Digital Program Book Data Takes Marketing from Ordinary to Extraordinary
Digital program books have drastically changed the landscape of audience engagement. Consumers already demand digital access to the things they love, expecting to find instant information at their fingertips. While digital program books provide that modern experience that performing arts patrons crave, they also provide some truly robust and valuable data. This data is much more ‘rich’ and more targeted than the typical customer information acquired from ticket sales or donations. It also encompasses more varied information than just contact information and ticket sales history.
With digital program book data, you have more than just information: you have insights. And these insights can help you target communications, drive marketing campaigns, and even inform business decisions. This article will discuss how to collect, analyze and use this data to transform your marketing efforts, and how to apply best practices that will ensure your data carries values today and into the future.
Understanding the Importance of Data in Marketing
Data is the driver behind everything from marketing campaigns to promotional outreach, from programming decisions to advertiser spend. In the performing arts world, customer contact data is just the tip of the iceberg. Customer name, email address and mobile number can help you establish a digital marketing plan, and physical contact information helps round out your mailing campaigns. With contact information, you can blast out upcoming performance information or calls for donations.
But with a little more data, you can add relevance and personalization to the marketing mix. Ticket purchase history allows you to thank patrons more personally and better segment your promotional efforts. Tracking donors and amounts can help you craft future fundraising campaigns that fit audience interests. And capturing email opens, clicks and bounces can help you further refine your contact information and outreach efforts. In the end, the benefit of capturing and using this data to inform your marketing decisions lies in ROI. Which campaigns work best and lead to the most ticket sales, donations or new subscribers? What’s the best time of year or season for each campaign? And for which audience segments? Knowing these answers can help you decide when, where and how to spend your marketing dollars with confidence.
The Transformative Power of Collecting Data from Digital Program Books
Digital program books are a unique and transformative source of data that will open your eyes to new audience insights. Traditionally, your data collection method was limited to ticket sales that could only reveal at best, one buyer per household, and at worst, one buyer or company for a block of group tickets. Known as data leakage, you had no visibility into the individuals sitting in seats.
But digital program books provide a completely new and unique data collection point: they are clicked and opened by every single audience member, instantly providing the email and mobile number for every single patron in each seat. Through the power of two-way engagement, you can also collect keywords from back-and-forth exchanges, feedback and interests from surveys or flash polls, and click throughs to advertisers or program information. This data is also extremely accurate and up-to-date, since it is provided to you by the patron at the moment of each performance.
Strategies for Analyzing and Utilizing Digital Program Book Data
There are many ways to analyze digital program book data to gain marketing insights and inform your marketing efforts. Start with the realization that you now have far more patron data than ever before: you know every person who has attended the performances, as opposed to every ticket buyer. With this data, you can incorporate more personalized outreach, achieve better audience segmentation, and design more targeted promotions or campaigns. Better yet, survey and feedback data provide you with previously unknown audience insights. You can respond directly to audience needs, suggestions and desires, leading to increased attendance and revenue. After all, when you take advantage of this new level of audience engagement, your patrons will feel like they are the stars of the show.
Best Practices for Using Data from Digital Program Books
Digital program book data can and should be integrated into your ticketing or CRM system, expanding your customer base beyond just ticket buyers and providing you with the most up-to-date and accurate patron data at all times. Also keep track of marketing initiatives that were promoted through the digital program book or that were expanded beyond ticket purchasers to to include ‘patrons in seats’ so that you can look back and compare ROI and success of these data-informed marketing efforts.One best practice is to use the digital program book texting portal as an interactive gateway to your patrons: you can answer their questions, help them buy tickets, or invite them to special events. After a performance, you can send follow-up communications ranging from personalized thank you’s to feedback surveys to announcements of new performances. The end result is an overall user experience that is vastly improved over the old days of anonymous attendees flopping down in their seats with a paper program book that ends up in the trash.
Putting It All Together to Transform Your Current and Future Marketing Efforts
As exciting as this new dataset sounds, we’ve really just scratched the surface. You have more patron data at your fingertips than ever before. You can design and track marketing initiatives that you never thought possible. And you can realize better audience engagement, higher ticket sales, and higher revenue as a result of these new marketing efforts. Now imagine being able to tell an advertiser how many eyes actually saw their advertisements, and better yet, how many patrons clicked their offer or link for more details? Or helping sponsors better target their ads and promotions by performance, audience segment or patron interests. The future of your marketing efforts is only limited by your imagination. Contact us to learn more about the transformative power of digital marketing book data. We can show you how the Audience Access digital program book platform can help your marketing efforts take the next step from mundane to extraordinary.
