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At Goldstar, we only sell authentic tickets direct from the venue, artist or other primary rights holder. So before you start using the Audience Marketing Platform to sell tickets, please help us ensure your email is accurate and authentic by confirming below.

Then keep an eye on your inbox for more information on working with us.

Now that you’re an official Goldstar event organizer, let’s schedule your Audience Marketing Platform coaching session. 

The Audience Marketing Platform (AMP for short) has everything you need to market your event, reach new audiences and sell tickets on Goldstar.

During these 30-minute, one-on-one sessions a member of our Organizer Success Team will show you how to navigate the platform quickly and easily.

You’ll be able to:

• Reach a new audience of live event fans
• List your events
• Add show dates
• Update ticket offers 
• And get their expertise on all of the marketing tools available to you 

Hit the button below to find a time that works with your schedule. We look forward to chatting soon!

Just in time for Halloween, we’ve got a real treat for you: A Boost BOGO (Buy One Get One) starting today through October 31!

With Boost, you get … 

• Your event in a prime position in Goldstar emails.
• Increased awareness with our most active members.

And with the BOGO, you’ll double your awareness and reach. 

To get your treat: Set up a Boost campaign of $300 or more and include “BOGO” in the campaign name. 

Create your campaign for half the total days you want it to run and we’ll sneak in and match it. (For example: If you want a six-day campaign, set yours up for the first three days and we’ll match the following three days.) 

If you want help Boosting, email us at venues@goldstar.com.  

Two weeks ago, 10 million members woke up to find 300 Goldstar Rewards points in their accounts. They just magically appeared. If you look, you have them in your account too.

Now, for every $1 spent on Goldstar, members get 1 reward point. For every 400 points earned, they’ll get a $5 reward to spend on tickets. Thousands of people have already cashed in their points to save money on their next night out at your event.

This program harkens back to the core of what we’ve always practiced here at Goldstar -- making it as easy and affordable as possible for our members to go to shows, while filling your houses and increasing overall revenue. We tackle large-scale programs like this so you won’t have to. In other words, we’re investing in the technology so you can skip the risk and see all the rewards.  

We’re just getting started with Goldstar Rewards. We'll have more updates and opportunities for you soon. Meanwhile, take a look at the About Rewards page. 

Cheers,
Jim

Don’t forget, we’re offering a Boost BOGO (Buy One Get One) through October 31!

With Boost, you get … 

• Your event in a prime position in Goldstar emails.
• Increased awareness with our most active members.

And the BOGO doubles your awareness and reach. 

To join in: 

1. Set up a Boost campaign of $300 or more.
2. Include “BOGO” in the campaign name. 
3. Create your campaign for half the total days you want it to run, then we’ll match it. (For example: If you want a six-day campaign, set yours up for the first three days and we’ll match the following three days.) 

Need help Boosting? Email us at boost@goldstar.com. 

In case you missed it, we're kicking off the holidays this Wednesday with our 'Tis the Season promotion! 

List your holiday concerts, plays, festivals, light shows, Nutcrackers and any events that celebrate the festive season -- and take advantage of the busiest time of year on Goldstar's site and apps! 

Deadline to list: November 5 (tomorrow!) at noon 

You might be able to name all of Santa’s reindeer -- Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph -- but can you tell Dancer apart from Comet? Or Dasher apart from Vixen? Guessing not. 

Rudolph, on the other hand, has a little something extra that makes him stand out. 

In a reindeer herd of holiday events, does yours have a red nose? That is, does it stand out from the bunch? 

Every holiday season, we see a massive increase in the number of events listed on Goldstar -- and a massive increase (30%!) in what members are spending. 

So how do you put a red nose on your event and separate it from the Blitzens and Prancers? Well, having a unique element certainly helps. And making sure your imagery and copy capture the magic of the experience is a must. 

You can also use Boost to put your event in a prime email spot to our most engaged members. The front window display of our digital storefront, if you will. 

If there was ever a good time to use Boost to maximize your awareness and reach, it’s during the busy holiday season. You’ve created a delightful event, now you need people to know about it. Think of Boost as the blinking red nose making that happen. 

If you want help setting up a holiday plan, just email us at boost@goldstar.com. 

Happy (almost) holidays! 

On November 13, we're announcing the Nominees for the 13th Annual Goldstar National Nutcracker Award! There'll be an email promotion to Goldstar members, social media promotion and press release to spread the word. 

To have your Nutcracker show included as a nominee, list it in the Audience Marketing Platform by November 12 at noon. 

If your Nutcracker wins, you'll receive The Nutty statuette, a cash prize toward your education programs and bragging rights as the best Nutcracker in the U.S. 

