EP 100: Handbid By the Numbers: All-Time Auction Stats and Superlatives

Positioning review: No positioning adjustments needed. All content is data-driven, drawn directly from Handbid's internal reporting. Product mentions are factual and contextual. Recommendations around bid increments are presented as observational best practices based on platform data, not prescriptive advice.

Jeff: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. And this is a special one. We never really talk about when these are published because people listen to them at different times. But I think we're going to spill the beans and say this is kind of a toward-the-end-of-the-year podcast because we're going to do some superlatives. Some best-ofs or tops or whatever. We're going to get nerdy, too, which is kind of fun. And I'm sitting in the wrong spot. I'm sitting in a different spot. I'd like to introduce Lori Mackay from Handbid, who has decided that she wants to sit in that seat. And wherever she wants to sit, that is where she gets to sit.

Lori: Shaking things up. We're all about different. Think different, do different.

Jeff: So we're going to sit in different seats today. But we also have in the studio with us Elise Druckenmiller. And she's got her earmuffs on. We are ready to roll. It's not that cold. We live in a state -- so again, not to spill the beans on time of year, but we have 65 to 70 degree weather outside today, and tomorrow we're expecting eight inches of snow. So welcome to life in Colorado. Normally this happens in the spring, but apparently this is going to happen right before Christmas. Anyway.

Lori: We're supposed to get a lot of snow tomorrow.

Jeff: And we're not going to talk about the weather. It depresses us. You guys don't want to listen to us be depressed. You want to talk about fun stuff -- really kind of interesting nerdy stuff. We're going to talk about top items, top bids, all that kind of fun stuff. And this is the opportunity for us to nerd out a little bit, go into our database and pull reports. And thanks to Carrie for being the database guru that she is. She pulled a lot of this data for us. And then we got to sit around and munch through it. So we've got some all-time stuff because that's interesting. We also have some top of 2023. Sound good? What are we going to start with before my laptop dies? Let's do all-time most bids on an item. Most bids on an item.

Elise: How many do you think it is? Well, I already saw the data.

Jeff: Just play along, for crying out loud. Most bids on an item.

Lori: 38.

Jeff: The answer is 314.

Lori: Wow.

Jeff: Now, we did pull some items out. We disqualified certain things -- for-sale items, donation items -- because we're really just looking at silent auction items. 314 bids for a 20-yard dumpster haul and disposal. Let's do top three, because these are interesting. Number two, 292 bids on a $500 gift card.

Elise: Maybe they started it at a dollar. Dollar bid increments.

Jeff: Can we talk a little bit about the importance of bid increments? We're all for small bid increments. Not because it drives the bid counts up, but it definitely does generate competition.

Elise: They had a lot of competition on that $500 card.

Jeff: Number three -- a signed Donald Trump hat.

Elise: What?

Jeff: 273 bids.

Lori: Wow.

Jeff: Yeah. I'm not going to share the event name, but it was a state convention. It was definitely some group, and it was an auction.

Lori: I wonder what kind of group.

Jeff: Okay. So let's go on to something else. That was all time. Should we look at this year? Some of these are obviously going to overlap. Top bids per item this year was 249. And all it says is "NASCAR fans, check this out."

Elise: Clearly a lot of NASCAR fans checked it out.

Jeff: So there you go. Congratulations to NASCAR fans, 249 bids. Number two was significantly less than that. And that was vacation for two at Tony's Fiji resort.

Lori: I want to go to Fiji. I would have bid on that.

Jeff: 160 bids. I didn't pull in what it actually went for, but I assume a lot of money for a vacation in Fiji. Number three -- and not everybody knows that we also do commercial auctions. This is a commercial item -- a Dyson Air Wrap Complete Long.

Lori: That's not a vacuum.

Elise: Well, kind of. It's actually a vacuum for your hair, and it goes whoosh and it curls it, heatlessly. And then if you swap it, it'll go the other way, so your curls go like this.

Jeff: I don't think that would work on my hair.

Elise: I don't think it would either, Jeff.

Jeff: Very cool. Okay, let's keep going. How about bids in an auction? Shall we do that one?

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: We did bids on an item. Now all-time bids in an auction. Give me a rough guess on how many bids all time in a Handbid auction.

Lori: 11,000.

Jeff: Higher.

Lori: No kidding.

Elise: 11,500.

Lori: 14,000.

Jeff: You're all underbidding. It is 14,736.

Elise: And it was an auction for Disney memorabilia, so obviously we know that Disney fans are a little crazy.

Jeff: Okay, what was number two?

Elise: Well, less than 14,736.

Lori: I'm going with 10,000.

Elise: I'm going to go with 8,000.

