Ideas

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)!

As we approach the end of the decade, I have to pinch myself when I chat with venues around the world. 

Somehow, after nearly 50 years, email marketing is still the belle of the ball when it comes to conversion and engagement with ticket buyers and fans. It’s amazing to consider that with all the exciting new channels available to consumers, the modest email marketing campaign is still the one that gets us clicking. 

Will I be publishing the same article in 2029? Hard to say, but for 2019, the success of your venue and your career hinge on you making the most of this quirky channel. Here are five data points successful arts organizations should use to measure their email programs.

There’s quite a bit of nerdery happening in the blog post. If you’re new to the conference, you’ll want to read the whole thing. If you’re a vet, you may want to skip toward the end of the post. I hope you find some of my ideas helpful.

If you’ve never been to Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts, let me just say this: you will find your people.

I’m the Director of Marketing, Sales, and Communications at BalletMet, and this will be my fifth year attending, and my first year presenting! Every year, I always find someone new to connect and nerd out with. Want to talk AI? Go for it. Want to chat about strategy for building new audiences? Yes, please! Want to give me a ridiculous amount of amazing information that I can use to do my job better, cheaper and more efficiently? Glory to the marketing geeks and gods.

It has never been easy to run an arts organization. Since our dreams are always larger than our budgets, arts organizations almost always grow to the point where it is uncomfortable. I have never met an arts leader who believes they have enough resources to meet their needs.

We have always fretted about box office revenue and fundraising success. We have always looked to attract new audiences and donors. We have always prayed that an angel donor would fall in love with our work and allow us to make a quantum leap in artistic ambition and budget.

As arts marketers, we invest a lot of time learning the tools of the trade and staying up to speed on the ever-changing technological landscape. But what if one of the ways we can enhance our performance at work is by doing something for ourselves? Namely, getting our financial house in order.

Just like eating a balanced diet, exercising and getting enough sleep, maintaining healthy financial habits is fundamental to achieving and sustaining career success. One reason for this is that financial stress has a direct impact on productivity, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not surprisingly, about 70% of Americans say that financial stress is their most common source of stress.