If you’re not familiar with the concept of Siri, watch the short demo video from Apple:

All of this got me thinking: although Siri is very new (and officially still in “beta” by Apple), what capabilities does she already have for helping a patron connect with arts and culture?

What can Apple’s Siri do for patrons and arts organizations?

Based on this, I scratched out a number of questions to ask Siri related to finding arts organizations and attending arts events. I also sent an email out to my Groupofminds mailing list, asking my subscribers to become fellow researchers and supply questions for me to ask Siri. I thought crowdsourcing the research would be a fun way to increase engagement, and also a great way to supply me with questions from specialists in many different cultural genres. In this 12-minute video, you can see me asking these questions to Siri, and can see her responses.

Don’t want to watch the whole video? I’ve summarized the findings below.

Summary of Siri arts & culture features

• Siri is great at using aspects of the iPhone to do things such as set reminders, change appointments, and message (multiple) people via voice. These can be quite complex, such as “set an appointment (now) for lunch with Dave tomorrow at 5pm.”
• Siri is very good at finding directions to a venue from your current location, but she cannot yet give directions from somewhere you are not, to somewhere else you are not.
• Siri does voice searches like “Siri, show me orchestras in San Francisco,” if you want “symphonies” you’ll need to ask.
• Siri defaults to doing a web search for many answers she doesn’t know (and this is a key opportunity for you.. see below).
• Siri currently uses Yelp to look up venue and business information.
• Siri is currently unable to look for specific events, such as “tell me when The Secret Garden at Theatreworks closes?”
• Siri cannot yet pull up reviews for events or organizations (even though Yelp lists a ton of reviews).
• Siri cannot yet tell us any fine details about specific venue, such as handicapped seating availability.
• Siri can tell you about parking near a venue, if you are currently near the venue, such as “show me parking nearby.”
• Siri says she “can’t search near businesses” even though she can if you’re near the business.
• Siri currently doesn’t know anything about any ticket prices, but knows about “ticket agencies,” though she specifically says “I can’t look specifically for price range… my apologies” — she calls out pricing, so I think this feature is being developed.
• Siri is very good at getting rid of the parts of sentences that aren’t important; for example, in a separate test, I asked her “Siri, bee boo bop bop fee foe fum show me nearby theaters” — she ignored the first part, and just showed me local theaters.
• Siri knows the venue “playhouse” as it relates to seeing local plays.
• Siri correctly showed me comedy clubs when I asked her “Siri, I need to laugh tonight… can you show me where I can see comedy?” and showed me musical theatre groups nearby when I asked her “where can I see musical theatre?” (wow, nice).
• Siri automatically started sorting venue results by Yelp rating, which was cool.
• Siri is very good about showing you restaurant options before an event by just asking her to tell you about restaurants near the venue you’ll be near (you don’t actually have to be at the venue for this to work).

Is Siri the answer to every arts patron’s dreams? Not quite yet — she has a long way to go for that. But when she can do now is already amazing, and her abilities are getting stronger each day, due to all the people asking her questions each day. This article on Forbes.com mentions that results from a small study show that “people who use Apple’s Siri don’t really need Google.” That is a major potential shift in how we search for information.

New discovery: How to help Siri users find your cultural information via Google, until she can find it on her own

Many organizations have spent time on SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or making sure your web pages score high on search results) on Google and Bing. And this is still an incredibly good use of your time that gives back real ROI. (Disclaimer: Groupofminds, and I personally, have done a lot of this type of work).

Consider that people on Google are searching via keywords such as “San Jose Theatre” or “Palo Alto Events.” But Siri uses whole phrases in her searches. As an example, I asked her “Siri, what is playing at the San Francisco Symphony tonight,” — she couldn’t answer that, and did a web search. The top result was a blog post that wasn’t even about the symphony. If I were a real user, I’d be frustrated.

Then I got to thinking, posts from blogs and websites with high Google ranking often get listed on Google incredibly quickly. What if I made a blog post on the groupofminds blog, with Siri phrase searching in mind for the same question? I think you’ll be excited by the results in this short video:

Holy freakin’ cow. On publishing my post, my sample San Francisco Symphony page called “Siri, show me what’s playing at the San Francisco Symphony tonight” is the #1 result on Google, and at the time of writing this post is the first thing you see when you do a Siri search with this query. Have an iPhone 4S? Try it yourself.

Not only does it work for the San Francisco Symphony, but there is so little competition for this phrase that even asking her “Siri, show me what’s playing at the symphony tonight” STILL brings back my page as the highest search result. That’s for any symphony in the world.

This represents a huge opportunity for arts marketers who want their users to find relevant Google results via a Siri voice search until Siri can answer on her own (like I currently am for this search for the San Francisco Symphony). It’s actually pretty simple — arts organizations just need to build a series of pages that are optimized for voice phrases people would ask Siri.

Yes, this means trying to figure out what phrases people will be saying to Siri to find you  like I have above, along with different variations, such as “tomorrow,” “this weekend,” “over the holidays,” etc. Your Google analytics will be able to tell you if those pages get traffic. What you put on this pages should be generic enough so you don’t need to update it often, but should at least link to the correct information on whatever page it is on in your site. Considering that virtually nobody is optimizing pages in this way yet gives you an opportunity to be number one in a new search category; something that companies pay millions of dollars to reach.

