You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attended Media.
All right Jenny, today’s topic, Exploring Dynamic Racing for your institution.
Yeah, excited to talk about this topic. We’ve had some guests on before and kind of
dabbled in a little bit, but today we’ll dive a little bit deeper. I think everyone
that I’ve worked with talked with in the cultural attraction space has, is that they’re
already doing it or is doing a form of it in terms of variable pricing or is talking
about doing it? So excited to bring in an expert to talk more.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s like something we’ve dabbled with. It’s something that I know
you see quite a bit with your clients. I know maybe a couple of them are using dynamic
pricing, a couple of, and most of them that are not already on dynamic pricing or at least
talking about it. But I really want to tack this topic, like this big trend from a marketing
perspective. I think that’s what we do on this podcast is like, what’s going on in the
space and what is the marketing teams think about it? So as we do, we brought in a guest
and expert to help us navigate the world of dynamic pricing. I’m sure many of our audience
has already heard of Diginex. They are the leader within the cultural attraction space
about dynamic pricing. And we got the Chief Revenue Officer. So Harry Thomas seeds is
going to join us. Harry, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Give us like the 30, 60 second, you know, spiel on Diginex.
Yeah. So just a little bit of background on Diginex. Diginex has been working with cultural
attractions since 2014. And we’re really known as the experts in this line of field. What
we do is build customized and automated dynamic pricing solutions or algorithms for our
clients. We work with over a hundred third of your organizations in, in we’re a global
company. So we work in North America, the UK, Australia, and cultural attractions is
a big part of what we do. We also do a lot of work in live entertainment as well. But the
thing that makes us, I think unique and what our clients really and why they like working
with us is all of our solutions are driven by our team of PhD economists. So we have a
nine PhD economist on staff who have expertise in pricing science. So they’re really the ones
who are responsible for developing the solutions that are clients use. And you know, behind
that, we have software developers that analysts and not necessarily something a lot of marketing
people may not the super much in the details. But I think the economist team is something
that’s that really makes a difference in terms of implementing a dynamic pricing strategy.
And that makes us unique. We also have a client success team that really works with our clients
on a day to day basis. So it’s not really a black box of dynamic pricing. And then the other
thing that that makes us unique is all of our what our core deliverable is for our clients is to
provide price recommendations for them on a daily basis. So every day we provide price recommendations
for whatever is on sale. But our clients are still in control of accepting, rejecting or
overriding these prices. So so that’s a real key component. Typical revenue lift, depending on
what a strategy is today is, you know, we see anywhere from five to 20 percent. And then we’re
integrated with most of the leading ticketing systems today that most cultural institutions use,
which is a really, really, really key component. So Harry, help us out a little bit.
That was a lot of info. Yeah. What you guys do. But I actually want to pause for just a second. And
maybe help the audience who’s not aware of what is the difference between dynamic pricing and
variable pricing. Because I think sometimes these get interchanged or they’re used interchangeably
and they’re actually different. Yeah. So that’s a great question. So so when we’re talking to clients,
you know, they’re really maybe three or three or four different strategies for pricing for cultural
attraction. So the first one, of course, is static pricing where prices don’t change. Variable
pricing does sometimes get confused with dynamic pricing. So variable pricing is where an organization
may pick two or three static pricing tiers, whether it’s peak or off peak, you know, Friday through
Sunday might be a different price than Monday through Thursday or summer may be different than winter
pricing. So seasonal pricing. That’s really more of a variable price. So there’s not, not, is not
necessarily being responsive to the market. It’s not necessarily, you know, looking at what’s
currently going on in the market, but it’s, but it has some moderate variability. So with dynamic
pricing in the, in the, in the true sense of the form, like what Digit X does is Digit X uses a
lot of different factors and variables that go in into, into the solutions of things like bringing
in weather, what’s going on with their weather right now. And that’s going to impact maybe attendance
and that’s going to impact pricing. What, you know, when people are going onto your website,
you know, what does Google Analytics say? Where are they going? Are they putting, are they making
that purchase? Are they not making that purchase? So we look at things like that. So to think about
the data that we’re bringing in and how is it being fully responsive to the market. And then from
there, we provide price recommendations on a daily basis to where variable pricing is typically more
of a set it and forget it and, and, and doesn’t bring in any of the, the changes. And then the, then the
third thing is, is that it fully optimizes the online price as well as the walk up price too. Because
with most of our clients, if not all of them, we’re not only dynamically pricing the online price,
but we’re also dynamically pricing the day over the walk up price.
