Boost recurring donations this giving season with the upsell prompt!With the Events and Auctions apps, you can invite each guest to add a card for your auction right after they complete their ticket details. The guest uses the same personal link, adding a card is optional, and Soapbox Engage makes the guest a bidder with a user account so the card is ready to charge after the event.
Important: This needs everything in the list below. Until all four are in place, guests complete their details as before and are not offered a card.
- Allow Guest Details Requests is set to Yes for the event. See Turning on guest details requests for an Event.
- The event is linked to an auction that has not ended. See Associating an Auction with an Event.
- Your site takes payments through Stripe.
- Your Stripe webhook sends Soapbox Engage the saved-card event. See Updating an existing Stripe webhook for subscription cancellations and Auctions card requests.
To offer bidder sign-up to an event's guests:
- Open the Events Manager.
- Click the title of the event.
- Click the Edit tab.
- In the Self-Service section, for Offer Bidder Sign-Up to Guests, select Yes.
- Click Save.
What changes for guests
- A guest's own form asks for First Name, Last Name and Email Address, whatever else the event collects, and its button reads Save and continue.
- After saving, the guest reaches a page headed "Faster check-in", where they can give a mobile phone number, agree to text messages, and add a card on Stripe's page. They can also choose Save without a card.
- A guest who skips the card can add one later from the same link, until the auction ends. The link keeps opening for this after changes to the ticket have closed.
- A purchaser with a ticket of their own sees "Faster check-in for you" on their order, with an Add a card button.
- The request email to ticket holders gains a line inviting the guest to add a card, unless the event has its own Email Text.
See What purchasers and guests see when they open a guest details link for each page.
Note: The mobile phone field is optional unless the auction's Require Mobile Phone setting is Yes. See Choosing what bidders must provide (Bidder Management).
What happens behind each guest
When a guest reaches the card step, Soapbox Engage makes sure they are a bidder in the auction with a user account:
- A guest with no bidder gets one, with the next bidder number.
- A guest whose bidder was created earlier, from their ticket, keeps that bidder and its number.
- A guest whose email address has no Soapbox user account gets one. A guest who already has an account is linked to it once they have shown the email address is theirs, by arriving from the request emailed to them or by opening a sign-in link.
A card the guest saves becomes their card for the auction.
What you see on the Tickets tab
On the event's Tickets tab, a card status appears under each ticket's bidder number:
- Card Ready: the bidder has a card that a charge would use.
- Card Needed: the ticket has a bidder with no such card.
- Needs Review: something about the ticket and its bidder needs your attention. The row says why.
To list tickets by status, click the filter button, choose an option under Card, and click Save.
A ticket with a name and no email address reads Missing Info while bidder sign-up is offered, because a guest needs an email address to sign up.
What each Needs Review reason means
| Reason | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Email belongs to another bidder in this auction | The ticket's email address is already another bidder's in this auction | Check that the ticket has its own guest's email address, and correct it if not |
| Bidder details differ and the bidder has activity | The ticket's bidder holds a different person's details and can't be updated, because it has an account, a card, a card request or auction activity | See What happens to a bidder when you edit a guest's ticket |
| Existing account not confirmed | The guest saved their details, and a user account has their email address, but their bidder is not linked to it | Ask the guest to finish from their link, where they are emailed a sign-in link, or link the bidder to the account yourself |
A reason clears on its own as soon as its cause is gone. There is nothing to mark as resolved.
Guests you have already emailed
Links in emails sent before you selected Yes keep working, and those guests reach the card step after saving their details. Two things differ for them:
- Their email says nothing about a card.
- A guest whose email address already has a Soapbox user account is asked to open a sign-in link first.
To send the new email, select those tickets on the Tickets tab and click Request Details again.
Note: Before you tell guests, open one guest link yourself and save a card from start to finish. It is the quickest way to confirm that your Stripe webhook is working.
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