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.
In recent years there has been a lot of focus and conversation around bringing more Millennials into arts organizations – but what about Gen Zers? As a 23-year-old born in 1996, I find myself on the cusp of two generational groups: Millennials and the increasingly prevalent Generation Z (or Gen Z for short). Gen Z includes people born between 1996 and 2015 while Millennials were born between 1980 and 1995. This up and coming generation is spending money, engaging with brands, and consuming arts and entertainment in different ways than Millennials. By engaging this audience now, arts and non-profit marketers like you can get in on the ground floor and put yourself in a position to retain their loyalty for years to come.Read the Article
Are you telling your organization’s story everywhere you can? I have some data that might inspire you to take a second look at where you’re funneling your marketing efforts online!
The Background
Every year at PatronManager, we conduct something we call the “Arts Patron Survey,” a nationwide survey in which we work with 20-30 of our clients to send a detailed questionnaire out to all of their patrons. Over the 15 years of the survey’s existence, we’ve partnered with over 300 organizations to contact over 1.5 million arts patrons, and we’ve received over 125,000 responses.
As you might expect, it’s a great source of information! Michelle and Gene used it to write our book Breaking the Fifth Wall, and we regularly present information from the survey at events. Over the last few years, one of the most important things we’ve learned from conducting this survey is: arts patrons of all ages are online, and that’s the primary place they interact with your organization before they come in person. Read the Article
By Gene Carr, Founder & Paul Miller, VP Sales – Non-Profit Ticketing
In our last post, we introduced the concept of the “sponsor activation,” which is becoming more commonplace in commercial venues, but less so in the arts. In this post, we’ll give you more detail on how to think about a sponsor activation at your organization — and how it differs from a traditional sponsorship.
The key element of an activation is that it offers benefits to all participants — the patron, the sponsor, and the arts organization. Read the Article
Today’s blog post is written by Cheryl Dolby, Senior Sales Development Representative, PatronManager.
What do these three things have in common?
First, some background — several years ago, in a former career, I was a Broadway press agent. Among the dozens of Broadway shows I represented were Pippin and Chicago, two Bob Fosse musicals very much in the news now as a result of the FX limited TV series Fosse/Verdon, nominated this year for 17 Emmy Awards.
When I worked on Pippin, I was an associate in the PR office of Harvey Sabinson, one of Broadway’s legendary press agents. The standard process in Harvey’s office was that he and the show’s producer would come up with a marketing blurb and, using that as our main message, the associates would then do all the daily marketing work for the run of the show.
In this case, the marketing blurb was “Pippin is the story of a young man searching for fulfillment, just like any other young man today, except his father is Charlemagne, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.” Remember, this was 1971-72, so “searching for fulfillment”was the mantra of the day.
My reaction? If that’s what you say the show is about, then that’s what I’ll market.
Today’s blog post is written by Aaron Schwartzbord, Director of Marketing, PatronManager.
The non-profit arts industry is built on a framework of advocacy. Your organization has a board, donors, members, and subscribers who support your mission in various ways from donating their time, subscribing to your season, even soliciting people from within their own personal circles. It’s ingrained in how we do business; a non-profit organization simply could not function without the strong backing from its community. But there is a constituency we may be forgetting… Read the Article