5 Reasons to Promote Your Event on Cyber Monday

No. 5: Cyber Monday 2018 was the 8th largest sales day in Goldstar history! We expect 2019 to be even bigger. 

No. 4: We'll have a variety of emails going out throughout the day, which means several opportunities to showcase your event. 

No. 3: Views to emails, the site and apps increase 23% on average on Cyber Monday. 

No. 2: We'll be promoting Cyber Monday on social media, with push notifications, texts and more. 

No. 1: Goldstar members typically spend 30% more this time of year! 

Want in? List your tickets at 60% off (or more) by November 22 at noon to be eligible. 

The deadline for Cyber Monday is this Friday, November 22. Haven't added your 60% off tickets in the Audience Marketing Platform yet? Now's the time! If you missed the details of the promotion, you can get them all below: 

I want to share something with you that I haven't really shared before. For some reason, Thanksgiving always makes me think about the very early days of Goldstar, and what it was like to get started.

It was late 2001, and the world was reeling from the impact of 9/11 and a severe recession. It was the era of the "dot-com" crash. Nobody was starting businesses, and many of my friends in the internet industry were seeking out "safe" jobs with big companies like Earthlink and AOL. My co-founders and I had just left a dot-com startup that had raised and spent a lot of money and had very little to show for it, like so many other organizations that had been so full of promise and optimism just a year or two previous. I guess there are a lot of "dark times" in the history of the world, but this was definitely one that qualified. If you're old enough to remember that time, you can probably reconjure the feeling.

The three of us who started Goldstar pooled $1,000 and put it in the bank account of the newly formed company and started building a website at goldstarevents.com (we didn't own goldstar.com yet). We didn't know anybody in the live entertainment and performing arts world. We knew the internet and e-commerce, and we had this really simple idea:

People wanted to go out more, and other people (you, the event marketers of the world) wanted them to come!

So we did what we knew how to do: build a kick-ass site that was prepared to do business and we turned it on. Somewhere in that process, we realized we'd need something to sell, so we started calling venues and marketers and saying, "Hey, we're doing this thing we call Goldstar, and we'd like to sell your tickets for you!"

At the time, this was so unusual and weird that it took some explaining. For some people, the explaining included the internet itself, how it worked, how we could sell things on a computer, and how it would be safe to do so. For other people, they got it right away: “Cool! Extra marketing for my show!”

For still other people, they understood it, but they quite rightly looked at us and said, "What do you guys know about any of this? How many customers do you have?"

Not much and not many, was the answer.

And this next part is what makes me so thankful when I think about it. After explaining that we knew little to nothing about the biz and had not exactly a ton of customers because we were so new, we said "we don't have those things yet, but we know what we're doing and we promise you this is going to get better, because our goal is the same as yours: get people into your events who otherwise wouldn't be there."

Lo and behold, most of those rightly skeptical people, including many who became partners and friends for years, said, "OK, let's give this a shot."

We rewarded that trust with hustle and a daily commitment to make Goldstar a better and better platform for ticket buyers, but also for the event organizers who want to reach them. I can't even number the ways in which the Goldstar platform has changed, customers have changed, or you, the people who sell your tickets through Goldstar, have changed, but day by day, we've tried to stay at the forefront of finding ways to do more to live up to that original commitment. (And by the way, some of the biggest and most exciting changes are right around the corner, so keep paying attention!)

And so on this Thanksgiving, I wanted to share not just the sentiment that I -- and we -- are thankful for your partnership, but to give you a little bit of depth about why we're thankful for your partnership. When we didn't have a track record of tens of millions of tickets sold or deep knowledge about the business or even really an office for that matter, our event organizer partners were there, trusting us to make a difference for you. And in return, we make sure that we do.

Thank you,
Jim McCarthy, CEO

We're extending the deadline! 

If you need a little more time to add your 60% off tickets to the Audience Marketing Platform, you've got it. 

Get them in this weekend, before Monday (11/25) at 10:00am and you can still secure a place in the promotion. 

Cyber Monday is our biggest promotion of the year, and one our members love (they typically spend 30% more this time of year). Don't miss the chance to promote your events to an enthusiastic audience looking for live entertainment! 

December Comp Trains are some of our biggest of the year! 

Goldstar members are looking for holiday deals, things to do with friends and family in town, and ways to treat themselves -- so make sure they see your event! 

Deadline to list: December 10 (today!) at noon

Here's how to add your comps: 

• When adding ticket inventories, after putting in your Offer Name and comp offers, select “Show Advanced Options.” 
• In the advanced options, select “Comp Train” from the “Special Promotion” drop-down menu. 

