Roundabout Theatre Company

In the crowded field of New York City’s seemingly endless entertainment options, Roundabout Theatre wanted a way for loyal patrons to feel like VIPs. 

The Rewards by Roundabout program would allow ticket buyers to earn points on qualifying ticket purchases, which could in turn be collected and redeemed for tickets to future Roundabout productions. The idea was that the program would create another path – outside of traditional subscription packages – to encourage audience loyalty in an appealing way for new categories of ticket buyers.

Collaborating with the team at Roundabout, we worked through a number of onsale and customer scenarios so we could deliver a custom web solution that abstracts complexity out of sight of the end user.

Some questions we worked to answer:

• Do all tickets earn points?
• Can some shows earn more points than others?
• Can any ticket type be purchased by point redemption?
• Are points awarded for the full cost of a ticket, or does it exclude fees?

The program, which patrons can join free of cost, is live now. It allows ticket buyers to collect points when they attend qualifying performances. By logging in to the My Account section of the Roundabout website, customers can see the number of points they’ve accrued and also access their loyalty program number alongside a digital membership card that can be downloaded using Apple Wallet and used in venues to identify patrons and customer service issues, or collect points for purchases made in-person at the box office.

The number of points accrued in a transaction depends on the type of ticket: 5 points are earned for every dollar spent on tickets, and sweetening the deal for subscribers, each package purchased earns 3,500 points plus 10 extra points for every dollar spent on additional performance tickets purchased outside of a package.

In addition, the flexibility of back-end setup of the custom web solution allows Roundabout to easily create enhancement and exclusion scenarios on a per-performance basis, or for certain time periods:

• Lightning deals
  Instead of discounting, the program offers the flexibility to offer additional points on purchases during limited windows of time, like Cyber Monday.
  
  
• Exclusions
  Entire production runs or discounted tickets can be excluded from accruing points.

Points can be redeemed to obtain tickets for eligible performances, and must be used for the entire cost of the ticket; however, the system also offers support for mixed carts (e.g. one ticket purchased with points plus a $20 contribution paid with a credit card).