5 best practices to keep your email marketing relevant

In 2012, TRG bloggers are taking a fresh look at data and trends that inform risks worth taking, best practices worth hanging onto, and assumptions worth challenging – each in time for action to be taken. This post is cross-posted on the Technology in the Arts blog.

We’re not buying the bad rap email marketing is getting these days. You’ve heard it all before. Open rates are down. Users often filter emails by sender and ignore unwanted or low priority communications. Sophisticated spam filters are plucking out and putting in quarantine anything resembling a sales message. And sophisticated users, especially those in the Millennial generation, prefer other media.
The offsetting fact is that access to email is greater than ever. Users of all ages have smartphones and tablets that make on-to-go communication easy, convenient, and ubiquitous. And, those worrisome open rates for email? They actually reached a two-year high in the third quarter of 2011.

So, when our clients ask whether it is worth it to continue to use e-mail in marketing and fundraising campaigns, our reply is: Absolutely. 

Why?

Fear Competition? Lose Opportunity!

In 2012, TRG bloggers are taking a fresh look at data and trends that inform risks worth taking, best practices worth hanging onto, and assumptions worth challenging – each in time for action to be taken.

Competition for patron’s dollars is a subject that’s back in the industry dialog again, sometimes with negative overtones. Can we really still think that sharing a marketplace with other successful arts and entertainment organizations is a bad thing? Even with foundations willing to invest in collaborations? I find that disturbing, especially in view of the opportunities being mined daily by members of community collaborations nationwide.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about the power of technology and data collaboration at an INTIX conference session. You can view the presentation here:

Consortiums: the Power of Technology & Data Collaboration

View more presentations from TRG Arts.

I was reflecting in this discussion on the 18 data-sharing networks (also known as consortia, co-ops) that TRG manages. Each network brings together disparate groups of patron records from all different kinds of organizations and their different ticketing and fundraising software systems. The network allows each and every member to see their own and all patron connections across an entire community—to discover all the other ways a member’s patrons engage in the arts.

Warning! An Election Looms November 6th

As a new year begins, TRG bloggers are taking a fresh look at data and trends that inform risks worth taking, best practices worth hanging onto, and assumptions worth challenging – each in time for action to be taken. This post is also published on the Americans for the Arts ARTSblog.

 

Image by the League of Women
Voters of California via Flickr

When I worked as an arts manager, the election season – particularly presidential years like 2012 – was a time of fear and loathing.  Why?  First and foremost, ticket sales and admissions soften or die immediately before and on Election Day.  At TRG, we’ve watched this trend play out across the U.S. over the past two decades in client sales results from markets of all sizes.  An inescapable consequence of major election cycles is campaign advertising – a driver of America’s economic engine that is bad for arts and entertainment. 

The flood of campaign advertising every other October sucks opportunity out of our promotional campaigns. (Just ask anyone in Florida right now where the Republican primaries alone are having a major impact.) Campaign advertising drives up the price and limits -- in some markets eliminates -- the availability of advertising time on radio and TV.    In-boxes, mailboxes, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are stuffed beyond capacity.  The normal roar of media clutter hits overload.  It becomes nearly impossible to create a viable marketing message capable of cutting through.  No matter the quality of what goes on stage or in the gallery, patrons are less likely to hear about it.

Upcoming Webinar: Demand and Success Factors for Museum Pricing

TRG President Jill Robinson

Admission price increases at some of America’s highest profile museums trigger major media coverage and a “fear factor” in discussions about how museums should determine pricing. However, museums aren’t getting useful direction from the dialog about the pricing, says TRG President Jill Robinson in her recent blog post.

Jill leads TRG’s counsel for museums, and in this free webinar she will explain the demand-based pricing approach that has led TRG clients to sustaining revenues and lasting patron loyalty over the last two decades. Hear how pricing fits into a smart revenue strategy as well as the key success factors for optimizing admission pricing in museums and other membership-based organizations. Jill will make a brief presentation and then take your questions.

Join us for this free hour-long webinar on November 29, 2011 at 1 Eastern/10 Pacific.

