Arts and Culture Marketing: Investment X 10

Let’s say this clearly: it has never been harder to create, build, and maintain an arts audience. There has never been more attrition, lower retention, more ways needed to connect, more prospecting needed, to more numbers, to derive small incremental gains. Toss out yesterday’s level of investment. Take it up x 4. Or x 10.

There are more and more reasons not to attend, to walk through the doors, to sit and interact with the art on stage or with the art on the wall. The economy and lack of discretionary dollars, fragmentation in our lives and interests, inertia, lack of social connectedness with others in the audience or on stage, lack of time, lack of intellectual curiosity, lack of winningness to invest in the metal state of emotional and intellectual response and reflection that art demands of us. And, not to forget Shanon from Arizona’s comment in response to my last blog – the complete and utter self absorption that comes with endlessly customizing earphones/text/screen handheld/Twitter/Facebook to reinforce self rather than encounter with minds open to exploring the different and other that is art. She’s talking this problem v/v high schoolers, but it increasingly pervades all generations. It may be that new media’s foundational concept of 24/7 self-absoption is the greatest challenge that arts participation warriers have ever faced.

I think of the monster challenge, then, that is what arts marketing now faces every day, and the level of investment that HAS to be made to find, prospect, emotionally connect to and then retain audiences.

A couple of weeks ago, I concluded a year-long consultancy with a fine Canadian theatre company, during which we created marketing systems, tested them through fire, and evaluated what should last. They did significantly increase their audience count, but didn’t reach their revenue goals because it cost more than planned, and they needed more discounting tactics to get people in and back in the door than they planned. It left the board and staff collectively saying “it was so hard, so expensive, took so much time….was it worth it? Is this our future? Are you SURE there is no other way than a lifetime commitment to marketing at this level?”

Yes, yes, and yes. It will cost more, require more prospecting with lower returns, take more back office time, and be ever more strategic – requiring more and more organizational skill. It will be less fad, more investment. It will grow from detailed ROI projections, detailed Lifetime Value calculations. It will be more investment in the pipeline – constantly ensuring a stream of newcomers to enter the door, and then winning them back. It will be much more releationship marketing to build that return. It will take nothing for chance.

Today, we are marketing to the cultural market of one. It takes a lot of investment to find and connect to that “one,” to keep and nurture that “one,” so as to eventually realize the continued support of that “one.” Today there are hundreds of niche arts and cultural audiences and interests: no single “arts-interested potential audience.” Realizing this, and aligning your organization’s investment accordingly, will position you to gain the one-by-one audience growth that is the arts future.

Ignoring it is…denial.

Good news for arts marketers!

The USPS is in major deficit mode, but for once, rather than passing along its issues in rate increases, it is actually DISCOUNTING in ways that may really help nonprofits who do mass mailings over the summer months. You must apply by June 11, 2009, and there is some nuts and bolts work involved, but you can reap significant savings and, at the same time, reach more prospects. The cost savings comes in the form of a per piece price credit to postage paid based on the incremental volume mailed over the baseline.

The savings are based on using Standard Mail Saturation Mail. Saturation mail is defined as reaching 90% of the households in a specific carrier route. Now, many of you know that I advocate for very highly targeted prospecting – only reaching the very best households that match your desired households. So, you will want to use saturation mailing only on those carrier routes you or your market analyst/list preparers know will be productive. But if you can demonstrate to the USPS that you will increase over your baseline, the credit per piece mailed can be $.022. Think of it as stretching your budget to allow you to mail more, and right now that is good news when we know mailings have to be larger to yield the needed ticket sale results.

Talk to your USPS district manager. Requests have to come directly from your organizations, not from mail houses or agents. You’ll need some time to do the math, so don’t put this off to the last minute. You, your budget, and those added households you can now afford to reach will all be glad.

Arts Marketing for Success 2009. Part 1.

There are three things that can happen to an arts organization (or any nonprofit) during a recession.
1) You can close your doors and basically go dormant. 2) You can scrape by, maybe in worse shape, but making it. 3) Or you can thrive.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it – THRIVE. Yet it is happening. People are lined up in the rain outside the Chicago Arts Institute for the Edvard Munch show. Movies are selling out hours before show time. Symphony concerts, popular artists, lecture series – shows in venues coast to coast are selling all tickets. People are responding to arts and culture.

How can you ensure this kind of good news? Follow these rules and tips as a start, and come back next week for more in the tool kit.

