Contacts

Navigate to: Menu > Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

Overview

Contacts holds a record for everyone your venue deals with: ticket bookers, Friends and members, patrons, companies and promoters, press, and your own staff. Each contact record brings together their details, bookings, tags, addresses, files and the email campaigns they have received, all in one place.

Contact tags are one of the most useful tools in Backstage Manager. You can use them to build mailing lists, give members special prices, show ticket types only to certain people, and trigger automated emails.

Add a contact

●      Go to Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

●      Click Add Contact

●      Enter the contact’s details

●      Click Add Contact to save

Staff are added as contacts automatically

Anyone you add as a staff member in Staff & Payroll > HR is automatically added as a contact too. You don’t need to create them twice.

●      To manage a staff member’s tags, open their contact record in Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

●      Add tags that describe their role or team, for example Front of House, Box Office, Stage Management, Technical, Casual Staff or Volunteer

●      You can then use these tags in Contacts & Relationships > Audiences to build targeted lists, for example all casual front of house staff, and send them a campaign from Email & Promotions, such as a rota update, a call for availability for the Christmas show, or a staff newsletter

The contacts list

●      Search: Find a contact by name, email or tag

●      Select all: Select every contact in the list

●      Bulk Edit: Update several selected contacts at once

●      Delete: Delete the selected contacts

The contact record

Click a contact’s name in the list to open their record. Along the top are three buttons:

●      Save: Save any changes you have made

●      Storefront: Start a sale for this contact. This opens your box office sales screen, where you can choose the performance or product they want. The contact is added to the order automatically, so you don’t need to type in their details, which is ideal when taking a booking over the phone or at the box office window

●      Remove: Delete this contact

Contact Info

●      Total Spend: Shown at the top, so you can see at a glance how much this contact has spent with you

●      First Name, Last Name, Email and Phone: Their contact details

●      Note: Anything your box office team should know, for example that they prefer an aisle seat or always book the Circle

●      Tag: The tags on this contact (see Contact tags below)

●      Marketing: Ticked if the contact has agreed to receive marketing emails. Untick it if they ask to be removed from your mailing lists

●      Older ID and any other custom fields you have set up, for example a membership or identification number

Import contacts in bulk

If you have a list of contacts from another system, a spreadsheet or a previous box office, you can import them all at once instead of adding them one by one.

● Go to Settings > Data Import

● Click to download the contacts template

● Add your contacts to the template, one contact per row

● If a contact has more than one tag, separate the tags with a comma, for example Friends Member, Panto Booker

● Save the file as a CSV

● Upload the file and click Run Import

● Your contacts will now appear in Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

Tips for importing

● Keep the column headings in the template exactly as they are, so your data imports into the right fields

● Only mark contacts as agreeing to marketing if they have given you their consent

Transactions

Every order the contact has placed is listed with its Order ID, Date, Order Value, Quantity, Items and Status, for example Complete or Refunded. Total Contact Spend is shown at the bottom. From here you can:

●      View the contact’s bookings and purchases

●      Resend confirmations, for example when a customer can’t find their e-tickets before a performance

●      Print a contact card

●      Change the contact associated with an order

Click an order to open it. The order page shows:

●      Transaction Info: The Order Status, the Source, for example Back Office for bookings taken at the box office, the contact, the order date, the last update, the time of the last ticket scan and a Note field. Click Update after changing the status or note

●      Cart Info: Each Item with its Details, Price, Fees, Total and Delivery method, with a Refund button beside each line

●      Payment Info: The Payment Type, Contact Name, Processor Name, which is the member of staff who took the payment, Price and Date

●      Buttons: Refund Transaction, Exchange Transaction, Print Items, Resend Confirmation, Print Contact Card and Change Contact

Addresses

●      Click Add Address to add an address, and use View/Edit to update one. A contact can have more than one address, with one marked as Primary

Files

●      Click Upload File to save files against the contact, for example a signed access scheme form or correspondence with a promoter

Campaigns

●      Shows the email campaigns sent to this contact, with each campaign’s Name, Clicks, Status, for example Sent or Unsent, Opens and the date it was Sent

Merge and remove duplicate contacts

Duplicates happen, for example when a customer books online with one email address and at the box office with another. Tidying them up keeps your booking history and mailing lists accurate.

Find duplicate contacts

●      Go to Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

●      Search for the customer’s name to find any duplicate records

Move orders to the correct contact

●      Open the duplicate contact and click the order you want to move

●      On the order page, click Change Contact in the top right corner

●      Search for the contact you want to move the order to. You can search by Customer QR, ID, First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone or Postcode

●      Click Select beside the correct contact. Use Edit if you need to update their details first, or Add New Contact if they aren’t in the list

●      Click Save Contact

●      Repeat for each order on the duplicate record

Remove the old contact

●      Open the duplicate contact once all its orders have been moved

●      Click Remove in the top left corner

Clean up poor quality data

●      You can correct details on any contact record at any time, for example fixing a misspelt name or an old email address. Click Save when you are done

Bulk delete contacts

●      Go to Contacts & Relationships > Contacts

●      Select the contacts you want to delete

●      Click Delete

Group contacts by email

●      You can switch on grouping contacts by email address in settings. This helps bring together records that share the same email address

Contact tags

Tags label your contacts so you can find, market to and reward them. Examples for theatres include Friends Member, Patron, Access Scheme, Panto Booker, Schools, Press, Group Organiser, Front of House Staff and Volunteer.