Jeff: 13,000. Then we go down to 9,253, and then 8,375. There's a lot in the 8,000 range. We won't bore you beyond that. But anyway, interesting for those who care about how many bids. What would be curious to know is -- that's how many bids in an auction, but how many items are in those auctions? The one that had 14,000 bids -- it's not in the top 20 in terms of items. It had 660 items and did 14,000 bids. That's incredible.

Elise: Crazy Disney people.

Jeff: This year, number one was 7,214. Not in the top 10 all time, but top this year. One that just recently closed was 6,841. Congratulations, Trees of Hope -- 6,841 bids. That's awesome. We have a client that runs large auctions every year and they're so aptly named -- Silent Auction 2023, Silent Auction 2022, Silent Auction 2021. They do a lot of items and obviously a lot of bids. But I think the interesting question is -- what are those auctions that generate a lot of bids but maybe don't have a ton of items?

Elise: If I had to guess based on patterns we've seen, the bid increments are probably smaller on those items.

Jeff: They are. And there's some intelligence in that. We've talked about it in other episodes. If you have really high bid increments, you're going to discourage bidding. So we always recommend -- and this is for charities -- if you've got an item worth $500, please don't start it at $400. Start it at $100 or $150 and put a $10 bid increment on it or a $5 increment. You're going to be blown away. If you give your bidders enough time to bid, once they've bid enough, they get emotionally engaged and attached to winning. It's no longer about what they're spending. It's about winning. You will see amazing amounts of bids and amazing revenue.

Elise: Yeah, there's something that happens in your mind where it's like, it's only $10, instead of another $100 -- I don't think so.

Jeff: This is what Vegas does to people. Come on. Don't you want to double down for an extra $5? Of course, those are the tables I play at. Probably not Lori, though. She's probably at the $50 table.

Lori: No, I'm at the $5 table. I'm at the tables wherever people are handing me money to play. I'm rolling the dice for people.

Jeff: Anyway, it's the same mentality. What's another $5? Come on. That does work. Okay, so we see a lot of that.

Jeff: How about auctions with the most items? What's the most items? And we're talking silent items, not for-sale or tickets or anything. What's the most silent auction items put in a Handbid auction?

Lori: 1,300.

Jeff: Higher. Of all time.

Elise: 5,000.

Lori: Not that much. 3,800.

Jeff: 2,084.

Lori: Is that a commercial client?

Jeff: Yes, it was. The next one was also a commercial client, 1,304, and they basically auctioned off all the street signs in their town.

Lori: Oh, that's cool.

Jeff: Because apparently they made a major design change and these were kind of old and cool. It's like license plates.

Lori: I would buy a license plate from my town. What a great idea.

Jeff: And then we had one of our hockey team youth foundations that did 1,270 items. Then we have our Silent Auction 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 all in the 1,000-item range. So there you go. That's a lot of items.

Elise: But that's a charity, too, if I remember correctly.

Jeff: It is a charity. An actual event. They have roughly a thousand items -- just short of 1,100, put it that way.

Jeff: How about this year? Outside of Silent Auction 2023 having 1,015 items, our folks down in West Texas -- they always have a big auction. They do it every January. 598 items. We've got a lot in here -- 573, 548, 456. Handbags of Hope did 433, Cayman Islands did 389. People are packing their auctions with items for sure.

Lori: Handbags for Hope sounds wonderful.

Jeff: Not to me. I just want the handbags, but also for hope.

Lori: I'll take golf clubs for hope.

Jeff: Very cool. Okay. And then we were talking about this earlier -- it's not always the case that auctions with all the bids have all the items. For example, Silent Auction 2023 did six bids per item. That's not a lot. But that's why you get 6,000 bids when you have 1,000 items. You've got to have a lot of people for that too. But we had one client this year that did 31 bids per item.

Elise: That's Trees of Hope.

Jeff: That's the average in that auction.

Lori: 31 bids an item? That's a lot.

Jeff: When you have three or four hundred items with that many bids per item, it's a lot. You're going to have some that have less, but some that have more. That's how you get to the average. And to recap, most bids all time on an item is 314 -- that was the dumpster haul. So anyway, interesting.

Jeff: This is a fun one. What's the most money put on a single credit card transaction at a Handbid event? All time.

Lori: You're still married, so it clearly wasn't your credit card.

Jeff: True story. And my credit card was denied.

Elise: I actually know the answer to this because it was a Handbid trivia, holiday party, Christmas trivia thing in 2019, and I remember the answer. For our audience, we used to do this as employee trivia. And then they all started cheating, so we don't do it anymore. Photographic memory is not cheating. And it's $201,000.

Jeff: $201,000. Bonus question -- what kind of card was it?