ArtsMarket’s Rules to Live By

1. Plan to thrive. That’s right. Plan for success. Even now.
2. Budget to thrive. Invest resources where you can see results.
3. Program to thrive. Do what will stand out, be noticed, and program what will “demand” an audience.
4. Market to thrive. Create a compelling story. Share it. Prospect. Link.
5. Brand to thrive and image to thrive.
6. Govern and lead to thrive. This is exactly not the time for fear. Careful stewardship, for sure. But thinking for long term success now will let you open the box of your thinking (see my logo, above), explore new opportunities, edit back that which will go nowhere, and focus on the goal.

Over the next few weeks, I will be translating these into tools for the month. We’ll start with marketing, because April is the start of prospecting season for most performing arts organizations. It is when major budget allocation decisions are being made for next year’s marketing budget. Next month, we’ll focus on governing and leading to thrive, so you can move forward with those plans in May in June.

Using the ArtsMarket Rules to Live By in Your Next Season Marketing.

Your marketing effort for next year isn’t going to work if it is only about survival. You have a brilliant chance, right now, to emerge from the shadows and be the answer to consumer needs and wants for great art, great entertainment, great food for the soul. THINK AT 40,000 Feet. Plan for increased participation, and increased revenue. I challenge you to NOT set low expectations.

When you plan and budget to thrive, there are 10 things not to do in the current economy. Address each of these, and you will succeed.

1. DO NOT cut direct marketing. There is so much less clutter out there right now that every piece of mail is noticed, and if written write, provokes a response.

2.DO NOT stop prospecting. Everything is about prospecting. Remember that the #1 rule of business is to get a new customer who WILL COME BACK. So first you get them in the door, then you provide a great experience, and they return. You must prospect. People who don’t keep your organization top of mind are probably – like all of us – a little too numb to pay attention to what play is on stage where next Saturday night. Remember, your house list faces bigger churn in a recession so you constantly need to find newcomers.

3. DO NOT stop PR. There are more PR opportunities out there now than ever, more keyed to age groups than ever. For your networking savvy folks, you have the cocktail party atmosphere of Twitter where you can drop a hint, ask a provoking question, start a dialogue. You’ve got the Starbucksian atmosphere of Facebook, and the ever so professional conference of Linked In groups. You can Flicker, YouTube (and I challenge anyone to take on Carnegie Hall to an even higher level of community building), and so much more. At the snail level, there is a plethora of new micro newspapers emerging with the demise and cuts of metro dailies – ever so accessible. The web sites of existing media, the newsletters and the links….we’ve never seen such ability to use so many PR channels. And let’s not forget the real essence of PR – doing good for the community. Any time you can get out there to help others, right now, you WILL be seen. A number of you have read my blog and Twitter notes on the organization that has been giving tickets to the local food bank so that families can attend performances. The tickets are on the shelf next to the canned soup, and anyone can take them. No one in the audience knows who used those particular tickets.

4.DO NOT sell extravagance. This isn’t the time to market to the luxury-for-me crowd. But it is time to market wonderful experiences that create lasting memories you can enjoy and replay in your mind for months to come.

5. DO NOT cut your back office investment in database excellence. If the fire alarm goes off what is the most important investment you must save that probably isn’t covered by insurance. You got it: your database. And it isn’t just the data, it is how the data is organized and how much it allows you to customize the offers you make. Well structured data lets you personalize your prospecting.

6. DO NOT think that e-marketing, alone, will save you. It will save you a lot, but every arts audience out there has a sizable proportion of older individuals who will not follow you via email and an equal portion of all ages that has opted out of the e-marketing grid for financial or philosophical reasons. They want to see if you care enough about them to get your info to them. Do you?

7.Do not disappear between events. This is particularly important for organizations that have only a few major events a year but are there all year. I know many museums in this boat – especially as special exhibitions have decreased. Find ways to be visible every week, and to create curiosity so that people have to follow what you are doing and thinking. It might be your blog. Or it might be that you start offering salsa classes in the galleries on Friday evenings.

8. DO NOT stop leading. Your organization signals hope, confidence, and meaning to your community. Be out there living the message. Help other organizations. Facilitate civic plans. Be visible, and be confident.

