Three Simple Tips for Increasing Auction Revenue
These tips are easy to execute and can make an appreciable difference in your auction’s bottom line.-
Provide valet service.
You know that guests dislike waiting to park their cars when arriving at your event. Get your bidders inside and buying sooner by providing five parking valets for every 100 guests. Delaying 10, 20 or even 50 guests from getting out of their cars and in the door dampens your guests’ mood. And it cuts down on the time they have to review and bid on silent auction items, peruse the live auction catalog, buy raffle tickets, or commit to a fund-a-pledge. This ‘double whammy’ can hurt your event revenue.
Fast, efficient valet service presents a terrific first impression for your event and your cause even before your guests get in the door. From a budget perspective, the minimal cost of a full complement of valet attendees pays for itself in the first hour of your event. Plus, you get the benefit of that all-important, positive “last impression” your guests receive at the end of the evening when they can get their chariot back fast and take their auction treasures home.
The sooner guests get in the door, the sooner they start spending.
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Round up.
Using this technique, you can make hundreds or even thousands more at your next event, depending on the number of guests that attend.
Offer your guests the opportunity to “round their bill up.” Create signage with a message like “Please round up” and display it prominently in your check-out, cashiering, and information areas. Then train your check-out or cashier staff to ask each donor to “help out by rounding up to $100” or whatever the next highest dollar amount is. Most guests will be happy to oblige, and you’d be amazed at the donors who will decide to go even further than you’ve asked.
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Super-Size Your Raffle.
Everyone loves a chance to win a raffle. And, for most people, more is better than less. Take those two common characteristics and combine them for a more successful raffle.
Sell more raffle tickets for the same price! Whether you sell one ticket for $25, or ten tickets for $25, the odds do not change for the buyer—but the buyer thinks differently. To most people, having 20 raffle tickets provides 20 times more chances to win than having one ticket. Use this psychological perception to sell more tickets.
Align Live and Online Auctions for Greater Giving
Running an online auction in conjunction with your live auction allows you to expand your bidder community and increase participation in your live event. Here are some tips on how to run a successful online auction in conjunction with a live event.Promoting Online and Live Auctions
When planning marketing and promotions for your online and live auctions, remember that online auctions can offer built-in marketing for your live event. Not only can you harness ordinary promotional methods to drum up interest for your live event, you can also communicate it within your online auction homepages, catalog items, and emails to your community. Here are some promotional rules of thumb:
- ‘Coming Soon’ Homepage - Create your auction page early to begin soliciting item donations and referrals. Feature buttons such as Donate an Item, Donate Cash and Refer a Friend. Also, preview some of the best items that will be available in your auction, to generate demand and interest.
- Promote your online auction first; your live event, second - this will ensure that the greatest number of potential online and live bidders can view and bid on your auction items, thereby elevating the starting bids at your live event and ultimately helping your organization raise more money. You can also extend your potential bidding audience with an online auction—using Auctionpay Online Auctions, you gain access to the BiddingForGood network of 120,000 bidders.
- Make some of your items online-only and live-only - this best practice is especially effective in generating ‘auction fever’, maintaining the interest of both online and live audiences, and obtaining the highest bids. Post highly interesting and attractive ‘live event only’ items in a section of your online catalog. This way, online bidders may be enticed to attend your live event. Be sure that live-event-only items are very clearly identified to avoid bidder confusion.
- Email - use email campaigns to request item donations and drive bidders to both online and live auctions. Increase the frequency of your email blasts as your auction open date draws near to maximize response. To ensure that your emails are opened, add new items over time to your online auction and live auction item list, and use the emails to introduce new items as you add them. You’ll create suspense among bidders and make them eager to open each new email to see what’s new.
Having the right items placed in the most appropriate auction is key to success. Fill your auction with items that appeal to a wide audience and that are easy to receive or redeem. This is especially true for an online auction. Here are some hints for item placement:
- Understand what sells well online versus what sells better live. Historically, auction experts have found that in an online auction, items that sell well include: experiences such as balloon rides or skydiving; up-close-and-local items such as restaurant gift certificates; and unique or rare items such as autographed memorabilia (just be sure you have a clear photo of the object). Items that can be easily shipped and gift certificates that can be redeemed at multiple locations are ideal for online auctions.
