Ideas

It’s January—time to break in those new hats and scarves, pick out a fresh calendar for the office, and get organized for the year ahead. Before we plunge into all 2018 has in store, we’re dusting the holiday cookie crumbs off the files on our desks, pouring a cup of coffee, and looking back at that blur of a week that covered Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday (remember that week?...when your inbox practically burst into flames?).

It’s November. That means brisk weather and crunchy leaves underfoot. Your mind turns to Thanksgiving and you start to panic. Not about the perfect green bean casserole but about #GivingTuesday - one of the most anxiety-inducing hashtags out there.

I am thrilled to be keynoting Capacity Interactive’s Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts this October. “Prepare to get your geek on.” That tagline is music to my geeky, data-loving ears.

As the Chief Market Engagement Officer at IMPACTS, my job involves translating big data concerning trends in audience behaviors and perspectives, and making it both accessible and actionable to the hard-working folks who run cultural institutions. I work with boards and executives at major institutions regarding data-informed best practices related to earned revenue, the visitor experience, creating access programs that actually work, and cultivating donors. My focus is on how audiences think and behave. After all, it is living and breathing human beings that arts organizations aim to educate and inspire.

As the analytics lead at Capacity Interactive, my job revolves around on-site behavioral data - collecting it, analyzing it, making informed decisions and strategic recommendations based on it. Data can be analyzed in many ways, and I don't believe in a cookie-cutter approach. Every client is unique - in who they are, what their objectives are, what kind of content they have, how their website looks, what tech platforms they use, etc.

I don’t consider myself a fundraiser at all. Yes, I worked as a grant writer for a not-for-profit theatre company for two years fresh out of college, but writing proposals to large foundations asking for funding hardly matches the hustle it takes to be a real deal fundraiser, grassroots style. Asking people for money was always mildly terrifying to me, though I would give what I could to causes I believed in.

When Stephen Dubner interviewed Charles Duhigg, author of the book Smarter Faster Better in a Freakonomics podcast focused on productivity, Duhigg told a story about how electricity, when it was first popularized, was hailed as a game changer for productivity. There was a huge wave of factories that replaced their steam engines with electric engines. But what happened next is what economists called a “productivity paradox”- initially, productivity didn’t rise in the factories.

We compiled survey data to create benchmarks to help you compare your digital marketing efforts with other performing arts organizations.  Our report looks at social media, digital advertising, analytics, email, mobile and website maintenance.  

Arts marketers often ask me questions like, “What percentage of advertising budgets are most arts organizations spending on digital ads?” and “What percentage of tickets are most organizations selling online?”