Smart Budgeting for Website Redesign
Picture it. You are halfway through your website redesign. You’ve signed off on your wireframes and designs and your programming vendor is coding the site. You’ve allocated your budget just right to pay for the project. Then trouble hits.
A Listening Strategy for Your Website
Do you know why users are coming to your organization’s website? I mean specifically. Can you tell me what percentage are coming to purchase tickets, what percentage are coming to research your upcoming show, what percentage are coming to find directions to your location? Do you know if the users were able to complete the task that they came to your site to do? Were they satisfied with their visit?
What Else Do Your Facebook Fans Like?
Through Facebook's Insights you can see your fan's demographic data. Through the website Fan Page Analytics you can see the other organizations and pages that your fans are likely to also be a fan of. This provides a fuller picture of your Facebook fan base.
9% Decline in Newpaper Circulation
The New York Times reported today that newspaper circulation has fallen almost 9 percent since the same time last year. 9 percent!
Further evidence that traditional advertising is loosing it's punch. I see this as a call to examine your marketing budget allocations. Here is my advice. Take 9% of your newspaper advertising budget away from the newspaper and invest it in improving your permission marketing.
We Need a Blog
We need a blog. Four simple words when said by a board member or Executive Director can make a Marketing Director tense up. But who will write it? What will we say? How often do we need to update it?
Showing You Value Customer Opinions By Asking For Them
This weekend I bought a new iPod at the Apple Store. By the time I left the store there was an email in my inbox asking for my opinion in a survey about the service I received.
Social Networkers Still Love Email
Choosing between sending an email to your constituents or updating your org's Facebook status? Probably not but it is good to know that a recent study found that social network users check their inboxes more frequently than those who shun social sites. So most likely your Facebook fans are getting, and reading, your institutional emails. More here from eMarketer Daily.
Select Your Own Seat Users Spend More
For quite some time now airlines have been offering users the ability to select their seats online when purchasing tickets. In the past few years performing arts organizations have been implementing SYOS tools on their sites allowing patrons to choose their exact seat locations.
What Social Media Followers Want
Why do people become fans of your organization or any brand or organization for that matter? A December 2009 MarketingSherpa survey indicated that learning about specials and sales was the top motivation of those who friended or followed a brand online. Learning about new products, features or services closely followed as motivations.
A Great Email Promoting a Single Production
I think this is a really strong email from Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They've created a great template to promote a single production. It is simple and effective including a few brief quotes, a strong visual, a succinct overview, visual links to multimedia, and a clear and bold call to action.
Email 2.0 - A Major Opportunity
I think it is fair to say that the performing arts industry is pretty far behind the email marketing curve, operating with email 1.0 technology. New technologies exist to tie email into ecommerce--more email 2.0. Think of email marketing as a conversion funnel where the first step is a user opening an email and the final step is a user purchasing a ticket on your website. Most email programs that arts organizations employ stop tracking a user once they click on a link in an email. All they track are email open rates and click through. New technologies can track much further, following users all the way to purchase or cart abandonment. Email 2.0 systems can be set to automatically send follow up messages based on user browsing and purchasing behavior which can ultimately lead to major increases in sales.
A Video Fundraising Campaign
I am proud to have worked on a video fundraising project at New York City Opera that was a collaboration between the marketing and development departments. We created a video of General Manager and Artistic Director, George Steel, discussing the recent successes at City Opera and sent out email appeals asking patrons to help out with a matching gift drive by donating online. This is the second time we have created an email video appeal campaign and this time I think we did it quite well.
How Many Facebook Fans Should We Have?
Facebook has been referred to as an on-line popularity contest. Whether that is true or not, popularity is certainly a factor in the number of fans your organization has. Other factors include the number of constituents your organization serves, the amount of effort put towards marketing your Facebook Fan page, the geographic reach of your company (touring the world certainly helps), and how early your organization joined Facebook.
Measuring Email Effectiveness
Last week on his blog Gene Carr of Patron Technology wrote about email open rates. He concluded that while open rates are important, marketers should also measure "cumulative average open rate." This is a measure of how many recipients open emails consistently, how many open sometimes, and how many don't open at all.
Great Article on Web Usability
Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines from SmashingMagazine.com that may help you improve the user experience on your website.
On Website Maintenance
Would you buy a new car and never change the oil? Never get it washed? Never change the tires or tune it up? Of course not. The same is true for a website.
Creating Effective Emails
People read email differently than they read a brochure or a newspaper. If someone is enticed by the subject line (or very loyal to your organization) they may open your email and skim it, not really read it. Lots of text makes skimming difficult.
Determine the Primary Reasons Users are Visiting Your Site
It is easy to get carried away with fancy features and tools when tasked with designing a new website. Every department within your organization has wants and needs for their section of the site. You can easily end up with a large list of complicated and expensive-to-build tools and features.
A Short Video on the Prevelance and Power of Social Media
Watch this video that shares some staggering statistics about the prevalence and power of social media. Some stats from the video:
--By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network.
--1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.
Email Collection Must Be a Top Priority
Email address collection can no longer be something that cultural organizations just think about in passing. It must become a top priority for your organization or you are going to be in big trouble very soon. Here's why:
Opera's First iPhone App
Money Shifting to Digital Marketing
The Scientific Method
A Great User Interface from the NY Phil
Just wanted to acknowledge The New York Philharmonic and Rolling Orange for this beautiful and elegant interface where users can see the benefits of giving. Check it out.
Lessons from the Tessitura Conference
I just got back from the Tessitura Conference in San Antonio. One of the best things I heard all week was this: "A project manager's job is not necessarily to lead the project but to remove any barriers from the project's goals getting accomplished." I like that.
Google as an Arts Organization
Google is governed by the following: openness, sharing, aggregation and capturing customer data. The more customer data you have the more you learn and the more you can improve. So inspired by Jeff Jarvis' book What Would Google Do?, I thought about the following: If Google were a performing arts organization it would...
