Are You Stalking Your Audience?

Heather Maitland sees too many arts organisations squandering opportunities to use their customer databases for effective audience development

I come across too many organisations who are not making effective use of the information they hold about their ticket buyers. It’s not just that they are wasting a valuable resource, they are probably actively putting off their potential customers too.
Their strategy for using their customer database is to send direct mail about an event to people who have recently been to something similar at the venue. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? But the trouble is that no-one is taking a strategic overview of who gets what. And the more often a customer buys tickets, the more often they get direct mail. Some venues are mailing their core customers at least once a fortnight. That’s stalking!

Not only does it mean that response rates to direct mail will be low because it’s predominantly the same people getting it, but also that the organisation’s most loyal customers will feel that their loyalty is not recognised and valued. They will probably view these letters as irritating junk mail…

View full article as PDF document.
View full article as word document.

Profiling on-line ticket buyers

Each year since 2001, ts.com has sent out email questionnaires to people who purchased tickets from client organisations who want to participate in the research. In 2004, we joined forces to explore in more detail customers’ attitudes to the online purchasing process, ecommerce and new technology. 18 organisations participated in the project resulting in 6,931 responses to the email survey and a useful profile of on-line customers.

Does online purchasing attract new audiences?

5% of all respondents to the email questionnaire were first time attenders at the relevant organisation. But if you have undertaken self-completion questionnaire research in your organisation, you will have noticed that certain types of customer are more likely to respond: in particular, they tend to be older and to be more frequent purchasers. The Swan Theatre in High Wycombe and Newbury Racecourse volunteered to help us test if this was true for email questionnaires. During the two week research period, all their online customers were asked to respond to a short questionnaire at the end of the ticket buying process. They also asked three core questions of their telephone and counter customers. In both venues, this showed that new and infrequent customers were significantly under-represented among respondents to the email questionnaire.

View full article as PDF document.
View full article as word document.