Set up tags

●      Tags are managed in settings

●      For a tag to be used on contacts, its Contact Tag setting must be set to Yes

Search by tag

●      On the contacts list, you can search for contacts by the tags they have

Add a tag to a contact manually

●      Open the contact record

●      Click in the Tag box

●      Choose a tag from the list of existing tags, or start typing to find one

●      If the tag doesn’t exist yet, type the name and press Enter to create it

●      The Tag Settings window opens. Choose days until Expiry or date until Expiry if you want the tag removed automatically, for example when a membership ends. Click No Expiry if the tag should stay on the contact

●      Click Save on the contact record

●      Any automations that trigger when this tag is added will now run

Add tags automatically when someone books

You can set a rule that tags customers automatically based on what they buy, either for a whole event or for a particular ticket type. Rules are set up in Promos.

Tag everyone who books a type of show

●      Go to Promos and add a new offer

●      Enter an offer name, for example Tag Panto Bookers

●      Choose If Event Category Is, then choose the event category the rule applies to, for example Pantomime. Click New to create one if needed

●      Choose then, followed by give the customer the tag

●      Choose the tag to give the customer, for example Panto Booker

●      Save the offer

●      Go to Calendar & Scheduling > Events, open each event and, in Event Info, set its event category to the one you chose in the rule

●      Anyone who books those events will now be given the tag automatically

Tag everyone who buys a particular ticket type

●      Go to Promos and add a new offer

●      Enter an offer name, for example Tag Concession Bookers

●      Choose If a ticket sold with tag, then choose the ticket tag the rule applies to. Click New to create one if needed

●      then is selected automatically. Choose give the customer the tag

●      Choose the tag to give the customer

●      Save the offer

●      Go to Calendar & Scheduling > Events, open the event, go to Event Info and click View Times and Prices

●      Edit the ticket types you want, for example Concession, and set their ticket tag to the one you chose in the rule

●      Anyone who buys those tickets will now be given the tag automatically

Build mailing lists with tags

Because tags can be added automatically, you can build mailing lists that keep themselves up to date.

●      Go to Contacts & Relationships > Audiences

●      Click Add Audience, then Generate Audience

●      Add a rule for Contact Tag and choose the tag, for example Panto Booker or Front of House Staff

●      Every time the audience is generated, anyone with that tag is included, so your campaigns always go to the latest list

Send automated emails when a tag is added

You will need an email template and campaign ready first. Templates are created in Email & Promotions > Template Designs.

●      Go to Contracts & Signatures > Automation

●      Click Add Workflowte and enter a name

●      Choose the trigger Time after a tag is added to a contact

●      Choose the tag, for example Friends Member

●      Set how long after the tag is added the email should be sent, in minutes, hours, days, weeks or months

●      Choose to send the campaign to the contact, or to send a notification to yourself

●      Save. The email will now be sent whenever the tag is added, whether manually or automatically

●      See the Automation article for more detail

Special offers with tags

You can give tagged contacts special prices, which they receive automatically when they log in and book online. This works well alongside automated emails, for example telling new Friends about their member discount.

Discount a type of show for tagged contacts

●      Go to Promos and add a new offer

●      Enter an offer name, for example Friends Drama Discount

●      Choose If event category is, then choose the event category, for example Drama, to limit which events the discount applies to

●      Choose and, then if someone has the tag, and choose the tag, for example Friends Member

●      then is selected automatically. Choose apply the discount

●      Choose a discount, or click New to create one

●      Save the offer

●      When someone with the tag books an event in that category, the discount is applied automatically

Ticket types only for tagged contacts

You can create ticket types that only people with a certain tag can see and buy, for example a Friends priority booking price, a Patron ticket or a Group Organiser rate.

●      Go to Calendar & Scheduling > Events and open the event

●      Choose the performance date and time in the bottom left of the screen

●      Open the section the ticket type is in, for example Stalls or Circle, or the section you want to add it to

●      Add a new ticket type or edit an existing one, then click the cog icon beside it to open its settings

●      In Contact Tag, choose the tag

●      Click Save at the top of the page

●      Only contacts with that tag can now see and buy this ticket type online. You can do this when creating a ticket type or at any time afterwards

Season tickets

●      You can set the same Contact Tag rule on the season ticket types within your season ticket event. This lets you offer different prices or named season tickets to tagged contacts, for example a Friends season ticket, in the same way as for individual performances

Tips

●      Use tag expiry for memberships, so the Friends Member tag drops off automatically when a membership ends

●      Combine automatic tags, audiences and automations so members are welcomed, marketed to and rewarded without manual work

●      Keep staff tags up to date so staff communications only go to the right teams

●      Always check the Marketing tick box before adding contacts to marketing campaigns

●      Merge duplicates regularly, especially after busy on-sales