Mon, November 30, 2009
I think many people in the industry would agree with me that Broadway’s greatest missed marketing opportunity is the way we communicate with our customers. I think it’s safe to say that we don’t say ‘thank you, come again’ to every patron effectively. I think we can all agree that we don’t effectively cross-sell shows on Broadway or on tour outside of the dreaded discount email offers we currently send. Think of the last meeting you sat in where we spoke about the customer feedback we received from ticket buyers on how they felt we could make their Broadway experience better.
My point – our customer communication platform needs help.
With the way we communicate with consumers before, during and after their experience with Broadway, we are in a prime position to take advantage of very big opportunities for our industry if we collectively invest the time and resources to enhancing our efforts towards better communicating with our customers.
Now, I know many on the producing side in the industry will go directly to the point of “how can we improve customer communications when we don’t own our customer data?” While there is truth to the point that not owning your customer data is a stumbling block (I continue to fight on my clients behalf!), this doesn’t mean you can’t have access to using this data by working collectively with the theatre owner (the one’s that own the customer data).
For some reason, this collaboration hasn’t really happened on Broadway as I see it done in other markets. My agency manages somewhere over 1 million customer records (including email addresses) across the globe for our clients, so we are used to the politics that come along with email usage across multiple parties. But, on Broadway, it seems as though the industry keeps getting tripped up in the perpetual argument of “who owns the email addresses of ticket buyers” rather than the larger discussion of “how can we collectively use the email addresses to reach our marketing goals.” Personally, I chalk this lack of collaboration up to egos and power struggles that is a common theme across all markets we work in. I would argue that that this is the single biggest reason it’s taken this long to get a meaningful email communication plan in place across the industry. We need get past this and embrace industry collaboration.
But, to make this collaboration a reality, there is fundamental change needed in how we talk about the topic. I sit (and have sat) in a ton of meetings discussing this issue and I believe if we better structure the discussion and goals of what we all want to accomplish by communicating with our ticket buyers, 2010 will be the year that we can make significant progress on the topic. I submit to you four changes I believe we need to make in how we talk about the topic in order to move an actionable agenda forward on improving overall customer communications in the Broadway industry:
Change #1: We must recognize this is not a conversation about the ownership of email addresses. All too often, this is the focal firestorm that gets attached to the discussion of customer communications. I’m not saying this can’t be a conversation down the road, but for now, if we expect to get anything done we have to put behind us the argument of who “owns the email addresses” and look towards the future of what do we want to say to our customers and when. There is way too much money made on the buying and selling of this customer data – to think the theatre owners would want to give this up is a battle producers are most likely never going to win. Again, this is not unique to Broadway – most venues across the country maintain ownership of the customer data, not the producing entity.
I’ve spoken first hand with the theatre owners and they have very valid arguments as to their position on their maintaining ownership of the data and have collectively outlined a plan through a new program called Audience Rewards that seems very promising as a channel to help with the long-term development of new customers for Broadway. In short, it’s a rewards program aimed to build customer loyalty across all of Broadway and the arts. If nothing else, Audience Rewards represents a single entity bringing together the interests of the three major theatre owners with the cooperation of the two major ticketing systems to create one platform for consolidating customer data and making it actionable for producers. That’s a huge accomplishment in and of itself. I highly encourage you to talk with Josh Lesnik, the President of Audience Rewards, who is outlining a plan that is quite exciting and has huge potential.
Change #2: We must all believe that a comprehensive customer communication strategy is vital to building and maintaining audiences over time. It’s quite common for me to hear from clients, “but they already bought a ticket, shouldn’t we be investing money in reaching new audiences?” Well, I firmly believe in maximizing your existing paid customers experience IS investing in new audiences – you are turning those that see your show into walking ambassadors. Happy customers post their opinions on Facebook, tweet their review to friends and email recommendations to colleagues – every research report ever created for live events will reinforce the value of word-of-mouth and endorsement from colleagues as a critical component when choosing which show to see. The Internet has continued to put word-of-mouth on steroids and it’s the way of the world in a digital marketplace. If you seek to maximize your customers happiness through strong customer communications, even those that didn’t enjoy what’s on stage will be more opt to keep their ‘not-so-good’ opinion to themselves because they felt taken care of. Read most poor reviews on consumer research sites – they are typically customer-service related issues more so than the actual production.
Change #3: We must agree that shows have specific needs and opportunities in talking to their customers that are independent of the larger, broader, industry need of talking to these same customers for a long-term relationship with Broadway. Often when the topic of email marketing comes up for specific shows wanting access to their email addresses, it often goes into a discussion about whether or not we can create repeat buyers to the show. While I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to gain repeat visits, I think there are far greater opportunities that individual productions should explore.
First, there are a range of what I would call experiential email opportunities. These are emails that tie directly to the brand experience and are sent for a functional purpose to improve or deliver the customer experience. These include pre-trip, post-purchase and post-trip related emails. These are the emails consumers open that could include directions to the theatre, a survey asking for their feedback about their experience, an ecard that could be sent to friends or an invitation to remain connected by becoming a fan of your show on Facebook. From the data we see across the country, these emails typically see open rates of 50%+ which means you have consumers – not just fanatical fans - that are engaged, listening and ready to act assuming you are talking to them in the right context.
After experiential emails, you have what I call earned email opportunities. I think of earned emails as the emails you send to people who have asked to remain connected with your show above and beyond the communication that is involved when seeing the show. This means that you made such a great impression with your show and people want to remain connected with your brand over time that they said, “yes, please keep me connected as I am a fan of your show.” This could be a repeat customer, a first-time customer trying to get know you better or a fanatical fan at your beck and call to help support your show. I think of a shows ongoing newsletter as a great example of earned email impressions.
The last category is what I would label as paid email opportunities. This is pretty self-explanatory. These are emails that you pay an advertising or premium cost for to have sent to potential ticket buyers who did not specifically opt-in to get messages from you. I think this is one place that has not been scrutinized enough and we should take this next year to put a much larger focus on this. There are literally millions of emails sent (and lot’s of dollars spent) each week – but, if you were to survey the industry to know response rates, open rates and overlap between email programs there would be a lot of questions unanswered.
Change #4: We all need to work together or we will be having this same exact conversation for years to come. To make email communication successful will involve participation by all parties. If everyone defined their marketing goals of what they want to get out of improving customer communication, I’m quite sure we can all stitch together a plan of who is responsible for what touch point. Shows have their specific goals to drive revenue, up-sell ancillary revenue opportunities and to build a communication platform that extends to the future life of the production on tour. The theatre owners want their theatre’s full for many years to come, so have a vested interest in building long-term, sustainable relationships with Broadway ticket buyers. Everyone has a vested interest to improve customer communications – but, without a shared vision, no progress will be made.
So, there you have it. I know there are a lot of differing opinions on the topic and I would love to hear what all of you have to say. We will be hosting an event at our office this coming Thursday at 8:30am which will bring together about 100 folks in the industry to talk about the topic of customer communications. You can submit for an RSVP and will be notified if there is availability. http://www.situationinteractive.com/rsvp.php
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