9. DO NOT cut advertising. Okay, you very well might cut advertising dollars, but you’ll do better if you rearrange your advertising dollars. To all of you who have cut back your major entertainment page spending: with so many fewer competing ads, yours will be more visible. To those of you who have wondered where to advertise: you have terrific options now between on-line news media (banner ads), civic calendar/ticketing sites, local cable (incredible deals), and even traditional media. It is turning into a buyer’s market, so take advantage of your opportunities.

10. DO NOT stop saying thank you. In fact, thank your audience and attendees more than you ever have in the past.

I want to come back to point 4, and really every other point about image, atmosphere, communications… I read a recent analysis of Allstate Insurance’s most recent round of TV ads. They are a brand and image marketing giant –i.e. “Like a Good Neighbor We’ll Be There”, “You’re in Good Hands,” etc… Do you remember this winter’s NFL ads, using the Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra “Feeling Kind of Sunday..” tune? It would be hard to find something that did a better job, this difficult year, of creating a happy kind of glow…that tune and sensibility sticking with you until you felt hey, it was Sunday, and time to kick back….so you might as well be there with Allstate…

I challenge you to come up with your own “Feeling Kind of Sunday” imaging for upcoming season. Feeling kind of museum…feeling kind of theatre… Send your ideas and you may see them on the next tips and tools!

And, last but not least, I want to come back to prospecting. What you don’t want to do now is waste money. But you do want to get a call for action/great offer out there to people who will respond. We regularly put together prospect mailing lists like this to target people who wouldn’t be likely to know about a performing arts series through the web. It can be a real challenge, but we see how incredibly well it works. When your returns zoom up there, this is the kind of prospecting to use. For example:

These criteria for everyone on the prospect list (Sample criteria for a given geographic area)

Over 60 (figuring this is still the age group less likely to contain high level web searchers)
Self identified interest in performing arts
Self identified interest in gourmet food
Self identified interest in reading books
Take music/arts classes
Responsive to mail offers

It works.
Remember, PLAN TO THRIVE.

Take the big picture view…

What’s the number one issue you need to overcome? Retreating due to fear.

The best nonprofits are those that take the long view. That see the world – their art, culture, audience, funders, and future – at the 40,000 foot level. They see where they want to go, and they know that if they keep focused, they will reach their destination. It might mean a little slowing in the pace, but it doesn’t mean giving up.

Andiences and funders will come back, and in fact are coming back already. For audiences, demand is on the increase after months of negativity. For funders, donors, and folks whose discretionary income rises and falls with their portfolio – last month was the best stock market month since August. It still will be hard, but there are some spring flowers blooming out there.

What should you be doing? This is the season for renewals – in memberships, audience subscriptions, and looking ahead to a new year. Do not pull back on your renewal and new efforts. Plenty of people who dropped off your database last fall are ready to – need to – reconnect to art.

New Opportunities, Agile Organizations…

So many layoffs, so much strife. What’s our industry to do? We’re going through real change, and only part of it has to do with the economy. Changed consumer patterns are just as big. We have to run just to stay in place. So grab your running shoes! We may live in scary times, but they sure are interesting.

As a member of a focus group I led last week in Trenton, NJ quipped, “Email is so 2008. Mobile text is so 2009.” Yes, if you are still worrying about email lists, maybe your should think about leapfrogging right to texting. All you need is cell phone numbers. Days Inn has been testing text messages. They ask guests upon arrival if they’d be willing to leave their cell numbers to get valuable text messages. They have found consistently, nationwide, that 29% of guests will do this. In exchange, guests get texts with bonus offers like reduced price coupons for breakfast or the like. One Days Inn in Boston reported literally standing room only at their restaurant for breakfast in return. Hmmm…text with coupons for the next event? Text your museum visitors for $3 off lunch at your restaurant…

This is the kind of rapid response to new technology we all can use. How else can we be rapid and agile? How can we respond to what could be crisis and turn it into new opportunity?

Heads Up Arts Marketers: New Postal Regs Start Nov. 23rd

In the past couple of weeks, I have received many questions from arts marketers about the new postal regulations going into effect on November 23rd.  Here are the essentials you need to know. 

 

1) If you are sending any mailings out after November 23rd, you will need to make sure you have completed a NCOA (National Change of Address, CASS Certification) on these in the past 95 days.  This new 95 day rule was passed by the US Postal Service on September 23, 2007 to address the huge issue of UAA mail.  (UAA = Undeliverable as Addressed Mail.)  An estimated $2 billion of mail a year is undeliverable due to out of date or incorrect addresses.

