June Newsletter

 

Welcome to the June ArtsMarket newsletter. We have a number of new clients to welcome: 

 

  •   Hudson County, NJ and its 13 great cities, working with us to develop a county-wide cultural plan;

 

  • The Buffalo, NY, CVB and the city’s great art museum, the Albright Knox, and the city’s many architecture sites and museums, building the Buffalo legacy of architectural and arts destinations;

 

  • National Geographic Live! and its expanding presence throughout the country;

 

  • The Austin Circle of Theaters and the diverse theatres of that great city, embarking on data mining to build audiences;

Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council, in an expansion of our previous work, to build the market and brand for arts and culture in Charlotte and the region;

Along with these, we welcome back our repeat clients. In the past month, these have included South Coast Rep (CA), which saw an 18% return on the key new target markets we developed last year – an amazing accomplishment; Amish Acres (IN), which saw the incredible achievement of a 70% increase in subscriptions, plus the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and Broadway Across America/Live Nation. This is a fabulous line up of arts, cultural, and entertainment powerhouses! Meanwhile, here at home we continue to work with one of the country’s finest hands on learning organizations, the Montana Outdoor Science School, and we look forward to completing the final evaluation of the Montana Building Arts Participation program, a network of arts organizations across the state that have spent four years engaged in building, winning, and retaining new audiences and donors. They are all great success stories, and are models for rural and urban organizations, alike.  

 

 

 Direct Marketing Success Story

 

May 24, 2006

 

 

Mr. Sean Becker

Research Director
ArtsMarket, Inc.

1125 W. Kagy Blvd, Suite 100

Bozeman, MT 59715

 

Dear Sean

 

After a lack luster start to the 2005 season that included Aida, a fabulous production so poorly received that it seemed Robert Falls, librettist and Broadway director, who attended was the only patron, and before being rescued by Beauty and the Beast, we began to doubt our marketing instincts as they applied to our season subscribers. As we sat around my round desk discussing the plight of The Round Barn Theatre, some artsy publication laying there mentioned ArtsMarket in bold type. It caught my eye, I called you, told you my sob story, and my world changed when you said, “We’re here to put butts in seats.”

 

Within hours three data bases were on their way to Montana. Within days ArtsMarket had extracted from those data bases more information about our theatre and attraction that we had ever known. I gritted my teeth, ordered names by the thousands, lowered the price (this is probably important for you to know), cancelled other media, and hit the post office with our barrage.

 

We have held our breath ever since, until now; our goal has been reached, ArtsMarket’s share has been paid for by new subscribers (up over 70%), so we let out a big sigh and wrote this letter.

 

What happened? We learned that who we thought was our patron is getting his and her musical theatre on Broadway and in London. We discovered that our patrons, who we thought weren’t, are striving to become loyal boosters of The Round Barn Theatre. We went from wearing coats and ties to open collar shirts, began talking about informality, friendly, intimate, relaxed, etc., all of the accessible terms, and less about dramaturgy. These new subscribers are loving it; they think they have arrived, and I’m here to tell you they have.

 

Leave it to you. When I called to report the good news, you asked what our goal was for 2007. Since I wanted to wallow in 2006 for a while, I had no idea. Now I do and ArtsMarket will be a big part of reaching it.

 

Sincerely

 

Richard Pletcher

Founder/CEO

 

 
 
 
DIRECT MARKETING:
NEW LIST SOURCES THAT WORK
 

Good direct marketing really works. Look at South Coast Rep’s remarkable 18% returns with the right target market segments. Look at the incredible 70% increase on subscriptions to the wonderful Broadway series at Amish Acres, a destination in Northern Indiana that attracts audiences from a tri-state region. 

 

People want to be marketed to, and they respond. The trick is finding the people who will respond to your programs. Then use that prospect list and reuse it: Amish Acres mailed 12 times to win its outstanding returns.

