Special Music Event? Splash Offers A Solid Free Combo Of Promo Website, Email & Ticketing
Splash is an events website that provides serve yourself event pages, email and ticketing services for special events. It looks great, but at first I considered it overkill for most musicians' needs until reading some of Solveig Whittle's comments about using Splash for a special CD release party. Yesterday I spoke with her a bit more about her experience of using Splash and why it was particularly appropriate for supporting a unique event.
What is Splash?
Splash is a multifaceted service with both free and paid plans. It includes templates and related tools for creating eye-catching designs for the web and for email.
Splash also offers ticketing services, social media photo gathering and planning features such as budgeting and to-do lists. Basically it's an integrated service to provide web, email and ticketing services for events.
Basic services are free. There is a fee for paid ticketing that can be passed on to the ticket buyer or covered in-house.
Splash has been picking up momentum but hasn't struck me as especially useful for musicians given the wide range of marketing and ticketing solutions already available.
Solveig Whittle on Using Splash for a Very Special Event
But a recent post by Solveig Whittle on her CD release party includes the tip to "Use Event Software":
"I used SplashThat.com [aka Splash] to set up my event in advance and sell tickets, which really helped because I had a nicely designed website with e-commerce and email list management system all built in…"
"All I had to do was forward a URL, and people could sign up, and I could integrate it with my social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, email). SplashThat also allowed me to have discount codes for special people (volunteers, press, VIPs), and still have them register so I could get their email addresses and a headcount for the catering."
I spoke with Solveig Whittle a bit about why she used Splash and her views looking back at the event as a whole.
She didn't have any major complaints and felt Splash worked well overall. Part of the reason she felt Splash was a good choice was that it integrated and also branded the start-to-finish process for presenting the event online, connecting with social media, selling tickets and managing related details.
Whittle felt Splash's templates made it easy to give her site and emails a nice look. She also said processes such as giving promo tickets or refunds went quite smoothly.
Double Check the Details
Whittle did point out that, though Splash takes credit cards and does charge at the time of ticket purchase, you don't get paid till 14 days after the event itself. She also described paying a bit more than the FAQ seems to be saying so do double check the particulars with customer service about such aspects.
Having used both MailChimp and Brown Paper Tickets, Whittle found Splash to be a great alternative to both for handling a special event. She also felt it leant an extra special touch for an event that was of particular importance.
More: 9 Tips For Throwing An Awesome CD Release Party
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
