Ideas

Perhaps you were among the many thousands gathered around a YouTube livestream on March 22 for a one-night-only return of The Rosie O’Donnell Show. It was a live benefit for The Actors Fund and was billed as “Broadway’s Biggest Stars...At Home!” You’re reading this on our website so you’re likely an industry insider and familiar with the wonderful work of The Actors Fund. If not, go here – maybe make a donation – and then come back and read on.

Ah yes, the stock image. It’s a creative resource we have at our fingertips, yet rarely use. It’s officially time to stop fearing stock images and focus on the value they can bring. We’re in an age of high-caliber creative stock resources that will keep your ticket sales flowing when you’d otherwise be at a loss for content.

This past year, Dorset Theatre Festival, a small summer theatre in southern Vermont, diversified their portfolio and discovered what stock images can add to the performance of their season’s Facebook campaigns.

The Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study is back to provide you with the data you need as an arts marketer in 2020. We created this study as a resource for arts marketers in organizations of all shapes and sizes to navigate this rapidly changing media environment and the 2019 report breaks new ground as the follow up to the study we debuted in 2017.

Spring might be over a month away, but it’s the perfect time to start planning for a bountiful season of new, engaged patrons. We hope we reignited your passion for gathering new leads in our blog post about the success Emerson Colonial Theatre has had with their lead generation campaigns on Facebook.

In this follow-up post, we’re here to round out your repertoire of ways to gain permission to talk to patrons via email and then dive into how to make sure you set up great communication with those patrons from the get-go...and avoid losing their permission via the dreaded unsubscribe.

It’s a fresh, new year and with it comes the opportunity to think about new leads. When it comes to permission marketing, gaining an email address from a patron is the ultimate invitation—they’ve given you permission to have a regular conversation with them about the things they care about. It’s vital to nurture those patron relationships through tailored, vibrant communications. And it’s also important to continue to infuse your database with new leads to grow your patron base and weather the ebb and flow of database churn.

In honor of the new year, I am sharing the non-fiction books that resonated the most with me in 2019. I recommend all of these books if you are looking to become a better leader, marketer, professional, and human. I think these books can be grouped into three large buckets: Understanding the World, Understanding Yourself, and Understanding Your Workplace.

The holiday season is in full swing, and amidst the swirl of wrapping paper and ribbon, holiday baking and travels, your patrons are bravely facing down email inboxes chock-full of promotions. We’re here to help make sure your organization’s messages stand out like a bright red mailbox above a blanket of snow.

Read on for some content tips and creative inspiration that will keep your patrons merry and bright, and keep you on track to arrive at your holiday parties on time.

You probably have firsthand knowledge of the power of social media advertising tools to engage your audiences and sell tickets. Lately, we’ve been exploring cost-effective ways to harness these same digital tools to support the mission-centric programs that are important to all of the organizations we work with (and we’re guessing yours, too!)

Read on to learn how we did this with Anchorage Concert Association (Anchorage Concerts) and how you, too, can cultivate audiences and awareness for outreach activities and public performances through the Facebook tools you already may be using. With a solid targeting strategy as a foundation and engaging creative as your framework, you’ll see measurable results as your programs grow.

Central to the value of Facebook users and advertisers alike is its purpose of connecting people all over the world. Facebook has over two billion active users, and half speak a language that isn’t English. Additionally, a majority of Facebook Pages promote to multilingual audiences.

Carnegie Hall saw a crucial opportunity to reach multilingual audiences in New York City with their world-renowned programming. We worked with them to promote foreign language posts throughout various campaigns, which helped them bring new patrons into their universe, connect with communities in their languages, and as a bonus, drive strong return on investments (ROIs)!