 

 

2) This replaces the former 185 day NOCA/CASS Certification rule for automation rates, and it expands the NCOA requirement ot all automation, pre-sort, and presorted 1st class mail.

 

 

3) Starting on November 23rd, the Post Office will refuse to receive any presorted or bulk rate mail, including 1st class bulk mailings, unless it receives the certificate of update from within the prior 95 days.  This means that if you plan to send out a mailing on December 1, you will need to provide a certificate that shows your mailing list was updated no earlier than August 28th.

 

 

4) This is an on-going requirement for every mailing.  Starting November 23rd you will need NCOA certification that is up to date within 95 days prior to every mailing.

 

 

If your organization has not had us do a NCOA update of your house list as a part of your database research or list purchases, we can provide this service to you now in advance of your next planned mailing.  Having us do NCOA costs a fraction of a penney per record.

 

As an integrated service, ArtsMarket provides our clients with a list of all your customers that NCOA cannot match or that show as havingmoved outside your market.  We match these for you by your customer I.D. so you can update and clean your database to maintain accurate audience data.  you can decide to change addresses and keep the customers in your database, or eliminate names that are no longer deliverable or that have moved outside your market area.  We estimate about a 4-5% churn on any list per year based on the many lists we regularly NCOA for our clients.  We just did one metro area NCOA for a client and found close to a 10% churn!  Imagine how much your organization can save on printing, alone, by maintaining an accurately updated database.

 

 

Q.  If our volunteers process our mailings and bring them to the post office for first class bulk rate, do we need NCOA?  We never did in the past!

 

 

A.  Yes, you will need to NCOA any mailing you do starting November 23rd, 2008, even if your volunteers do the work.  The Post Office won’t accept your mailing for processing without the certificate.

 

 

Q.  Our mail house can do NCOA.  Why should we have ArtsMarket do it?

 

 

A.  We charge the same per address NCOA that is standard in the industry, based on a minimum order.  If your list is smaller than the minimum we can batch it with others and save you a bit, something your mail house is not likely to do.  But the real advantage is that we provide an additional service of giving you back the changed addresses so that you can update your in-house database.  Why does this matter?  Let’s say you plan on sending an end of the year first class mailing for donations – just standard delivery.  What if 10 addresses out of a hundred have changed and you don’t know it.  You stand to lose!  Our goal is for you to succedd with all your direct marketing and fundraising, whether you are doing a bulk mailing or sending ten targeted fundrasing letters!

 

 

Q.  What if we are moving more and more to email for our direct marketing.  Should we still do NCOA?  Why worry about physical street addresses?

 

A.  Our industry is evolving more and more to email marketing.  As you go forward, chances are your organization will want email appends on all your database households.  Accurate permission-based appends such as we recommend require accurate household addresses as a basis for append/match accuracy.

 

If you have more questions, contact us at staff@artsmarket.com   

   

 

The Incredible Shrinking Suburban Audience

Words of Wisdom and Wit

The next time someone asks you about the value of marketing and if your arts organization should cut marketing costs in a tight economy…

From David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather…

“I have come to regard advertising as part of the product, to be treated as a production cost, not a selling cost. It follows that it should not be cut back when times are hard, any more than you would stint in any other essential ingredient in your product.”

And from the lore of the Wrigley Company…

On a train trip to Texas, a friend asked Mr. Wrigley why, with the lion’s share of the market, he continued to advertise his chewing gum. “How fast do you think this train is going?” Wrigley asked. “I would say about 90 miles an hour,” his friend guessed. “Well,” said Wrigley, “do you suggest we unhitch the engine?”

Cross Channel Arts Marketing

Getting cross channel right is key to selling more tickets. In simple retail terms, cross channel shoppers are those who investigate before buying, relying on the full triangle of information triggers: the store, the web site, and the catalogue. And in the retail business, it has been pretty well proven that cross channel buyers spend more, are vastly more loyal, and make more frequent purchases.

So how do the arts create good cross channel buyers?

