If you’ve RSVP’d to a political event in the last few months, there’s a good chance you did so via the platform, Eventbrite. What’s behind the platform’s dominance of the political event space this cycle?
Chad Barth, who heads up Republican outreach for Eventbrite’s Political Team, says the platform’s features make it a natural fit for campaigns and organizations. Managing an event for a campaign can be a hassle: you’ve got to send the invites, get the RSVPs, collect payments, generate tickets, and check everyone in.
With Eventbrite, this is all done within a single platform through a very simple interface that anyone can set up in a matter of minutes.
Campaigns have been turning to the platform for event management as early as 2008, but for the 2012 campaign season, Eventbrite sought to expand its footprint in the political space by hiring experienced political operatives to head up their outreach.
The ubiquity of their registration pages for political events speaks to their success. In 2012, reports Barth, “thirteen state party organizations (both Republicans and Democrats) used Eventbrite to manage registration for their conventions.”
Eventbrite’s most well-known feature is event ticketing, which allows “organizers to have access to live, up-to-date reporting for their ticket sales and guest lists.” Previously, says Barth, organizers had to rely on less-than-elegant workarounds, like online donation pages.
If your event is free, so is the use of Eventbrite. If there is a cost to attend the event, Eventbrite charges a percentage of the ticket price for using the platform. As Barth describes it “Eventbrite is the non-vendor, vendor. Our platform is completely free to use for events that don’t charge a ticket price.”
In addition to registration and ticketing, Eventbrite has tools to ease the process of checking in with a mobile app. Now, instead of the awkward, printed out spreadsheet at a desk that may or may not have been updated with all the info, an attendee can show his ticket on his phone and it can be scanned right then and there.
On top of the event management platform, Eventbrite offers tools for social media and data capture. By integrating social sharing with event registration, organizers can encourage attendees to invite their friends, thus recruiting new attendees.
A unique challenge for expanding into the political space has been the need to address compliance with Federal Elections Commission guidelines for paid events. Barth also adds that political operatives are learning to be more reliant on non-partisan platforms, like Eventbrite, instead of party-specific tools.
Barth isn’t alone in political outreach at Eventbrite; his colleague David Glasgow works with Democrats. “At Eventbrite,” quips Barth “we’re neither red or blue…we’re orange!”