Our audience is so excited for comp tickets that we're adding on a Caboose (a bonus email filled with additional comps). 

Want to be part of the fun tomorrow? Add your comp tickets in the Audience Marketing Platform today! (They can be additional comps or new offers if you missed today's Comp Train promotion.) 

Hope to see your event on board the Comp Train Caboose! 

This holiday season, we want to give your events the gift of extra promotion! 

When you create a Boost campaign of $500 or more between now and December 31, we’ll match it 150% (it’s like a BOGO and a half!). 

Boost puts you in a prime position in emails to Goldstar's most engaged members. And in December, when Goldstar members spend 30% more on average, Boost gives your event some extra sparkle. 

Boost is also the best way to get a jump on your January shows. You’ll get consistent exposure and the repeat views needed to spark purchases. 

Our Boost team can help you put together a marketing plan to take advantage of the promo, or you can set up a campaign right now in the Audience Marketing Platform and we’ll go in and add the 150% match (just include “BOGO” in the campaign name like the example below). 

Happy Holidays! 

Please join us in congratulating the Long Beach Ballet for winning this year's prize! You can read all the details in the press release below: 

Long Beach Ballet Wins Goldstar National Nutcracker Award 2019

The Only Award Dedicated to Live Performances of the Beloved Show 

PASADENA, CA. – Today Goldstar proudly announces that Long Beach Ballet is named Best Loved Nutcracker in the U.S. for 2019. This marks a back-to-back win for the Southern California based organization, who won the Award in 2018. This year, they competed along with more than 50 companies to win the 13th Annual Goldstar National Nutcracker Award, the only award honoring live performances of The Nutcracker nationwide. 

Long Beach Ballet Artistic Director David Wilcox says, “It is an honor to have once again been recognized as the most beloved Nutcracker in the U.S.! We produce this show as a labor of love, with over 500 people behind the scenes and a 36-year track record. On behalf of the entire cast and crew, we send our sincere thanks to the nation!”

Accompanied by a full symphony orchestra, Long Beach Ballet’s The Nutcracker also boasts sparkling sets and costumes, a cast of more than 200, dazzling pyrotechnics and magic effects -- along with a special appearance by Rebel, Long Beach Ballet's gorgeous white Arabian horse. This production is one of only two ballet companies in the country that use two harps for their production, to ensure the performance sounds exactly as Tchaikovsky intended it to sound.   

Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, David Wilcox began studying the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus at the age of 11. Having successfully completed all exams through the Advanced level, he continued his studies in London and at the age of 19 began his professional career in Germany. He spent seven years dancing with the Berlin Ballet, the Nuremberg Ballet and the Heidelberg Ballet. Returning home in 1978, he co-founded Long Beach Ballet and formed a professional company, which became Southern California's most successful ballet company for 15 years. Mr. Wilcox has coached several of his students for international ballet competitions and many have gone on to join such companies as San Francisco Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Milwaukee Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre and others. Over the past several years he has produced and directed eight ballet tours to Asia and has staged three full-length ballets for the Classical Ballet of Guangzhou, China: The Nutcracker, La Bayadere and Cinderella. He is a prolific choreographer and has created numerous full-length ballets for the school and the company.

“We’d like to congratulate David and his company, cast and crew on this win,” says Goldstar CEO Jim McCarthy. “The field was crowded with a wide variety of genres, styles and creative themes. From big beautiful classic ballets to very unusual, creative, modern tellings and everything in between. In the end, the people voted Long Beach Ballet to be the best.”

As is tradition, the Long Beach Ballet will receive a cash prize to go towards education and accessibility programs, as well as the coveted title of Best Loved Nutcracker in the U.S. They will also be awarded “The Nutty” statuette. The winner of the Goldstar National Nutcracker Award is determined by audience ratings from people who attended 2019 Nutcracker productions through Goldstar. Performances for this production run through December 22 at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, Terrace Theatre. 

Long Beach Ballet will once again add their name to the list of previous winners of the Goldstar National Nutcracker Award, which include: 

2018 Long Beach Ballet
The Nutcracker 

2017 Company XIV
Nutcracker Rouge

2016 Colorado Ballet
The Nutcracker

2015 The Joffrey Ballet
Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker

2014 MBS Productions
The Beulaville Baptist Book Club Presents: A Bur-less-Q Nutcracker!

2013 Debbie Allen Dance Academy
The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker

2012 The Joffrey Ballet
Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker

2011 The Joffrey Ballet
Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker

2010 Debbie Allen Dance Academy
The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker

2009 Boston Ballet
Mikko Nissinen’s The Nutcracker

2008 Kirov Ballet
The Nutcracker

2007 The House Theater of Chicago
The Nutcracker 

When you create a Boost campaign of $500 or more between now and December 31, we’ll match it 150%. 