Yeah, I think that’s, I kind of going back to a part that you said about, I guess every day,
you’re kind of coming up with this new number, right? You got this team of experts, these PhD experts
sitting back there, I’m sure with algorithms, not just spreading,
countries, numbers decide what to serve in terms of that price. But you’ve got this daily approval.
So everybody gets the ability to approve or reject that. If I’m sitting here thinking, like,
I guess walk us through what that looks like from the team that has to do this approval. Because part
of me would say, like, oh my gosh, that’s trustful. What if I miss a day? Like every single day now that
I do this, I have to, like have this confidence that I’m going to select, like, I’m going to prove
the right number. Like, how are you working on that with your clients? So when do they finally just
let go and say, okay, just let it automate. Yeah, yeah, so I would say if any of our clients are listening
to this today, most of them are on what we call auto except. But the way the daily approval works,
we have this portal called seats and they go into the portal. They can see every day or if we’re
doing different time slots pricing that differently, they’ll see whatever price recommendations were
recommending. And then they’ll just click into this specific day. And they can look at
what are what the price is today versus what we’re recommending. And they could hit approve.
They can hit reject. They can hit override. And then once they click the button,
then it goes into a holding pattern and then it will publish in the ticketing system. So
but I would say Jenny that once, you know, once a client gets sufficiently comfortable with our
recommendations and that could be a week, it could be a month, could be a couple months,
then they just go on to auto except they can always go into the portal. We always send them an alert
of saying here are new prices. You could go in. But if they if they’re on auto except,
then they will automatically update at the time that the client wants them to do that.
Yeah. And this is more, you know, when you talk about the dynamic pricing and the bringing in
weather and bringing in demand, right? It’s more than just setting a price point seven days out
and it’s $30 seven days out, $31, $6 days out, $32, $5 days out, right? There’s so much more going into
how to come up with this price point. But then I think it probably also opens up this ability to have
days that are maybe more affordable than just a flat rate. So someone who
wouldn’t come because they think their price out might now be able to look at a calendar and
pick days that make sense for them to come. Yeah.
You’re going into an institution organization and say, hey, we’re going to change the price
every day. I’m thinking the marketing team’s going, what? Yeah. It doesn’t work. They’re going to blame
marketing, right? So I’m sure you’ve had this conversation of Ton Harry. What’s the conversation
that you have to a marketing team that’s raising their hand and saying, let’s pump the brakes on this.
Yeah. So when me or my team is in a meeting in an initial introductory meeting,
that’s the number one question that comes up is like, you know, the marketing team is like,
our guest is going to absolutely freak out in a band and ship and be really, really mad at us.
And so, Pitchforks, coaches, advocates, they’re not buying tickets.
Yeah. So a couple of things. One of the things we spend a lot of time on is what is the marketing
message. And so most of our clients today, none of them call it dynamic pricing.
Most of them will call it plan ahead pricing or pick your day, pick your price. And so typically
with our cultural attraction clients, we’ll start out at a lower price point and then we’ll only go up.
And so then they can make the marketing promise of if you buy today, you’re guaranteed the best price.