Elise: Amex.

Jeff: It was an Amex. Yeah, no way Visa would let that through. Visa would have the police showing up. Maybe not. But anyway, $201,000. We still love Visa. I happened to be in the vicinity of that transaction. And we were all just wondering if it was going to go through. I don't even think the bidder had faith that it was going to go through, but it did. I had one a couple years ago -- we didn't do it on the card -- but it was $505,000. And I was like, I can invoice you. He's like, oh, that'd be way better. Crazy.

Lori: We now put the card chip in. Come on.

Jeff: Tap to pay. That's coming in 2024. That's some cool stuff we're going to do. Don't spill all of our beans.

Lori: I know.

Jeff: Tap to pay on an iPhone, which would be cool. We got some more stuff to talk about. Okay, so some people may know this, some people may not, but when you create an account with Handbid, it's your account. You can join various auctions. And obviously for some of our commercial clients, we have people that bid in a lot of auctions. So this is kind of a fun one. Top bids per person, all time, across all auctions in Handbid. How many bids has that person placed?

Lori: 8,602.

Jeff: That sounds like a really well-thought-out answer. It's not correct, but Jesus -- we're not going to spill his last name -- Jesus has placed 10,410 bids.

Lori: And if I remember correctly, that organization -- how long have they been with us?

Jeff: Just this year. So he's number one this year too.

Elise: He's been Biddy McBid Bid.

Jeff: Number two is not a commercial client. This is somebody who's been bidding in charity auctions. Kelly has placed 8,363 bids.

Lori: All time?

Jeff: All time. William has placed 6,868. Angela has placed 4,967. She's also a charity bidder, which is cool. 4,967 bids across charity auctions is amazing. Number five is actually one of our commercial clients in Switzerland selling genetically engineered cattle -- 3,542 bids.

Elise: Those are all floor bids. Fascinating.

Jeff: Here's another gentleman, Matt. He's placed 2,684 bids across a number of charity auctions. So he is definitely a charity auction bidder. Pretty fascinating.

Jeff: All right. Most expensive item ever sold in Handbid. We didn't pull the commercial ones out.

Lori: I'm going to go with $210,000.

Jeff: Way low.

Lori: Way low?

Jeff: This is an overriding royalty interest in Midland County, Texas. An oil and gas item that went for $8.5 million.

Lori: Did they put that on a credit card?

Jeff: No, I can tell you they negotiated it. So anyway, $8.5 million. We should probably redo this and pull commercial items out so you guys can see something more interesting for charities. But anyway, eight and a half million bucks.

Jeff: Last one we're going to talk about -- devices. And we've talked about maybe doing a future podcast where we really discuss how people bid, the interfaces they use, and why it matters. Before we get into actual numbers, we have four categories of where bids are placed in Handbid: iPhone, Android -- these are our native apps -- the web, and then our iPad kiosk app. First question -- what of those four has the most bids?

Elise: I am going to go with the web.

Jeff: Interesting. For a lot of our competitors where that's their only interface, that would be true, but not for us.

Elise: iPhone.

Jeff: Okay, what percentage of total bids are placed on an iPhone through the Handbid app?

Elise: I'm going to go with 85%.

Jeff: Not quite, but you're in the range. 65%.

Elise: That's lower than I expected.

Jeff: 65% of all bids placed in Handbid are placed on an iPhone. What's number two?

Elise: I'm going back to web.

Jeff: Ding ding ding. And what percentage?

Elise: I'm going to go with 15%.

Jeff: 22%. So iPhone was 65% all time. Web is 22%. Android was 11%. And iPad was 2%. Now that changed a little bit in 2023. What didn't change is the iPhone -- it still is roughly 65% of all bids. Android surpassed the web, but barely -- roughly 18%. And then followed by the web and then iPad at 2%.

Elise: iPad bidding -- it's a thing of the past.

Jeff: We see this. And when you go in and run your auction, you've got reports that break down by device type. Where are the bids coming from? And when are they coming? What's always been interesting at our events -- if you look at market share of handsets in the United States, iPhone has a higher market share than Android, but that's not the norm worldwide. Android has a higher percentage globally. In the United States, there are more iPhone owners than Android owners, but it's close -- maybe 55 to 45 or 52 to 48. Not at events. It is 85 to 90% iPhone at events, 100%. And that's probably why you're seeing the vast majority of bids on iPhone. The big discrepancy between iPhone and Android isn't that iPhone users bid more -- when we look at bids per device, if you're in the app you're bidding more than if you're on the web, that's for sure. It's just that there are more iPhone users than Android users at events.

