2. Purpose of this Sales Recap
The purpose of this document is to share our insights from working on a large scale sales TEDx event,
such as TEDxWhiteCity.
We believe such a document would have helped us with our Sales strategy and execution. We hope that
this will bring value to the TEDx community, especially with large TEDx events.
We encourage you to share this document and use it as you see fit!
3. Background
TEDxWhiteCity took place on October 12, 2015 in the Tel-Aviv Port, Tel-Aviv, Israel
The theme was Entrepreneurship & Innovation. The lead organizer was Yossi Vardi, co-founder of
Mirabilis (ICQ) and an angel investor
TEDxWhiteCity was a full day event - 8:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.. 1,850 guests participated in the event
TEDxWhiteCity was, by far, the largest TEDx event in Israel to date
4. Sales Team - Responsibility Scope
The Sales team was responsible for two things: Sales & Crowd
‘Sales’ includes: a. tickets & revenue; b. customer service; c. on site registration process.
‘Crowd’ includes: a. crowd quantity (actual attendance); b. crowd quality (diversity, composure).
Main challenges: a. a long holiday season prior to the event during the sales ‘crunch time’; b. 1,800
tickets to sell; c. the event was scheduled to 10am-6pm on Monday - a full work day.
5. Online Registration
Goal - make the online registration process quick & easy
All links published by the marketing team linked to our tickets section. Later on, we added the tickets
widget to the home page on our website.
Check Out Process - our platform worked exclusively with a PayPal checkout. Since the PayPal credit
card checkout process is longer and more complex, we needed the support of a dedicated PayPal
customer service team.
Customer Service - we viewed this as an integral part if the TEDx experience: a. emails were answered
within a few hours; B. issues resolved within 2 days; c. always refund, no questions asked
The overall conversion rate was 2% (registrations/website visits). We monitored the conversion rate
6. Tickets & Revenue - Overview
H
H = Holliday
W = Weekend
W H W H W H
(in local currency)
7. Tickets & Revenue - Overview
Goal - 1,800 registered guests, $39K in revenue.
Ticket Price - We made a special effort to present an affordable price, by focusing on sponsor
recruitment early on. A regular ticket price was $35, and a student ticket price was $25.
Results - we were sold out 2 days prior to event day.
Results - Total revenue - $46K, revenue from promotions - $12K (25% of total).
All proceeds above the original $39K goal, went towards the event (better screen, more refreshments,
etc).
People buy close to event day - 35% of sales ($16K) were generated during the last 5 days
8. Promotions
This pie chart shows % of promotion channel out
of promotions revenue (not total revenue).
25% of total revenue came from promotions.
We used a 10% discount in several channels - we
felt we needed to give something ‘in return’ to
help in distribution.
We prefered an email distribution over social
networks.
We used our team’s personal network to quickly
9. Crowd - Distribution Channels
Community Leaders - individuals who have a large following on social media, such as bloggers.
TEDxWhiteCity Community: MeetUp community, Bizzabo community and people who attended our pre
event at Google Campus).
Student Unions
Entrepreneurs: cooperation with the Office of the Chief Scientist, Co-working spaces (such as WeWork),
accelerators and developer communities.
Alumni networks: Military, Academic and Jewish organizations.
Municipality: Tel Aviv municipality, Entrepreneurship centers, city benefit card.
10. Promotions
Automatic Promotions #1 - The automatic promotion is a Bizzabo feature that enabled guests who
registered to share it with their network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). Their friends who registered
via the link received a 10% discount.
Automatic Promotions #2- this was the most efficient channel (work time vs revenue) - it required no
work (just activation) and accounted for 20% of promos revenue.
Community Leaders - another excellent channel was using local community leaders -- they accounted for
24% of promos revenues.
11. Promotions
Students - our goal was to sell 440 student tickets (25% of total tickets) for crowd versatility. We
made student tickets affordable at $25 (~25% discount). We reached our goal, mainly from
organic sales (cooperation with student unions yielded only 8% of promo revenues).
TEDx community - we sent twice a special discount to our TEDxWhiteCity community via email. This
channel yielded only 10% of promo revenues (2.5% of total revenue). This was below our
expectations, since this was an already engaged crowd.
We recommend starting out with a wide array of channels and later on focusing on what is most
efficient for you (sales/time).
12. Crowd - Diversity
Goal - attract a crowd which is engaged, diverse and relevant to the Entrepreneurship & Innovation
theme.
We decided that a good networking experience was key to a successful customer experience at
TEDxWhiteCity. That’s why we put special effort in attracting: entrepreneurs, investors, students,
engineers.
We gave special attention to the Arab community and the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Both these
communities are still excluded from the startup ecosystem, but show a very positive trend. Our
efforts yielded over a 100 participants from these communities.
14. Event Day - On Site Registration
Goal - create a pleasant TEDx guest registration process (keep the lines moving).
The sales team was responsible to monitor and troubleshooting the registration process
Preparation - 3 days before the event, we shifted our focus to event day preparation. We did the
following: a. we prepared a list of scenarios, to reduce on site troubleshooting time; b. coordinating
on-site logistics with the production team; c. visiting the site a day before for finalize event-day
plan.
Team Position - we had out 10 registration posts, which were manned by professional sales
stewardesses. Our team remained dynamic and present where we were needed for troubleshooting.
We conducted a preparation talk with the stewardesses team an hour before the event, so they
knew our position and responsibility.
15. Event Day - On Site Registration
On Site Registration Policy - since we had 1,800 registered guests, we had one goal in mind - keep the
lines moving and create a positive TEDx experience from the get-go.
Since we had reached our revenue goals and since there were a few technical difficulties with online
registration, we decided that when in doubt, we will let the guest enter the event.
This policy ‘cost’ us a few dozen tickets, but resulted in quick lines and a pleasant experience to the
rest of the guests.
1,451 people (80%) came during 3 peak hours. Good preparation enabled the lines to move swiftly.
17. The Sales Team
Roi Ben Daniel, Sales Director
Let’s connect on LinkedIn -
http://goo.gl/wl1z6P
Yaron Fishelson, Sales &
Partnerships
Let’s connect on LinkedIn -
https://goo.gl/Sn9atQ
Hila Rosenfled, Sales &
Partnerships
Let’s connect on LinkedIn -
http://goo.gl/J8UaPj
