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E-Marketing Essentials
A cost-effective tool in your marketing arsenal, e-mail
promotions can help you get bigger attendance numbers if used wisely
What’s the most powerful way to reach out and touch
someone in the 21st century? E-mail. And there is no use resisting it—e-mail
marketing is a must these days. With rising mailing and printing costs, e-mail
is not only a widely-accepted way to reach patrons, it is unbelievably cost
effective. If done correctly, e-mailing your patrons will lower your marketing
costs and increase your attendance. However, done poorly the e-mail will be
unsuccessful, and it could also damage the theatre’s reputation. There
are several things to keep in mind when designing your e-mail campaign: first,
how you go about gathering e-mails; second, when and what to send; and lastly
if you will be managing the e-mails in-house or if you will elect to have
an e-mail service provider (ESP) manage your e-mail marketing. Regardless
of your staff size and budget, all theatres should participate in e-mail marketing.
There is no way around it. E-mail is here to stay.
The most important item is the e-mail address. It is extremely important that
you gather your e-mails in a legal and ethical way; otherwise you will look
as tacky as the Viagra spammers clogging your junk mail box. The CAN-SPAM
Act of 2003 has strict guidelines for businesses sending e-mails to the consumer.
The act requires that unsolicited commercial e-mail be labeled; contain opt-out
instructions and the sender’s street address or P.O. Box. The e-Marketing
Association in Atlanta recommends that e-marketers should NEVER buy a list
of e-mail addresses that is delivered directly to you. Legitimate e-mail list
brokers will send your e-mail out for you rather than supplying the list.
BlueHornet®, an e-mail service provider (ESP), discourages businesses
from buying lists at all. Since the lists are usually sold and resold, the
open rates are very low. Also, since the people on the lists are usually being
spammed by other businesses that purchased the list, your reputation may be
lowered to the status of a spammer. The last thing you want is for internet
service providers (ISP) to put you on their e-mail blacklist. A blacklist
is a list that each ISP keeps of spammers and potential spammers. It doesn’t
take much to be put on the list, only a few complaints can get you blacklisted
which is why theatres should handle their e-mail reputation seriously.
Getting an audience member’s e-mail at the time of sale and asking for
permission to send those e-mails may be the safest and most effective way
to obtain e-mail addresses. Kami Terry of Utah Shakespearean Festival and
Chad Bauman of Arena Stage, D.C., both shared that their theatres have incentive
programs for their sales staff to gather the high quantity of e-mails. Another
way to gather e-mail addresses is to have a form on your site that asks patrons
to sign up for your newsletter. Many companies now are doing double opt-in
practices to ensure that e-mails are reaching those who in fact want their
e-mails. Basically you would have the patron sign up for the newsletter and
then an automatic e-mail would be sent to the patron telling them to click
a link which would ensure that the e-mails are delivered. This practice is
a win-win for the theatre because you instantly will know if the e-mail address
is valid and see that you are being delivered to the inbox of your patron.
Eugene Carr of Patron Technology, an e-mail service provider (ESP) that
specializes in professional e-marketing for arts, nonprofits, and creative
businesses, notes that “One of the most significant aspects of e-mail
marketing is the ability of your e-mail partner to get it delivered to the
inbox.” The truth of the matter is that regardless of the quality, design,
and execution of your message, if it isn’t delivered it is ineffective.
A good reason to consider using an e-mail service provider (ESP) to send out
your e-mails is that most ISPS guard against bulk e-mailing and will filter
your message to the junk mail box or not deliver at all because you appear
a spammer. E-mail service providers such as PatronMail, Constant Contact®,
BlueHornet®, and E-mailLabs have relationships with ISPS and are allowed
to send bulk e-mails. PatronMail boasts higher than average delivery rates
and click-through rates (CTRs) because they only cater to arts and nonprofit
businesses.