1) Think about how the catalogue (brochures) support the web, and how both are supported by the store (destination/box office.) The messages, the look, the call to action, the ability to satisfy the customer should be consistent. That means regular updates to the web, matched by periodic updates/new versions of the catalogue. Yup, new covers and inside front pages of the “catalogue” a couple of times a year, to drive people back to the web site, also with fresh content.
2) Think about prompting purchases at key times during the year. Did you know that good cross channel shoppers are 110% more likely to purchase from catalogues than non-cross channel shoppers? Basically, that catalogue you get from Restoration Hardware is prompting you to get back on line, check things out in depth, and then finally make that purchase you’ve been putting off.
3) Make the web experience terrific, fresh, and deep. There are many tremendous arts web sites with great content. (The Mesa Arts Center’s interactive brochure this year is terrific! Fabulous job, Randy!) Think of the customer who looks things through in the catalogue, goes on line, zeros in on the lamp he wants to buy, zooms in for a closer look, gets to then zoom in for detailed product information, more background and even more background, until he is satisfied that this is indeed the lamp to buy rather than that other lamp over at that other store/catalogue/web site. Don’t imagine for a monent that your customers aren’t doing exactly that kind of comparison shopping! They are, even for a $25 ticket for Saturday night.
4) Knowth thine customer. The more you know about the customer, the more you will be able to segment your customer base into four or five manageable slices and target them with the right catalogues at the right frequency. This isn’t always as easy to do as it might seem. Right now, we’re working at creating a single analysis database out of one major presenting organization’s three years of Ticketmaster box office transactions – none of which are linked together. (More on creating a viable customer database at another time… Sometimes, the back office is the most important office in marketing.)

There are real implications here.

1) Question the viability of a single season mailer. Would you buy as much if you only got one Bloomies catalogue a year? Make them different sizes, different thickness, different content.
2) Change the web to match the changed catalogue. Allow for new zooms in, more depth, special deals, new features. Assume that at this point your buyer is actively doing comparison shopping.
3) Build customer intelligence files.

There’s a great IBM publication on cross channel marketing. Check out the link to the left.

The Book of Season Marketing

Louise Stevens

Season brochures are the catalogues of the arts field.  So, with the cost of postage and printing at all time highs, are they worth the cost?  Plenty of pros would love to say no: they just can’t convince their orgamizations to toss the tradition of print.  Problem is, most brochures have a shorter life span than a catalogue selling spring clothing in June.  (If it isn’t urgent or timely, who cares?)  They go in the toss bin.

So, what’s a smart marketer to do?

At ArtsMarket, we think the recent trends in savvy retail catalogues should point the way for the future.

1) Begin by qualifying customers who will receive the “catalogue.”  Only mail to those who are most likely to respond.  Cut your list dramaticaly.  Qualify as much as you can.  If need be, use email or snail mail to pre-qualify customers to get the full package by giving them a special offer teaser.   

2) Create shelf life.  Our latest “edition” of the Brooks Brothers “book” arrived yesterday.  At a good inch thick, and with classic photos and history along with curiosities and the practical – the stuff you really order, as compared, say, to a hand made morning coat – it has shelf life.  It is cool, quirky, distinctive, elegant.  It is a venerable coffee table book – making it a distinct step up from the bathroom reading bin.   Imagine an opera company including everything you need to know to be a savvy opera goer in an inch thick glossy book.  You get it: even if you can’t afford the ticket, you’d want to keep a copy of the book around to impress your friends.  Word of mouth rarely gets better than this.

3) Create offers and imbed them in the catalogue.  The next catalogue we opened was from one of those soap and candles places.  Is this stuff you need to buy when your wallet is thin?  No.  But they included not one but three time sensitive MAJOR savings cards for specific products that were so convincing and easy to peel off the catalogue page that, yes, we stuck them in the wallet, went to the mall, and bought.  Imagine three time sensitive major offers in a season brochure.  Sure, including a special offer such as 40% off when the customer buys the first ticket might cut into season sales.  On the other hand, it might just add to season sales and it might gain a customer who wouldn’t spend on the first ticket.

4) Make the on-line offer even better.  The season brochure should be a tool to move people to on-line, not to keep them dependent on paper.  So sweeten the on-line offer.  We spotted a quick snapshot of how retailers are doing this when we got a print catalogue from JC Penney and then decided to go on-line for further information, only to find the on-line offer was different than the print offer, and by the time we were finished, the on-line offers had us hooked.  Almost as much fun as eBay.  Imagine moving arts buyers to better on-line deals, and being able to build a deeper on-line data relationship along the way by gaining all that information from them.  And then offering more deals… 

5) Qualify, qualify, qualify.  We just edited back one client’s direct mail list for a Chicago series by some 80,000 records that we are certain won’t produce.  That’s a lot of saved postage and printing.  Imagine what you could do with the spare change saved.