In December, when Goldstar members spend 30% more on average, Boost helps your event stand out. 

Boost is also the best way to get consistent exposure and spark purchases for your January shows. 

Our Boost team can help put together a marketing plan, or you can set up a campaign in the Audience Marketing Platform and we’ll add the 150% match (just include “BOGO” in the campaign name like the example below). 

Happy Holidays! 

We're making 2020 the year for theater! Kicking things off is our big theater promotion this Thursday, January 23. 

Theater is the most popular category on Goldstar, and members are constantly looking for new shows -- so this is your chance to show off your lineup in a big way! 

To participate, just list your theater events in the Audience Marketing Platform. 

Deadline to list: January 22 at noon. 

We’re thrilled to have you as a partner. And we want to be good partners to you as well. Which is why we’re happy to introduce you to our preferred ticketing platform partner, Eventbrite. 

If you need a primary ticketing platform that:

• Takes the guesswork out of SEO
• Comes standard with extra marketing power 
• Allows you start selling tickets on your website and on Goldstar -- in minutes!

Then yeah, we recommend Eventbrite. 

You can learn more about Eventbrite, and how Goldstar works seamlessly with their system to sell tickets, in the Audience Marketing Platform. 

Thanks again for partnering with Goldstar! 

Here’s a question for you. Have you heard The Green-Tailed Monkey Story? Or why getting older needs more heroes? How about the concept of “radical forgiveness”? 

If you haven’t, we’d highly recommend you watch the talks from TEDxBroadway 2019 (an event we've co-sponsored and run for the past eight years).

Then, if you’re feeling inspired (spoiler alert: you will be), head here to get a special deal on TEDxBroadway 2020 -- coming October 13 at New World Stages in New York City -- before ticket prices go up. 

Yes, Broadway is baked right into the title, but keep in mind, this is an event for all of us in the live entertainment industry. It’s an inspired day with groundbreaking talks on topics like conflict, forgiveness, ageism and yes, even the green-tailed monkey. 

And it always features fresh, new ideas that resonate in a BIG way.

On February 5, we're sharing events our members will fall in love with -- and we want to include yours! 

We'll be highlighting theater, music, comedy and date night ideas to inspire people to go out this month. 

Deadline to list: February 4 at noon. 

On Wednesday, January 29, we're showcasing super prices, super seats, super offers and more in our Super Deals promotion! 

Deadline to list: January 28 (tomorrow!) at noon.

List your offers (at 60% off or more) in the Audience Marketing Platform to be included. 

Here's how to add your offers for the promotion: 

• When adding ticket inventories, after putting in your Offer Name and 60% off offers, select “Show Advanced Options.” 
• In the advanced options, select “Super Deals” from the “Special Promotion” drop-down menu. 

Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2020 with new features and some fun promos to help market your events. Here are the highlights: 

Select Where Your Event Is Promoted
We’ve added distribution channels to our event form in the Audience Marketing Platform. Now you can learn more about the different channels available to market your events, and you can select the ones that are right for you. You’ll see them when you create a new event in AMP. 

2020 Is the Year of Theater!
On January 23, we’ll be promoting all the great theater events on Goldstar. You’ll get more details soon, but in the meantime, make sure your shows are listed. 

Super Deals Are on January 29
In honor of the big game, we’ll be doing a “Super Deals” promotion, highlighting discounts and premium tickets. You’ll get an email with all the details on how to be involved later this month. 

What's the Sweet Spot for Sales?
Our survey last month found that 42% of organizations put their events on sale 3 to 6 months ahead of time. Only 2% go on sale less than a month before the show. 

Getting the Word Out
The best way to attract new audiences? Survey respondents said word of mouth is the best option, followed by social media and email. What ranked as the worst? Print ads. Do you agree? Reply to this email and let us know! 

We hope your January is off to a great start. If you have any questions about listing your events on Goldstar, using our marketing tools, or if you want help kicking off your 2020 sales, just email us at venues@goldstar.com. 

Have you listed your Comp offers in the Audience Marketing Platform yet? The deadline is today at noon! 

Each Comp Train, we see email views increase 50% on average, so it's a fantastic time to build awareness for your event.

Here's how to add your comps: 

• When adding ticket inventories, after putting in your Offer Name and comp offers, select “Show Advanced Options.” 
• In the advanced options, select “Comp Train” from the “Special Promotion” drop-down menu.