Show Your Ticket Buyers Some Love with Fan Clubs
2/9/17
For over a decade, Broadway shows have embraced email as one of the pillars of a complete marketing strategy. Reaching out to multiple industry email lists (like Telecharge, Playbill, Theatermania) with onsale notifications and discount offers is now a given, and savvy marketers have begun layering email with newer digital tools.
Those solutions help shows reach buyers who’ve shown an interest in Broadway, but they’re co-branded solutions and subject to scheduling and extra costs. And they don’t necessarily allow a show to nurture its own ticket buyers and encourage social sharing and repeat attendance.
That’s where fan club programs come in.
For a while, Telecharge has been offering shows the opportunity to manage their own fan club programs—using addresses collected from the ticketing system, layered with automated uploads from the show’s own website. Over the last few years, shows have been able to add Shubert Wi-Fi names, Telecharge lottery, and other forms of attendee data.
So how are shows leveraging this customer data? One great way is to set up triggered mailings—one to one messages that are triggered by an event, such as a ticket purchase. That ticket purchase could generate a thank-you email to the customer, providing valuable information about the show, venue, and other special show-branded info.
Triggers can also provide valuable customer service before the performance and ask audience members to review the show on social media after the performance. These post-performance emails often have open rates between 80%-90% and clickthrough rates in the 10%-20% range (see the data below).
Fan clubs allow shows to send promotional or newsletter messages to that show’s fans anytime—in their own voice. This eliminates the scheduling hassles and cost of booking emails with a provider, which makes marketers jobs a lot easier. Setting up a fan club can typically be done quickly for new shows or long-running hits, encouraging loyalty and building relationships between shows and audiences that last long after the curtain comes down.
Those solutions help shows reach buyers who’ve shown an interest in Broadway, but they’re co-branded solutions and subject to scheduling and extra costs. And they don’t necessarily allow a show to nurture its own ticket buyers and encourage social sharing and repeat attendance.
That’s where fan club programs come in.
For a while, Telecharge has been offering shows the opportunity to manage their own fan club programs—using addresses collected from the ticketing system, layered with automated uploads from the show’s own website. Over the last few years, shows have been able to add Shubert Wi-Fi names, Telecharge lottery, and other forms of attendee data.
So how are shows leveraging this customer data? One great way is to set up triggered mailings—one to one messages that are triggered by an event, such as a ticket purchase. That ticket purchase could generate a thank-you email to the customer, providing valuable information about the show, venue, and other special show-branded info.
Triggers can also provide valuable customer service before the performance and ask audience members to review the show on social media after the performance. These post-performance emails often have open rates between 80%-90% and clickthrough rates in the 10%-20% range (see the data below).
Fan clubs allow shows to send promotional or newsletter messages to that show’s fans anytime—in their own voice. This eliminates the scheduling hassles and cost of booking emails with a provider, which makes marketers jobs a lot easier. Setting up a fan club can typically be done quickly for new shows or long-running hits, encouraging loyalty and building relationships between shows and audiences that last long after the curtain comes down.
Originally published in Broadway Briefing.