Now that you have your permission-based e-mail lists, the next thing to decide
is what and how often do you e-mail. Many theatres send an e-mail three to
five days before the ticket holder’s performance date to enhance the
theatre-going experience. Arena Stage’s pre-performance e-mail includes
directions, parking instructions, interviews, extra performance information,
and frequently asked questions.
Theatres can send a post-performance e-mail thanking the patron for attending
the performance. The post-performance e-mail can include a discount code to
attend the play again or to share with their friends and family. Since theatre
is such a word-of-mouth business, sending a post-performance e-mail is a way
to spark the conversation among friends.
Newsletters are a great way to keep your audience apprised of special events,
performances, theatres’ news, and specials. Kami Terry of the Utah Shakespearean
Festival shares of their newsletters, “We will ask ourselves when trying
to think of topics, what would we talk about if we went to lunch with our
patrons? This helps us identify topics that will make our patrons feel like
an insider at the Festival -- early news on casting, information on Festival
alumni's projects, and the first information about the productions themselves.”
Use your newsletters as a way to connect with your theatre goers and to create
a more one-on-one feeling with your audience. At the bottom of the newsletter,
give options that allow the reader to forward the newsletter to a friend—this
method of viral-marketing is a great way to spread the word about your theatre.
Be careful not to over e-mail your subscribers. The industry rule of thumb
is to e-mail no more than three to four times a month. Any more than that
can make your theatre look desperate and unprofessional.
Subject lines should be short and to the point. Chad Bauman of Arena Stage
writes on his arts marketing blog, “Be careful when writing subject lines.
Subject lines with all CAPS, strange spacing, unusual symbols, and over use
of common spam words such as FREE! can cause a campaign to be caught in a
spam filter.” Subject lines should be no longer than 49 characters so
that they will appear in entirety in the inbox. Constant Contact® recommends
writing the name of your business in your subject line, examples: Thanks from
the Utah Shakespearean Festival or Exciting things are happening at Arena
Stage! Or Summer Savings Offer at La Jolla Playhouse.
Blue Hornet® recommends having a 70 graphic to text ratio. E-mailLabs’
research showed that messages in the 20-79KB file size range have higher click-through
rates (CTRs). And that successfully executed HTML e-mails have 35% higher
response rate than plain text.
If you decide to have an in-house team design and execute your e-mails, here
are some tips to keep your e-mails appearing professional. Each ISP has different
rules and ways they will display images in e-mails; therefore you must design
your e-mail so it will appear professional in everyone’s inbox.
1. Do not use JavaScript or Flash in your e-mails. They will not display correctly.
2. If you decide to use Animated GIFS, have the first frame contain the most important content since many ISPS will not display the animation.
3. Backgrounds fail to display quite often, so don’t have important data or design elements in the background.
4. Forms in e-mails rarely work or are delivered correctly. Instead have a link to a landing page that can have e-mail form on the web.
5. Have your designer use old fashioned table-based coding methods so that your e-mail will display consistently in each ISP.
6. Test how your e-mail works in different ISPS. Send it to test Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Blackberry mail, Mac mail, etc.
E-mailLabs studies show that Tuesday before noon is the
most popular day to send for e-marketers and Wednesday before noon is the
most popular time to open. Monday and Friday have the lowest open rates. If
your e-mail is specific and targeted, studies show that your CTRs will be
higher than broad mass e-mail campaigns.
There is an abundance of information available online on how to improve your
e-mail campaigns. Keep in mind that although e-mailing is much cheaper than
mailing or placing ads for your theatre, in order to make it successful it
will take time to manage it. Assess your company’s budget and carve out
some resources for e-mail marketing. Going with an e-mail service provider
may be your best bet if you don’t have the staff or resources to daily
manage your e-mail campaigns. Eugene Carr of Patron Technology sums it all up,
“E-mail marketing is no longer an add on. It should be central to your
marketing. Now is the time to reslice the pie and carve out some time and
money to invest in e-mail marketing. Any time and money will be rewarding.”
Chat up your e-mail marketing marvels on the DramaBiz Magazine forums
at www.dramabiz.com/forum.
