PatronManager

One of the things that attracted me seven years ago to building a
business based around e-mail marketing was my belief that as technology
developed, e-mail would shed its then bad image as spam, and would take
its rightful place as the most valuable and effective marketing tool
for non-profits.

Over the years, the market has validated this
and today nearly everyone understands that e-mail is an important
component of your marketing strategy.

What often irks me is
the propensity for "flavor of the month" thinking. A few years ago,
people were telling me that RSS would kill off e-mail: once people
adopted RSS, they would stop wanting opt-in e-mail. When that didn't happen, next it was text
messaging: "Nobody wants e-mail! The cell phone is the
device of the future!" was the cry. But neither of these technologies have killed
off e-mail and I doubt that they ever will.  

That said, what's
important to me is to highlight the relative interest in these
technologies by the vast majority of arts patrons — those between 35
and 65 years old.

Check out these numbers below — these are from
a recent study that asked people HOW they want to receive communications. The numbers tell the story even better than I can.