 

The marketers at Amish Acres worked carefully with us to identify the right households to target and then to purchase the right list. Several advances in prospect identification are making it increasingly possible to buy prospect lists that are accurate “qualified buyers” of the arts, at the household level. A few years ago, the best most of us could do was to use models for potential participation, which meant that purchasing prospects whose names were selected based on modeling of their demographics, geography, and lifestyle characteristics. Most of the time, this meant purchasing households based on models of the block group level (the smallest geographic unit for which the US Census allows modeling), rather than identifying specific households. 

 

Now ArtsMarket has moved to offering household specific data – self reported arts and cultural attendance, as well as other self reported data – in shaping direct mail campaigns. We’ve also moved to identifying very specific direct-mail responsive households and other qualifiers such as self reported donors.   So it is now possible to target prospects who are, for example, live theatre goers who are high level charitable donors, within desired demographic groups, who are mail offer responsive. Similarly, it is possible to identify prospects that are young, museum going, PDA users, and adventure and sports enthusiasts, all at the household level of accuracy.       

 

Simply put, it is ever more possible to reach that “audience of one” – the consumer who is exactly right for your prospecting.

 

The cost differentials from the old-style modeled lists can be measured in pennies per prospect. That’s right, pennies. So get smart, and use the combination of mining and household-specific targeting, to win big. Marketing is all about putting the right product in the right hands, and you can do it! If you’d like some guidance on the options, email our research director Sean Becker, sbecker@artsmarket.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

ITS LIKE PAINTING A ROOM: PREPARATION IS EVERYTHING

 

Last month we reported back to Charlotte’s arts and cultural leaders the findings of the marketing diagnostic they took as a part of our marketing and audience development research there. The diagnostic is a part of our analysis that gives context to public participation surveys (we completed a telephone survey of 2000 households), and is essential to study public knowledge and opinion in light of the marketing efforts of the arts and cultural organizations and then to respond strategically, based on that knowledge. 

 

The 23 organizations that participated in the diagnostic – a self-administered test of marketing capacity developed by ArtsMarket – gave themselves, collectively, a C in marketing. They graded themselves the strongest on day-to-day tactics. They marked themselves weakest in two telling areas: 1) high level board and executive strategic frameworks for marketing – i.e. everything from mission-based marketing philosophy and identification of “success” to a clear return on investment (ROI) ratio, and 2) Data mining, research, and use of data to build repeat attendance. 

These gaps aren’t by any means unique to Charlotte – they are consistent problems in our sector. (Our work in Austin is in helping the arts there develop data mining capacity they can integrate into heir systems.) The need for such customer knowledge is more crucial every day. 

 

Here’s why:

 

 A series of focus groups we have just done included regular and very frequent consumers of the performing and visual arts. Everyone was a regular. But as it turned out, none of the high frequency people around the table were subscribers or members. They were knowledgeable, smart, well versed cultural consumers, and represent the generation of new cultural attenders who don’t show up on the easy lists of subscribers and regulars. They represent tremendous buying power, but not in traditional ways. Ranging in age from their 30s to 60s, none ever see themselves as subscribing. 

 

They want to be marketed to, want to receive direct mail from arts groups, but not pushed to subscribe or join. They want to be known and have customized offers made to them, but to buy at the last minute.   

 

The implications are great. If each person who comes through the door once is a prospect for repeat attendance, organizations need to identify them, respond, invite them back, and give them a great experience. That means finding out everything about them through highly effective data collection, sorting, coding, mining, and merging with existing databases.

 

The breakthrough marketers will be those who have the unglamorous data mining down pat. Granted, marketing will cost more, not only at the front end, but also behind the scenes in that prep work that finds out who came to what programs at what price points and tailors the next offer accordingly. But, it’s how loyalty will be built. Do that prep work in the down time this summer. Set up your organization to mine, respond, and win.  

 

VISUALS

 

The same Charlotte diagnostic reported back that few organizations there – again reflective of our industry as a whole – use posters any more. Here we are in the arts - with an intensely visual product to market - and because of cost and lack of places to put posters, we no longer extend those visual images to the public. If you don’t know what something looks like, what it feels like to be there, are you going to buy it?  

 

The finding ignited a series of discussions on the new visual marketing tools the arts and culture need. Podcast technology, plasma screen billboards, elevator plasma screen advertising – they are not only our future; they are what is needed today.