Americans for the Arts

Chad Bauman

In Part 1, Chad discussed how Arena Stage conducted research to determine if subscriptions still worked for their organization. Below, and in Part 3, he discusses some of the tactical changes Arena Stage has made as a result of that work:

Simplified Pricing.
Our previous subscription pricing strategies were incredibly complicated. I remember spending hours poring over pricing strategy, and at the end thinking that one would have to be a CPA to understand how our pricing model worked. We decided that in order to create an effective value proposition, subscription pricing would have to be clear and easy to understand.

We worked for weeks to develop a simple pricing structure that could be messaged easily, such as "buy 6 plays, get 2 plays free." The new pricing structure allowed us to easily communicate a value proposition and to eliminate complicated order sheets, replacing them with order forms that could be filled out easily.

Clear, concise and transparent pricing was pivotal to effectively communicating the value of a subscription.

Ian David Moss

The hardest question to answer in arts research is “what would have happened if we had done things differently?” Researchers call this question the “counterfactual,” since it refers to a scenario that doesn’t actually exist. Generally speaking, it’s hard to measure things that don’t exist; hence the difficulty for arts research. We can’t measure that scenario directly, but we can get close to it through experimental designs that include a control group.

In a marketing-specific context, counterfactual scenarios come into play when considering alternative strategies aimed at driving sales or conversions. One technique that a number of organizations have used is called A/B testing, which is when two different versions of, say, a newsletter or a website get sent to random segments of your target audience.

Internet technology makes A/B testing relatively painless to execute: in the case of a newsletter, for example, all it requires is a random sorting algorithm in Excel to divide the list in two before sending the slightly different newsletter versions to the lists as you normally would. You could test which design results in more clickthroughs to a specific link or which subject line results in a higher open rate.

If you’ve ever worked in marketing at an organization, or if you’ve ever done graphic design work there, you know the pains and pitfalls of “design by committee.”  And unfortunately, if you’re not running the organization, you will never have the final say in the design of a marketing piece, a logo, a website, etc.  What makes one person happy can be totally wrong for another.  After all, design is subjective.  All the while, if you’re in charge of the design or the process, you can’t take it personally.  But design by committee is something that is almost unavoidable, and having to navigate it within an arts organization can be doubly hard because your colleagues often DO have at the very least a creative personality and a decent eye for art and design.  An article I read recently though, provides some good tips and tools for avoiding the worst parts of design by committee.

1. Clarify the Objective

A successful design starts with a well-defined objective that everyone understands and supports. Without one, it’s nearly impossible to complete a design project on your own, let alone as part of a large group. Be sure you also define and agree upon the target market, business objectives and criteria for success. Once you begin the feedback process, having a clear set of goals will help keep feedback on track and make it easier to disregard suggestions that are not in line with the objective.

Deborah Obalil

It's been interesting to read various marketing experts and pundits over the past year or so declare the death of marketing as we know it in various forums. And, of course, we've all heard the platitudes of social media experts regarding the “customer being in control” and “it's all about them, not you.”

It is true that the traditional interpretation of the Marketing Ps (product, price, place, promotion) may feel outdated in a world where people engage as often virtually as they do physically. And social media has definitely been a game changer in regards to customer relationships and communications strategy.

While I often find little to argue with in the details of these various exhortations, the conclusion that all of this means marketing is dead or vastly different at its core from what it was ten or more years ago confounds me.

I have always understood marketing to be “the process by which you come to understand the relationship between the product and the customer.” I don't think this definition has become false because of all the changes in the platforms we use to connect with our customers, or even because the needs of our customers may be vastly different from what they were a decade ago.

David Dombrosky

For years now, we have been talking about the latest tools and the best practices for incorporating these tools into our marketing and communications strategies. Of course, this is a necessary conversation in which we need to continually engage, but there is a corollary discussion that also needs to take place regularly.

As technology advances and communication-based behaviors adapt to these advances, arts marketers find themselves adding new tactics to their marketing strategies in order to stay current in meeting audience expectations. So the corollary discussion that we need to have is, “If we need to add new tactics to keep pace with changing technology and patron behavior, then which older tactics can we afford to lose?”

During the past five years of leading online technology workshops for arts managers, one of the most frequent concerns expressed by participants has been the ever-increasing workload. We’ve added social media to our plates, as well as mobile applications, broadcast emails, SMS campaigns, and more. But what have we taken away?