- Items like fine art and expensive jewelry do well at traditional live auctions. Due to the visual appeal of such items, they often don’t sell well online.
- The TOP TEN online auction items are:
- Restaurant Gift Certificates (especially those from recognized national or regional operations)
- Designer Luxury Accessories such as handbags, purses, scarves, sunglasses, men’s ties, etc.
- Retail Gift Cards (especially those with a recognized national or regional presence)
- Sports Tickets (especially those for popular sports teams like the Red Sox, Lakers, Eagles, etc.)
- Travel such as hotel stays, airline tickets and resort packages
- Unique Experiences such as VIP concert tickets, red carpet events, meet & greet with celebrities, etc.
- Gift Baskets
- Entertainment – Theater or concert tickets, comedy shows, amusement parks, etc.
- Electronics - iPods, iPhones, Blackberrys, Laptops, Game Consoles, GPS devices, etc.
- Spa and Beauty items – massage gift certificates, spa day gift cards, brand name cosmetic packages, etc.
If live-only and online-to-live items are posted in your online auction catalog prior to the live event, they can generate absentee bids. Absentee bidding occurs when bidding from leading online bidders at the close of your online auction carries over to your live event. Using absentee bidding, you can begin the live bidding of an item at a higher dollar amount. If you have live auction items with absentee bids, you’ll need to get their top bid amount prior to the event for each item on which they’ve bid online and designate a member of your auction team to bid on their behalf at the live auction.
Post-Auction
If your organization finds itself with a number of items which haven’t sold after a live event, consider a post-auction online auction. Post-auction online auctions can reconnect you with both your online and live communities and gives you an opportunity to thank them for their participation, all while offering them great items.
- Allow both your online auction close date and live event close date to pass
- Assess your unsold live, silent, and online auction items, and think about which ones you could extend to an online auction
- Close only the sold online items; leave your unsold items online, add any additional items, and feature these items on your Thank You Homepage;
- Change your online auction close date
- Alert your online and live community to your post-auction online auction
Jon Carson is CEO of cMarket/BiddingForGood. The sales team can be reached by calling 866-918-0313 or by emailing sales@cmarket.com. For more information, please visit www.cmarket.com
BONUS ARTICLE!
More Q & A from Our Online Auction Webinar
Many thanks to everyone who attended October’s webinar Best Practice for Online Auctions. We asked Jon Carson from BiddingForGood to answer some of the questions we were unable to cover at the webinar. Q: You suggest that we allow bidding to start online, then bring up the item as a live auction item at the event, with bidding starting at the level reached with online bidding. Why would patrons bid online and drive up the cost, rather than waiting and bidding at the event?
A: The online auction appeals to constituents who will not be attending the event (typically 30-90% of your list) as well as the 120,000 members of BiddingForGood who will see your auction promoted on the BiddingForGood Website. In addition, don’t underestimate that many constituents just get caught up – in a good way – in the competitive aspect of bidding online.
Q: If our event is in three months and we want to do an online and silent auction (procuring is already happening), are we doomed? We feel confident about pulling off the silent auction but have never done online before and had hoped to launch it two weeks out.
A: The online auction should typically run for 7-10 days, ending 1 to 2 days prior to the live event. Building the online auction should ideally take place a month before you go live. Using Auctionpay Online Auctions, building the homepage takes less than an hour (and you can easily get one running in approximately 15 minutes if you don’t need it to be too elaborate). Then the rest of the time is writing the copy for the item pages (like item descriptions, which you have to do in any case). Getting images (which improves presentation) can take approx 5-7 min per item or less if merchant provides. So you have two months to finish procuring and determine what items should go in which auction. Good luck!
Q: How do we drive up number of bidders with an online auction? How do we promote it?