And so all the places go up later in time, right? Right. Right. So we’ll start at a lower price point
as it gets closer to the day. The price will, you know, continue to increase. But then also the
pieces and I think you alluded to it is still how is that communicated to the guest? So all of our clients
have a mech, you know, typically it’s a calendar that shows a month out of pricing. So it could show
on the 26th, you know, if it’s a full month that is showing it could show on the 26th that the price is
24.95. But on the two days out, it could be 34.95. I’m just making up these prices. But having that
transparency to the guest and to having every day has a different price and then message it as we want to,
we want to have a broad array of price points. It’d be fully transparent to the guests. And you, the
guest will pick a day or a time that fits your budget and fits your schedule the best. And so, so even if
a client said or a guest says, you know what, I can only go on a Saturday or a Sunday just because of
my family schedule. Well, maybe they were going to go on that, you know, the two days out, Saturday or
Sunday. But then they can look at maybe the next week or the week after that on a Saturday or
on Sunday in a probably a more, it would be a lower price ticket. So it just, I think, empowers the guest
to make the right decision for their budget and schedule. And so that’s the message that our marketing
folks really exude. And we spend a lot of time with them helping, helping them with that.
All right. So I like the message or the kind of visual of like an airline calendar, right?
You know, every day the price is a little bit different. Maybe that’s a really good way to kind of
differentiate between this dynamic versus variable pricing. Every day that it’s different. You’re
telling me that today is always going to be the lowest price so that enables the marketing team
to use this language plan ahead pricing. I love that phrase. Like that, that resonates with me.
And then kind of looking at my notes here, going back to your process, you guys are looking at things
like weather, the site behavior, the site traffic, that’s part of like that magic pixie dust that’s
coming over. Right. This pricing schedule versus just said it and forget it, variable pricing,
as you mentioned. The picture is coming a little bit clearer for me now. Yeah. Yeah. And so that,
that, but that marketing pieces, you know, being super transparent, a lot of different price points,
all those kind of things are super important. And then the one thing too is that the reason that
we’re looking at prices and we’re giving price recommendations every day for whatever is on sale
is we think of a day as a as a unique event. So every day has it’s like, you know, this Saturday in
on July 4th is going to be have completely different characteristics than this day.
And even July 10th, you know, every day is unique. And so we treat it that way and that’s why we
price every day differently. And that’s why different price can be different.
So here we were recording this in September and holiday campaigns or holiday events aren’t
everyone’s mind. It’s right around the corner, right? I think for a lot of the clients that we work with
their, you know, zoo lights or, you know, garden lights show is huge, right? They add their
attractions, especially. So talk to us about how this works. Maybe if I’ve got not just my general
admission, but also special event pricing with VIP tickets and late night tickets. Like I’ve already
got like all these different special ticket pricing. Like how would I integrate dynamic pricing into
that? Yeah. So it’s so so you make a great point. We, you know, I know you guys had the Houston Zoo on
recently. That’s actually how we got started with them is their holiday lights program. We also
work with Morton Arborita and my friend Vince over there. We started with them with their holiday
lights program. And, you know, there’s some, some different complexities within holiday lights
programs, right? So, so there’s things like everybody will book the first hour as opposed to late.
So how do we kind of smooth that traffic and smooth that attendance? So, so with those kind of situations,
number one, we’ll look at the data. We’ll probably come up with help them come up with the strategy
on, you know, every hour or every half hour may have a different price. And, and we execute it that way.
But, but we have found in our clients have found that it’s a, it’s a really good strategy to help
move out of attendance throughout the campaign, throughout the, throughout the event and maybe shifting
some, some attendance even from, you know, sat Friday or Saturday or Sunday into
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday as well because there’ll be incentivized to go on those days. And even if you can,
you know, even get 10 or 15% of those folks to move into those non-peak days, that’s going to
provide a better customer experience or better guest experience for for everyone involved.
Just as a, as a story on that, we had one of the clients we work with said that, you know, on,
you know, typically before we hired Digin X, we were typically getting 13 to 14,000 people during our
holiday lights event on a, on a Friday or Saturday. And none of our people were able to sit.
