've tweaked your design just click the 'Get Code' button and copy the code. Its in iFrame. Then paste the code into your page's HTML and you're done! What are you waiting for? Go make your own widget here!

We are pleased to announce that our ticket validation app is now in Apple's app store. Getting ticket holders into an event quickly is a breeze with this easy-to-use box office tool. Turn any iPod or iPhone into a powerful ticket validation and will call check-in device. This app uses the camera on an iPod or iPhone to scan barcodes on HoldMyTicket's thermal tickets, print-at-home tickets or mobile (smartphone) tickets. You can also use the app to look people up on will-call and check them in without tickets.

Our free app, WeGetIn®, is downloadable in Apple's App Store, so if you have an iPhone or a new iPod Touch you?re ready to scan eTickets or hard tickets using the camera on your device. Additionally, we can equip you with a mobile scanner with a laser barcode reader and credit card swiper. This scanner runs WeGetIn® and provides the fastest scanning for high-volume entry, and effectively eliminates ticket lines. Multiple scanners can run simultaneously and communicate with each other in real time, virtually eliminating fraud. This app requires an account with HoldMyTicket.

HoldMyTicket is easy-to-use software for ticketing, box office management and event promotion. Our software offers incredible ways to promote events through social networks while keeping track of ticket sales figures, web traffic statistics, buyer demographics and much more. Sign-up for a free account here www.holdmyticket.com/sell/signup

###Features

• Will Call List
• Ticket Scanner
• Credit Card Ticket Validation
• Eliminate Duplicate Entry
• Multiple Device Support
• Track Attendees
• Analyze Traffic Entry
• Still works if wireless network is interrupted
• Data constantly syncs with central database

The HoldMyTicket team recently returned from Phoenix, where we had a booth at IAVM's 86th Annual VenueConnect Conference and Trade Show!

The Phoenix Convention Center

The International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) is an organization committed to the professional operation of amphitheaters, arenas, auditoriums, convention centers, exhibit halls, performing arts venues, race tracks, stadiums and university complexes. Thats a pretty wide range of operations so we were able to interact with many facets of the industry. From venue infrastructure like seating and lighting, to crowd control and ticketing, everything to do with events was represented. The HMT team arrived with our mobile box office. Our setup included ticket printers, iPod scanners, a few Mac Minis, and a bunch of monitors. We had workstations set up for patrons to demo our software, even print sample tickets. For fun we gave away HMT Ninja stickers and 'Show Me Your Barcodes' t-shirts, which were a hit!

We made some great contacts and enjoyed fraternizing with our potential clients. Being amongst the largest names in the ticketing industry was slightly nerve-racking at first, but then we realized our software is not only on par with our competition, its cutting edge and industry leading. Like our proprietary interactive seating charts which are iPad/iPhone friendly. We believe those who took the time to learn about us saw a better ticketing solution. A big thanks to everyone who took part in preparing and managing the conference! We look forward to returning for the next one. -HMT

Neon Desert Music Festival 2011 from Rodolfo Romo on Vimeo.

The team at HMT spent last weekend in downtown El Paso for the first ever Neon Desert Music Festival! Sprawled over two of El Paso?s downtown parks and seven city blocks, this full day festival featured nearly thirty musical acts spread over four stages. There were multiple art walls, excellent food vendors, and because of the title sponsor, tricked out Scion's parked randomly throughout the festival grounds.

Attendance was great, exceeding expectations. And aside from some mild wind, the weather was perfect! The vibe was one of positivity and enjoyment. The locals had a sense of gratefulness that something like this was happening, and were already looking forward to having another! It was a hit! We?re proud to say that our Apple powered mobile point-of-sale system worked flawlessly throughout the day, cranking out thousands of tickets from our trusty Boca ticket printer.

The beeping sounds of our mobile ticket scanners began at 11am, and continued throughout the day until after 10pm! Our setup included a portable 4G network, allowing our laptops and iPod based ticket scanners to share ticket sales and validation info. The doors opened at 11AM with a constant flow of festival goers, and arrivals increased steadily until they peaked around 6PM. Around peaking time we averaged over 1300 ticket scans per hour; every two seconds there was another person through the festival gates. In fact, any bottle necking was a result of security personnel using the metal detector wands.

The festival volunteers handling the iPod ticket scanners were doing so for the very first time. A quick twenty second explanation of how they work was enough, owing to the intuitive user interface of our ticket scanning app. Next door to the festival entrance was our box office setup, running an a few MacBook Pros and a Boca ticket printer, we were selling tickets for nearly twelve hours straight! People were psyched to see we were taking credit cards so they could save their cash for the vendors in the festival. Oh, and the free HMT Ninja stickers were a hit too! A big thanks to Brian, Gina, Zach and the other folks at Splendid Sun Productions for putting the festival together.

Thanks to all the volunteers and sponsors as well! We look forward to doing it again! Here's another awesome video we recently found of Neon Desert.. Enjoy

We are now offering our clients low-cost high-quality paper tickets. All tickets have valid bar codes that will tie into your event and can be validated with our barcode scanning equipment. All tickets are numbered and have a hologram.

TO ORDER TICKETS

Just login to your Spark app, and go to the Events tab, then click Ticket Orders. From there you can place ticket orders for any events and tickets that are active in your system.

GETTING YOUR PAPER TICKETS

• We will send you an invoice through email
• Tickets are $ 0.15/each + shipping
• Shipped via USPS Flat Rate Priority