Ideas

When you market a large volume of programs and initiatives, it can be tempting to run as many campaigns as possible—the more ads, the better, right?—but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee an equally significant payoff. When it comes to digital advertising, sometimes less is more. 

Intentionality is key, especially for multifaceted arts organizations with small (but mighty) marketing teams. We worked with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to streamline their campaign structure, mitigate audience overlap, and reduce their team’s workload, all while maximizing overall impact.

Last week, Meta bolstered its social media domination with the launch of its newest app, Threads. Threads grew its user base to over 100 million accounts in just five days since its launch. (Twitter is currently sitting at around 350 million users.) For comparison: it took TikTok nine months to achieve that same milestone. Threads is officially the fastest-growing online platform in history.

It's summertime, and you know what that means: arts marketers have visions of Sugar Plum Fairies dancing in their heads. That’s right: now is the time to plan—and, in many cases, start—your holiday programming campaigns. 

When you think about digital marketing campaigns, return on investment (ROI) likely comes to mind. But what happens when you’re running an attendance or membership campaign, and purchases largely don’t take place online? Museums and similar types of cultural institutions often find themselves in this predicament. 

At CI, we’re obsessed with measurement, and that includes even those scenarios that seem unmeasurable. Enter: proxy metrics. A proxy metric is something you can measure that represents or approximates the value of your intended metric when data is limited. Let’s look at how we use proxy metrics to measure campaign performance for the museums we work with.

Hi, CI! is a series featuring the best team we know—the Capacity Interactive team! Today, meet Stacie Louis-Jacques: a CI Digital Marketing Analyst, singer, actress, and saxophonist whose love for the arts continues to grow every day.

As privacy changes keep rolling in, it’s never been more clear that first-party data is the future of digital marketing—but how do you harness that power in a digital marketing campaign?

When San Francisco Opera (SF Opera) was ready to announce its 2023–2024 season, we developed a multi-pronged strategy that used first-party data as its foundation to drive subscription acquisition and renewals.

If you’re a content creator, you’re no stranger to getting creative with limited assets. But with short attention spans and competing internal priorities, it can feel overwhelming to think of fresh content ideas for paid campaigns. Enter: CI’s content experts. Our content team has seen everything from working with a high programming volume to minimal assets.

Read on to take your key art from static to scroll-stopping. It’s the first installment of a new blog post series to help you conquer the asset desert and craft content that converts. It’s World Design Day, after all!

Audience development is a crucial task for arts organizations. When growing your pool of prospective ticket buyers, thinking outside the box and utilizing innovative digital strategies is essential.

January is a notoriously quiet month in the arts. Audiences are recovering from the excitement of the holidays but are still deciding whether to dive into plans for the new year. If you’re a performing arts center with a packed programming lineup, though, you can’t take a breather.

We helped the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts beat the January doldrums with a wide-reaching Meta campaign that drove an outstanding return on investment (ROI) and built audiences for future programming.

Regional theater premieres can be golden opportunities to build on a show’s momentum, setting you up to run a comprehensive Meta campaign that meets revenue goals and also drives awareness of and sales for subscriptions, classes, and additional shows.