They were always kind of frantic. And so when Digin X came on board, they noticed that, but they were
completely sitting down and not doing a whole lot on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. But then in
that first year of dynamic pricing, there was a little bit more relaxation on Saturday and Sunday
or Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but there were a lot busier that the, their team was a lot busier
on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as well. So truly the attendance shifted because the guests had
a lot more options on when to choose for their pricing again, what fits their budget, what fits their
schedule. And they make some adjustments and sacrifices to that. Yeah, smoothing out traffic, I think
that’s what everyone’s looking for in the holiday event specifically. One more question on this. So
can I just do it like a one-time project if, if I wanted to just test it out for a holiday event?
Is that something that people wouldn’t do with you or is it really like your all-in for all
pricing year round? No, that’s a great question like with more in our
baritone, they started with us with the holiday lights and they’re now doing a general admission as
well and same with Houston Zoo. That’s, they contracted with us just to do their holiday lights
and then sell value in it for their general admission as well. And it’s really, it’s really different
because with the like a holiday lights and event like that and exhibition is just a finite period of
time. So there’s a lot more urgency, a lot more capacity issues, things like that. Whereas general
admission, it’s a different, a little bit of a different approach.
You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how non-profit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick
and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend media is a media planning and buying agency,
specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information please visit attend.media.
Now back to Ryan and Jenny. All right Harry, so all of this sounds great, the dynamic pricing idea.
I’m assuming this is going to generate more revenue for the institution and I know we’re going to talk
about that in a minute. But on the flip side, I’m thinking all you guys are doing is raising prices
for the local zoo, the local botanical garden making these cultural attractions less accessible
to the entire community. Can you speak to that? Yeah, so that’s a great question and a common question
we get. So the truth of the matter is, if you think back to what I said before about fitting,
picking a day that fits your budget and schedule, the truth of the matter is when we engage with
the client, one of the things that we do is, in essence, the pricing study for them and will provide
what we call start prices or on sale prices. So for the most part, all those
on sale prices are much less than what a current static price is today. So for instance,
if you’re an institution where you have a static price or a variable price of 20 or 22 dollars,
typically we may come in with our start prices at let’s say $16 or $15. So
and so all that’s marketed with a plan ahead pricing and giving your guests an opportunity
to buy a ticket that’s less than what it was previously. It’s just as it gets closer to the day,
it’s probably going to go above the current static price or variable price that you have today. So
more days than not, there’s going to be more opportunities for a guest to buy it for a less expensive
price. Got it. Okay, so I think that’s key. It’s not only just about raising prices, but you guys
lower prices as well. Yeah, we’ll start at a lower price again with plan ahead pricing.
You’re only taking the prices up, but because we’re starting out at a lower price point,
it gives a lot of runway for an organization to take advantage of in a guest.
And then what about who is, who’s this for in terms of an institution, right? How much
either ticketed revenue or total visitation do I need to warrant bringing this on as a new piece of
software? Yeah, I think in terms of kind of a benchmark that we talk about, it’s really about,
let’s just talk in terms of general admission revenue, typically anywhere, you know, you’re at
four, five million, four million, it’s really kind of a no brainer in terms of getting a really good
ROI return on investment in four to five million in terms of general admission ticket revenue that
did to next would be in charge of pricing, you know, three million. It’s absolutely worth worth
a conversation. And then in terms of special events like a holiday lights, you know, maybe a little
bit less than that as well because the engagement that we’re having wouldn’t necessarily be for an entire
year, but it would just be from say the on sale as a October through through through, you know,
middle, you know, beginning of January. So, but that’s sort of the, that’s really what we look at
is what are responsible for pricing. And then can we get a good return on investment for you?
Because otherwise we won’t get hired again if we can’t. Yeah. And then what about any restrictions
around like ticketing platforms like do you integrate with everyone? Is there some that you don’t?
Yeah, great question. So we we pretty much integrate with everybody.
