Americans for the Arts

Chad Bauman

When I joined Arena Stage in 2007, I came to my new job with a couple of preconceived notions about subscriptions. Perhaps it was in part a reflection that I am on the Generation X/Millennial cusp, but I was certain that the subscription model was outdated and ineffective.

Many mature organizations that had developed their business models on subscriptions were seeing significant declines in subscriber numbers, and were literally caught between a rock and a hard place -- should they dump their subscription model and leap into the unknown, or keep putting band aids on a failing and timeworn strategy? Reports from major performing arts organizations at the time seemed to indicate a trend of declining returns, forcing a feeling that immediate change to a staple in our business model could be warranted.

In early 2008, Arena Stage along with a few other League of Resident Theatres members, began to test subscription alternatives in focus groups. In doing so, I was absolutely certain that the results would show at least one, if not several, attractive alternatives to subscriptions. I was wrong.

Drew McManus

Regardless if you're a client, consultant, or vendor you've been on one side or the other of this perfectly reasonable sounding question:

"Do you have any success stories or case studies on how your service produced a positive result?"

A typical response looks something like this:

"Why yes, after implementing Technology-X, Arts Organization Y experienced a 15 percent increase in single ticket sales in the first year alone. Arts Organization Z experienced a 23 percent increase over two years and a 12 percent jump in the number of annual fund donors."

Naturally, arts organizations want to know how a product or service produced a positive result but in an environment filled with pressures and problems, the decision making process can get cut a bit too short and decisions end up getting influenced by vendor provided statistics more than they should.

David Schillhammer

The Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra’s ticket sales are up again this year, shattering local and national sales trends.

With several months left in the year, our box office is already seeing a 10 percent increase in subscriptions over this time last season, and renewal rates for freshman subscribers are over 53 percent and growing. This is the fifth year in a row we’ve had such gains.

Subscriptions to the orchestra’s “Super Series” have been steadily rising over the past five seasons. So far in 2011-2012, the orchestra has sold over 3,432 subscription packages, 300 more than this time last year, and a huge increase over the 1,500 sold in 2006-2007.

Our recipe for success? Marketing, innovative programming and outstanding customer service.

In the fall of 2007, we began working with freelance arts marketing guru Jack McAuliffe, president of Engaged Audiences, LLC, who pushed us to stop devaluing tickets through “buy one, get one” offers, and focus on marketing subscriptions. Specifically, he challenged us to convert one-time concert attendees into two- and three-time attendees, and then into long-term subscribers. So in 2007-2008, we began a targeted effort to grow subscriptions.

Here’s our method:

Ron Evans

Let's face it. Arts marketing and technology planning can be overwhelming at times. Especially for folks who are new to it.

I recently taught a class about self-marketing online, to a group of individual artists in San Francisco. They were all fired up about technology; it was awesome to see. But a lot of them didn't have a plan, and because of this, they didn't have consistent activities they could measure over time.

The effect was that that they were getting really frustrated chasing the next “silver bullet” and not finding any sort of results or satisfaction.

I can see how that can be really frustrating (especially for an individual artist with no staff to help). So we spent some time talking about creating a simple online marketing plan, and most importantly, establishing various behavior modification techniques to help them stick to a consistent marketing schedule.

I know many of you will have heard of S.M.A.R.T. Goals (hey everyone, did you know that S.M.A.R.T has been expanded to S.M.A.R.T.E.R?). This format is an excellent one for setting priorities so that you can get rid of the stuff that's not SMART(ER) and focus on the stuff that is.

Givenik, a service affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters, connects charities and Broadway theatergoers. When theatergoers buy tickets through Givenik.com, they elect to contribute five percent of the ticket sale to a charity of their choice. Charities benefit through revenue earned on ticket sales. Broadway shows benefit through the attention and goodwill generated when Givenik is promoted to a charity’s supporters.

For Givenik to be successful, it must appeal to all three audiences: charities, shows, and theatergoers. Charities must agree to participate in Givenik and promote it to their supporters. Shows must agree to sacrifice a portion of their ticket revenue. Theatergoers must be aware of the service and what shows and charities are available on it. Social media is particularly well-suited for solving problems like ours by enabling us to connect all three audiences in a cost-effective way.

We primarily use Facebook and Twitter with a Givenik brand user. Our principle strategy is to connect charities, shows and their supporters to us and to each other via service posts.

Show fans become charity fans, charity fans become show fans, and everybody becomes Givenik fans. There is nothing fancy here; this is Social Media 101.

We try to remain engaged in the chatter in both the nonprofit and Broadway worlds and contribute to the conversation wherever we can.

Scott Provancher

My colleagues and I at the Arts & Science Council (ASC) have been closely following the national and regional trends that affect the health of the arts industry.

In particular, several trends have caught our attention: 1) arts giving in America continues to lose market share to other charities; 2) recent analysis showed that 85 percent of cultural patrons (ticket buyers, visitors, etc.) are not donating to the organizations they patronize; and 3) the traditional fundraising campaigns of the arts community seem to be making little progress in reversing these challenging trends.

A little over a year ago these trends were the topic of ASC’s annual board retreat. As one of the largest united arts agencies in the nation, we owed it to ourselves and the field to be a leader in addressing these issues both at a local and national level. Our board wholeheartedly agreed and we left the meeting with a firm commitment to develop and invest in innovative ideas that could change how the arts engage new donors in the future.

A year and a half later, ASC launched a new website called power2give.org, which we believe will change the way we do business forever.