A: You can drive bidders to your online auction in a number of ways. Email is one option. Auctionpay Online Auctions has an email tool which includes a library of email templates to enable you to run a full email promotion campaign. Be sure every email includes a link to the online auction URL. You should be especially aggressive in the final 2 days of the auction, when “auction fever” is typically quite high. Non-email promotion includes PR (reaching out to local newspaper/radio), promoting the auction in your own newsletter, posting the auction link on your event home page, sending a flyer home with students (if yours is a school auction), hanging a public banner, sending postcards (the tool has an ability to order auction promotion postcards directly from BiddingForGood partner, Vistaprint), or sending letters.
Q: We are doing a live auction at our gala and an online auction prior to the event. We expect our gala will have 400 guests. We plan to procure about 100 items. Is that enough or too many? We will not be having a silent auction at the event.
A: The live auction should typically be 10-15 items. Have more than that, and your guests will run out of bidding energy during the live auction. Your online auction will accommodate the rest of what you procure. Generally, the more items you have in an online auction, the more money you will raise. Remember that it’s easier to review and search for specific items in an online auction that it is at a silent auction, and an online bidder can review all the items over a period of days rather than an hour or two like at a silent auction. Also, remember that, the size of the online bidding pool is quite a bit bigger than the number of event attendees because it includes all of your constituency plus 120,000 BiddingForGood members.
Q: How far in advance should auction catalogs go out to those attending the event?
A: Three or four weeks. You can also post your catalog online 6-8 weeks in advance. You can make an online catalog fun by adding items as you acquire them and driving donors to the catalog page (by using the built-in email tool) to see what's new.
Q: If you also want to have an online auction prior to your actual live/silent auction, how do you determine what items should go in silent vs. the online auction?
A: We believe that you should put all of your silent auction items in your online auction because bidders who can’t attend your event represent a very viable source of bidding demand. To create more excitement in your online auction, you can also post a "buy now" dollar price on an item that includes enough of a margin to cover your costs and allow bidders to realize 100% retail value.
If you missed the Best Practice for Online Auctions webinar, you can listen to the archived webinar here.
Jon Carson is CEO of cMarket/BiddingForGood. The sales team can be reached by calling 866-918-0313 or by emailing sales@cmarket.com. For more information, please visit www.cmarket.com.
Tips for Online Auction Item Descriptions
Want to get top bids on your online auction items? Here are a few tips to make those items more desirable to your online audience.- Consider consignment for out-of-the-ordinary items. Offering one-of-a-kind items makes your online auction special and can draw new bidders to your auction. Travel, special experiences, and sports memorabilia are examples of items that have enhanced drawing power. Just be sure that you are acquiring these items from a trusted source. Understand before signing a contract what you can make on the sale of a consignment item and how the item is ordered post-event. Make sure the item source is credible—ask for references and a client list, and get certificates of authenticity prior to committing to a consignment arrangement, too.
- Provide high-quality visuals in your online catalog. If the bidder can’t see the item, they won’t bid. Photograph online auction items (or get item photos) at 500 dpi imagery (print quality), and provide close-ups of specific, special characteristics of the piece (i.e. image of the overall memorabilia piece, then a close up of the autograph and plate verbiage). If the item is multi-dimensional, provide several views of the item.
- Describe the item clearly, completely, and concisely. Avoid hyperbole in item descriptions—just tell it like it is! Ensure that the description clearly and concisely explains the product design and materials. If applicable, tell the story behind the piece for added emotional appeal. This is especially beneficial for memorabilia items. Lastly, providing item dimensions assists the bidder with any applicable space considerations, and eliminates potential unpleasant surprises when the winning bidder receives the actual item.
- Explain shipping requirements and costs. If your online auction does not electronically calculate item shipping and handling costs, then provide a fixed amount in the item description based on the item’s packaging dimension and weight. For framed auction items, verify that your consignment resource will provide the necessary shipping supplies to deliver products via a reliable carrier, and provide those details in the description.
Vikki Aulie is Director of Business Development at Charity Sports Distributor. She can be reached at (800) 498-8826 or via email at vaulie@chrtyfa.com. For more information, please visit www.charityfundraisingauction.vpweb.com.