Jeff: And if we had done this 10 years ago, the iPad probably would have been 30 or 40% of the bids because a lot of people showed up at events without smartphones and used our iPad kiosk to place bids. You imagine showing up to an event now without your phone? How would you take a picture?

Lori: Usually the people I meet that don't have their phone, it's because their phone is dead.

Jeff: And so they go and charge it and then try to keep up. The whole "my guests are too old to use apps" thing -- that's really non-existent for the most part. And if you're thinking that, your guests are cashing their checks in their banking app and they're in their 80s. The trends are changing fast. The types of people coming to these events continues to evolve and people are comfortable in a mobile app world.

Jeff: But one of the things that's interesting is people choose the app. We don't force people to use an app. They can use the web. They can show up and use the web. They can sit at home and use the web. And honestly, if I'm sitting at home, I might as well pull out my laptop. But people choose this.

Elise: And to clarify for the people listening -- when we say iPhone and Android, that is only the app. The web is -- you could be on your iPhone and be on the browser, and that counts toward a web bid.

Jeff: The app is where it's at if you're trying to get engagement. These numbers reflect that it works -- 65% of all bids are placed on an iPhone. What would be interesting is to look at some of those auctions with the highest bids and see how they were bidding.

Lori: I would think heavy iPhone and Android.

Jeff: My guess is yes. These are going to be commercial bidders, at least some of them. And if I'm commercial bidding on a platform, I want to know when I'm outbid immediately. I want to be able to have a notification right away. So I'm leaning towards heavy iPhone usage.

Jeff: Let's go into Trees of Hope. They just closed. They did almost 6,200 bids with 700 people registered. Let's go in and look at the bidder summary and see how people bid.

Elise: What was the percentage of bids placed on an iPhone?

Jeff: 63% of the people had a bid on an iPhone, but the bids per device -- 77% of the bids came from an iPhone. So they were definitely heavy bidders. There's a little bit of a discrepancy there. The iPhone had 265 active bidders. The iPad had one -- probably the auction manager. The Android had 60. The web at 98. Bids by device -- 18 bids per bidder on an iPhone.

Elise: Nice.

Jeff: 15 bids per bidder on an Android. 2.3 bids per bidder on the web. Do you guys see how this works?

Elise: That's interesting.

Jeff: If we factor in the unknowns -- 531 bids divided by 98 -- it's still 5.4. So when we factor in the unknown, the web is still 5.4 versus 15 on Android and 18 on iPhone. It's dramatically different.

Lori: Could we look at a commercial one?

Jeff: Yeah. Let's not look at oil and gas because trust me, there's not thousands of bids on an $8.5 million item.

Jeff: So we've got a commercial client we've been involved with for about a year. A thousand bids, 225 people. A little more balanced between iPhone and Android. But when you look at this, it's still almost double on the app. They have about 76 iPhone bidders, 50 Android bidders, and about 50 or 60 web bidders. These are people sitting at home on their desktops. Either way, Android bidders are roughly six bids per bidder. iPhone is roughly six bids per bidder. The web is three. More bid activity in the app.

Elise: I don't know about you guys, and I'm maybe a little biased, but I hate using websites on my phone.

Jeff: I just want something formatted for a mobile screen. And web doesn't -- I mean, we have a website, and I'm not trying to fully pick on it. But it's just not as fun.

Elise: And we're all about fun and engaging.

Jeff: Well, I enjoyed seeing that information.

Elise: I think this was kind of cool.

Jeff: We'll push out some more interesting tidbits. We did something like this four or five years ago -- a whole analysis on the breakdown of bidding per device with Handbid. And we started to point to people like, hey, look, this is what it breaks out to. These apps work. So it's important for people to understand that. This is the end-of-the-year, top-type stuff. If you guys have any other questions about top types of things or advice or anything that we've mentioned or you need more detail on apps versus web, we'll do it.

Lori: We should do a podcast episode on why people bid more on an app than they would on the web.

Jeff: Absolutely. Because we understand the psychology behind that. And the technology behind it too.

Jeff: Okay, this was fun. Thank you guys for joining me in this one. Thank you, Elise, for giving us all those amazing right answers, especially with the Dyson Air Wrap.

Elise: Learn something new.

Jeff: Apparently you need a Donald Trump signed cap in your auction, or you need a 20-yard dumpster haul.

Lori: Or a Fiji trip. Fiji trip, guys. That's our recommendation for 2024. Get that Fiji trip in your auction.

Jeff: Okay. Thank you guys for participating. If you have any questions for the end of the year or into 2024, please reach out to us. We'd love to either answer that on a podcast or answer you directly. Leave us a five-star review if you're enjoying this podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google, or anywhere else you might be listening, including YouTube, because we are on there as well. So until we chat again, happy fundraising and happy New Year.