And that’s something that I think is really key to to making a successful dynamic pricing
implementation and execution for for for the team. So we’re integrated with Gateway with anchor
or Ventrada, Viva ticket, Tickature, Tessitura, Altru, Acme, Rocket Res, Exceso, sentiment. I mean,
you name it. We’re pretty, pretty Rocket Res. We’re pretty well integrated, you know, we’re integrated
with them. So that makes the conversation in terms of execution a lot, a lot easier. And they’re all
really great partners. All right. Hey, let’s talk about revenue. But I’m going to make a cheesy
dad joke. Show me the money. No, it’s a lame. Okay. But yeah, I mean, what this does sound like a
a little bit of a lift. I say a little bit a big lift for an institution. Yeah. What? Why would
an institution do this? Can you share any numbers in terms of ROI lift? Yeah. So I would think of it
maybe not a particular institution, but, you know, in terms of what a typical institution
enjoys with once they move to dynamic pricing is anywhere from five to 20 percent. Sometimes we’ve
seen it more. But I think I think that’s a good general estimate. So I think if you think about
if your institution is $6 million that Digitnex is pricing even at five percent, that’s a pretty good,
that’s a pretty good potential lift on that and pretty good ROI. So that’s really how we think
about things and, you know, really there’s some lift at the beginning, but hopefully with the automation
and everything that we have and the great integrations we have with the ticketing systems
that that lift is pretty minimal for our clients. So I think that’s how to really think in terms
of the ROI. Think about number one, what, you know, how much do you generate? What would Digitnex be
responsible for pricing? And typically we also do an analysis for our clients ahead of time. We
don’t charge for this where we can take some of their kind of high level data of attendance by day,
revenue by day, what the prices were and do a retrospective analysis and say, this is what you,
we think you would gain by dynamic with through dynamic pricing if you would have done this say in 2024.
And so that’s really helpful for organizations to have that in, have that internal conversation as well
in our economists do that analysis. I also want to kind of just as a visitor, as a frequent
visitor of cultural attractions, especially holiday light shows. I want to talk about the benefit
of having somewhere to sit, you know, like smoothing out that visitation. I really like what you guys
were saying there because sometimes you go these events and it’s just jam-packed, you know. Yeah.
Yeah. So I think, and that’s again where I think we can really help organizations out, especially with
with these with these events by having price differentiation by specific, you know,
by specific hour on a Saturday or a Friday or a Sunday. So typically we’ll see where five o’clock
maybe is more expensive than a eight o’clock or something like that. So we’re really motivating patrons
to make their own choices and naturally migrate maybe to a less expensive time, but it just smooths
things out or because you’re using this kind of visual calendar where you can also look at the
different days and options and times to move to those days. And again, it may not, it’s not going to
happen with 100% of your clients, but even if it’s 15%, 20%, where you can move them is just naturally
going to move. So you’re using pricing as a lever to smooth out attendance.
All right, Harry. Lots of good info. Let’s wrap it up here with, you know, what’s the outlook? What’s
the, what is everyone expecting to happen in the next five, 10, 15 years in terms of dynamic pricing?
Is this going to be just the natural way that all ticketing is done for all all of incident institutions?
I think, I think I’m hopeful that it will, that it’s just going to be a natural way of doing business.
I think the biggest hurdles that we’ve learned over the years is how do you communicate it? How do you
make sure your patrons feel happy and engaged by it? And but still, you know, no money, no mission.
And so we need to, I think every organization is really focused on, you know, what are some different
nuggets? What are some different edges that we have? And so this certainly is one of them,
but also making sure that your, the institution is still a great one to go to and the value proposition
was there as well. So, but I think, I think, you know, most organizations want agility, they want
flexibility to make decisions and just so they’re comfortable with the way this has executed.
I think that it is the way of the future and, you know, if 20% of organizations are doing it today,
hopefully 100% of them will be doing it in five years.
Harry, awesome stuff here. How can people get in touch with you? You talked about offering some sort of
back analysis so they can get a projection of what numbers would be. So if somebody wants to do that,
what’s the best way to engage with DigiNex? Yeah, just, you can email me directly and then I can,
you know, either work with them directly or one of my sales team, my email address is htomas@digomnex.com.
htomacd@diginex.com. Just shoot me an email and we’ll go from there.
Guys, that email is in the show. No Terry, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic
or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit our website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com.