To Register:
1. Go to Webex: http://bit.ly/tLvqLi

2. Click on "register" (free).

3. Fill in the short form and SUBMIT.

You will receive log-in information for the webinar in the confirmation email.

Note: To participate fully, you will call in for sound and log on to the online presentation and virtual dialog. 

The Patron Experience and the New Customer Service

By virtue of the way technology has changed our world, people have come to expect an ever more personalized customer experience. Retailers like Amazon and Netflix use sophisticated technology to recommend more products, remembering buying history and order information, and tailoring the experience to each customer’s preferences. Customers now expect products and the customer service surrounding those products to fulfill their specific needs.

What about the arts? In the arts, the experience is the product. The words we use to describe our product, our art, and the action of coming to the theatre or exhibit hall often include “experience”. It’s a critical part of our vernacular. Smart arts managers know that the arts experience starts from the time a patron picks up the phone or goes online to order a ticket and ends when he/she arrives home after the event. TRG’s decades of client experience and patron behavior research shows that patron loyalty is a process that grows with accumulated experiences with the organization.

Customer service supports loyalty development at every step of the way. TRG’s counsel on patron-centric management and customer service is built around the concept of patron loyalty. Think of patron loyalty as a ladder. Patrons start at the bottom rung as a “tryer” when they have their first interaction or transaction with the organization. Patrons who come back again as a repeat buyer, multi-buyer, subscriber or member-based frequent attendee are what we call “buyers”. With good customer care, an organization can retain buyers and cultivate them into an ongoing, engaged investor—an “advocate.”

A patron’s experience, then, is a set of related interactions that, together, determine future buying and donating behavior. Viewing customer service the way a patron sees the experience is the very definition of patron-centric customer service. The experience arts patrons have unfolds in a variety of ways--the marketing materials they see advertising an event, the interactions they have with box office staff or online ticketing, the ease or difficulty of parking, the way they pick up tickets at the venue, the manner in which they are seated by the ushers, and, of course, the artistic experience.

Pricing Dynamics for Commercial and Non-profit Entertainment

A version of this post originally appeared as my guest commentary for Ticket News, an online resource for ticket industry news and information.

Photo by Bobby Bradley via Flickr

When it comes to pricing ticketed events, what works? For nearly two decades, TRG Arts has answered that question for hundreds of non-profit arts and culture organizations. About four years ago, TRG also began working with a number of commercial entertainment clients, mostly Broadway productions.

Although non-profits and commercial entertainment presenter/producers serve very different missions, both face the need to get the most from every ticket sold. Maximizing revenue is frequently a life or death issue. Everyone is familiar with the fragile business model of a nonprofit. But the tight operating margins and pressures to re-coup production costs of a commercial event are no less challenging.

The key driver for both non-profit arts and commercial entertainment is demand, a completely situational factor that varies by market, organization, time of year, time of day, and of course, programming—what’s on the stage or in the exhibit space. To maximize revenue, the pricing strategy should anticipate and manipulate demand for an event or exhibition.

Pricing for Museums is a Demand Issue

My partner and TRG President Jill Robinson has led the development of our firm’s counsel for the museum industry. Recent media and blogosphere buzz about museum admission pricing coincided with Jill’s preparation for upcoming counsel sessions and a webinar on the subject.   In this post, Jill summarizes her insights and adds her voice to the ongoing dialog. She is currently attending the American Museum Membership Conference (AMMC) in Philadelphia and will join me later this week in San Francisco for the ArtsReach Marketing, Development and Ticketing Conference.

Photo by Glen Scott via Flickr

Museums aren’t getting useful direction from the recent public dialog about the prices they are charging or want to charge for admission. 

Admission price increases at some of America’s highest profile museums have made news in major media and online, and that coverage has touched off discussion that appears more emotional than productive. It seems like the further away from free or low-cost admission a museum gets, the more the institution is vulnerable to criticism on grounds of not making their collections accessible or affordable. It’s as if admission price is the only way to express accessibility and that accessibility is the only reason for a museum’s being.

Of course, accessibility is important. But, it’s not – and should not be – the sole basis for a museum’s admission price decisions. As Clare Ruud points out, pricing is a mission-based decision.