Ideas

At CI we are always thinking about how we can help arts organizations use digital tools to help you reach your sales and marketing goals.

Over the years we have helped hundreds of organizations build out digital infrastructures to better understand how users are interacting on arts websites. We have become very good at capturing granular user behavior online. When a user interacts with your website, they are providing you with rich data about their interests and intent. But this data has always been anonymous in Google Analytics and in advertising platforms like Facebook and Google Adwords.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas for your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What keeps you inspired as an arts marketer? 

PennyMaria Jackson (Apollo Theater), Sara Villagio (Carnegie Hall), and Sara Waugh (Marin Theatre Company) discuss their favorite apps, websites, and blogs to keep up with marketing trends, what they do to recharge outside of work, and how they keep their team (and themselves) motivated, even during the busiest times.  

Hi, CI! is our monthly series featuring the best team we know - the Capacity Interactive team! You will learn more about the people who help arts organizations market smarter. This month, we're featuring our Director of Business Development who is passionate about visual arts, a dedicated yogi, a self-proclaimed coffee snob, and a strategic fundraiser. 

In the past two years, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has worked closely with their CI team to use digital to holistically change patron behavior around purchasing membership to their organization. Not only have memberships grown across the board, now online purchases are a key mode of membership sales.

They’ve done this through long-term campaigns that cultivate a healthy membership pipeline. Rather than short, one-off campaigns centered around immediate membership wins, MFAH’s approach has led to sustained growth and strong ROIs. Read on to learn how!

I founded my video production company when I realized that all of my college dance footage was fuzzy, far away and completely unusable. There was clearly a need for better quality performance video, and I wanted to be the one to lead the charge.

Now, my company, Nel Shelby Productions, creates marketing videos and fundraising videos and on-camera interviews and films and documentaries. Still, the biggest part of what I do is document performance.

Hi, CI! is our monthly series featuring the best team we know - the Capacity Interactive team! You will learn more about the people who help arts organizations market smarter. This month, we're featuring one of our Digital Marketing Analysts who is an avid runner, a dog lover (cute dog photos ahead), and inspires arts marketers to be fearless when creating memorable social content.

Many marketers panicked during Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal. I was asked many times what it all means for Facebook advertisers.  Would users flee that platform? Should we move advertising dollars elsewhere?

My gut feeling was that this scandal would be a blip, the news cycle would pass, and users would continue to use Facebook's platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Messenger). New data suggests that is exactly what happened.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you can learn from them and it will spark new ideas at your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What advice would you give to a fellow arts marketer before embarking on a website redesign project?" 

Jonathan Carpenter and Jack Wright (Celebrity Series of Boston), Nora Brady (Los Angeles Philharmonic), and Rosemary Devine and Tori Harvey  (People's Light) highlight their most recent website redesigns, and answer everything from choosing a project manager, to their biggest successes and most valuable learnings. 

Over the past couple of weeks, you may have received an email from Google with the subject line: Important updates about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The email looked something like this, and may have seemed confusing. Why is Google emailing me about EU policy changes if our organization is not located there?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is confusing to marketers. Of course it is! GDPR is a legal issue and we are not lawyers. At CI we want to be helpful so what we can provide is what our lawyer sent to us and other resources we have found useful in facing GDPR for our business. This is the first post we’re publicly releasing with another specifically about Google Analytics to follow. CI clients will be hearing more from us individually.