Ideas

The New York Times reported today that newspaper circulation has fallen almost 9 percent since the same time last year. 9 percent!

This weekend I bought a new iPod at the Apple Store. By the time I left the store, there was an email in my inbox asking for my opinion in a survey about the service I received.

I think it is fair to say that the performing arts industry is pretty far behind the email marketing curve, operating with email 1.0 technology. New technologies exist to tie email into e-commerce on email 2.0. Think of email marketing as a conversion funnel where the first step is a user opening an email and the final step is a user purchasing a ticket on your website. Most email programs that arts organizations employ stop tracking a user once they click on a link in an email. All they track are email open rates and click-through. New technologies can track much further, following users all the way to purchase or cart abandonment. Email 2.0 systems can be set to automatically send follow-up messages based on user browsing and purchasing behavior, which can ultimately lead to major increases in sales.

I am proud to have worked on a video fundraising project at New York City Opera that was a collaboration between the marketing and development departments. We created a video of General Manager and Artistic Director, George Steel, discussing the recent successes at City Opera and sent out email appeals asking patrons to help out with a matching gift drive by donating online. This is the second time we have created an email video appeal campaign and this time I think we did it quite well.

Last week on his blog Gene Carr of Patron Technology wrote about email open rates. He concluded that while open rates are important, marketers should also measure "cumulative average open rate." This is a measure of how many recipients open emails consistently, how many open sometimes, and how many don't open at all.

People read email differently than they read a brochure or a newspaper. If someone is enticed by the subject line (or very loyal to your organization) they may open your email and skim it, not really read it. Lots of text makes skimming difficult.

Email address collection can no longer be something that cultural organizations just think about in passing. It must become a top priority for your organization or you are going to be in big trouble very soon. Here's why:

It is no surprise marketers are shifting their money to digital marketing. A new study from eMarketer.com shows that budgets were more likely to be cut for traditional media such as TV, radio and direct mail. More respondents said they would up their investments in e-mail marketing, search, and interactive rather than reduce spending.