Let’s set the scene: you’ve just gotten out of a play (or movie, or concert, you do you!) and before you even exit the theatre, you notice you have an email notification on your phone. Your eyes widen as you realize it’s from the theatre you are currently in, about the play you literally just walked out of. “What kind of sorcery is this!?” you may exclaim (especially if you’ve just seen Harry Potter on Broadway). That’s no magic though: that’s automated communication.
Today’s blog post is written by Paul Miller, VP Sales – Non-Profit Ticketing, PatronManager.
With all the corporate digital marketing dollars spent on search engine marketing and social media advertising, it might come as a surprise that email is still king of the marketing castle. And in no place is this perhaps more true than in the non-profit world, especially the arts and culture sector. How do we know? Well, according to the PatronManager Arts Patron Survey, which we’ve conducted with a subset of our clients’ patrons every year since 2006, email usage, and appreciation, continues to rank high in terms of usefulness and impact. Three statistics in particular from our 2018 survey stood out to me as definitive evidence why email reigns supreme with our particular audience:Read the Article
Today’s blog post is written by Aaron Schwartzbord, Director of Marketing, PatronManager.
Over the years, we’ve talked a lot on our blog about the importance of building personal relationships with patrons in an authentic way, and subsequently the do’s and don’ts of email marketing. (In fact, Michelle Paul recently touched on this exact topic in her recent blog post, “Staying on Target.”) A few months ago I had two contrasting experiences that really emphasized for me just how important these things are for the survival and growth of a business.
The first experience occurred during an amazing vacation I took with my husband over the holidays to Prague. We had never been before, so in the spirit of embracing an unknown foreign city, we decided to book a tour with a young local food tour company called Taste of Prague. This company had over 2,400 excellent reviews on Tripadvisor, we love food and food culture, and (based on the reviews) we were confident it would be worthy of our time and money.
Spoiler Alert: It surpassed every expectation we had. In just over four hours we were taken to 5 different establishments spanning from fine dining restaurants to a small butcher shop. Our tour guide was a young, local woman who gave us not just an overview of the food we were eating, but also went into the history of Prague and the Czech Republic.
Needless to say, the tour was amazing, but what really blew me away was what happened after. Read the Article
Today’s guest blog post is written by Kevin Patterson, Senior Account Executive, PatronManager.
This is a tale of three organizations and my relationships to them as a patron. It’s an ugly story complete with a bloated email inbox, frustration, unsubscription, and lost patronage. Draw near and listen to the tale of mass email blasts: Why they are a terrible idea, and how they can cost your organization money and lost opportunity.
The first organization is one that I recently purchased tickets from for an upcoming concert. I am traveling to this city for a brief vacation and have always wanted to attend an event in this famed concert hall. Unless I were planning a vacation, I wouldn’t normally be able to see this vaunted orchestra as it is too far from my home. The initial online ticket purchase was uneventful, in fact, the organization did a good job with initial follow-up with ancillary options like parking and restaurants near the theater. Not long after my ticket purchase, however, I began receiving emails for other concerts — I was averaging two to three offers per week. I also got an email from them asking me to become a donor. I haven’t even attended the concert yet! I immediately unsubscribed from their emails (I don’t even recall giving them permission to email me in the first place). The final blow was receiving a mailing from them for another concert.Read the Article
The article caused me to pause and think about what we do here at PatronManager to keep our employees updated and motivated towards our goals. First, we use Chatter a ton, obsessively in fact. For those who don’t know, Chatter is an internal communication tool built right into PatronManager/Salesforce that mimics Facebook style conversations.
We have over 15 Chatter groups including departmental groups, a full company group, and even one dedicated to our “cheese club.” In some ways, our “full company” Chatter group serves the purpose of a newsletter when we have big announcements to make. We also have a monthly live “all hands” call where we present an update for the whole staff. So it didn’t occur to me to do an actual newsletter, which I think is a pretty interesting idea. Read the Article
Today’s guest blog post is written by Ameris Poquette, Data Specialist, Patron Technology.
I’ve lost count of how many mailing lists I’m signed up for, but it’s probably in the hundreds. Every day, I get (at least) twenty some-odd emails from different sources all wanting my business — most of which end up living out their years unread in my spam folder. There’s no question that the Internet has changed the nature of marketing and the way we communicate with our audience — it’s become a digital, mass-market affair. Signing up for a new mailing list is something we do at the drop of a hat, for anything that even mildly piques our interest.
Today, even “contact us” pages that are meant to lead to a real human interaction can feel impersonal, cold, and automatic. In some ways, this is the nature of this new medium, which allows us to reach more people simultaneously than we’ve ever been able to before.
So the question becomes, how do we learn to stand out from the hundreds of unread messages in your patron’s inbox, most of which are trying to do the same thing you are? How do you maintain a connection with your target audience in the digital age?Read the Article
Today’s guest blog post is written by Kevin Patterson, Senior Account Executive, PatronManager. 