The future of Siri and mobile voice search for cultural organizations

I see Siri continuing to grow in both popularity and capabilities. User adoption will continue to grow: think about it — isn’t it odd that we still type letters out to say things on a computer, instead of using words? That’s like someone who is hearing-impaired just using finger spelling to communicate, instead of gestures that represent whole words. In the not-to-distant future, I’m sure Siri will speak her response back to questions on our arts and cultural events, and help patrons find their way to our box offices to purchase tickets. If we start considering the possibilities now, we can be ready for this day. Got an additional question about these experiments that I didn’t cover? Drop me a note and I’ll get back to you.

I’d like to recognize my fellow researchers for their contribution of questions to ask Siri: Kevin Kirby, Kateri McRae, Fran Spector Atkins, Doug Smith, Irene Sherr, Chelsea Maricle, Richard Hine, Paulette Lynch, Roland Valliere,  Jennifer Easton, Jerry Yoshitomi, Amelia Northrup, Joe Winter, Sanford Dole, Dale Albright, Bob Cable, Mary Arnold, Laura Paisley, Matt Campbell, John Martin, Rebecca Wallace, and Joanne Bernstein.

Like this post? Please share it with others who you think might benefit from it, via the links below, and subscribe via email orRSS to receive future updates. Ron Evans is an arts marketing and consumer psychology researcher, and principal consultant at Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing Consultants in Sunnyvale, CA, USA. He helps arts audiences increase their understanding, appreciation, and frequency of attendance through innovative uses of technology.

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This isn't really a live ad, just a screenshot for decoration. Had you going there for a second!

In my last post, I spent some time talking about advance sales and discount ticketing strategies, as well as how it’s too easy to train the patron to wait for a better deal if you offer large discounts late in the game. I mentioned that “the right thing to do here is create a marketing strategy that offers the most discount to people who give up the most convenience.” It’s enticing and effective to trade one thing for another (in this case, giving up convenience to get a discount back). I think we’ll see this idea of “trading something for something else” pop up again later on.

I also began to talk about discount ticketing, below, we’ll cover group-based buying programs (the half-price ticket program being an old favorite, and new group-purchase sites such as Groupon.com and LivingSocial that have recently come on the scene).

Half-price theatre tickets: deep discount or exposure to new opportunities?

Half-price tickets are hot. From the TKTS booth in New York City, to your local arts service organization with a half-price ticket list, the idea of “half-price tickets” activates the brain in an exciting way. First, there is the idea of the huge discount — similar to what you might feel when you say a $200 awesome leather jacket marked down to $100. A steal, right? Then there is the idea that they are limited (and we recommend limiting them) — get them while they’re hot, as they won’t be around long. Two powerful incentives to buy those tickets right now!

Let’s pause for a moment and ask ourselves “what’s the purpose of selling a half-price ticket?” If opening night is tomorrow night, and you have no tickets sold, half-price ticketing the house is not a good solution, for all the reasons I mentioned in the last post. So what else can we do with it? With a thought-out strategy, I believe that:

• Half-price tickets are good to move unsold inventory — as long as you limit the number of tickets to a small amount and/or control it in some way.
• Half-price tickets are a good way to sell obstructed seats — look at Cirque du Soliel… they will often sell a discount ticket for seats that have the tent pole in the view of the patron. If you’re ok with that, they’ll hook you up. Great use of a discounted seat.
• Half-price tickets theoretically allow people to see experiences they wouldn’t normally go to — for example, a 50%-discounted theatre ticket might push you over the edge to seeing a show that is outside your normal genre of arts events, and you might discover you like it.
• Half-price tickets theoretically allow people to experience twice as many arts events than they could on the same budget — if people are devoting twice the amount of time to the arts than they were before, that’s a good thing.

The first two are pretty clear. On the last two, I say “theoretically” because although I’ve heard patrons say they use half-price tickets for these things, I’ve never seen any hard data that proves that they behave in this way. If you’ve got a half-price ticket program running on a strong CRM, let me know and perhaps we can look at the data together and find out.

Additionally, when selling a half-price ticket, you MUST put some mechanism in place to capture the patron’s contact information. This might come with selling the ticket (they buy an e-ticket for which you have an email address, for example) or you may need to get it in other ways. Remember that idea of “trading something for something else”? Here, you’re trading profit on the ticket for the ability to market to the patron later on for another show.

Super-deep discounts: Groupon and LivingSocial for the arts

There is a lot of buzz about Groupon and Living Social. If you’ve been out of the loop (hey, welcome back!) you may not know that these services use a powerful combination of time limit, offer limit, and a need to have a certain number of people agree to buy the deal before the deal switches “on” and folks can redeem the highly discounted offers for restaurants, spas, vacation packages, and often, arts events. So you have a natural wish to share these offers with your friends, so you can get the deal yourself. These services move a LOT of offers. Here’s a short video explaining how these services work:

If you do some searches on the web, you can find both positive and negative experiences of those who have placed ads with these services. Just do your homework. Ask others in the arts community who have used these channels to tell you about their experience. These services offer a huge amount of exposure at no direct cost, but can often have a high indirect cost (what you’re losing on the sale when the customer redeems the coupon). The exact terms of the deal with these services is up to the two parties, but the rule seems to be you’ll offer something at 50% discount, and the service will take 50% of the sale, leaving you with 25% of original revenue. So, $20 ticket, sold for $10, the service gets $5, and you get $5. $5 instead of $20 is a pretty large drop, so what are you “trading” for here? In this case, it’s profit for exposure (and hopefully the patron’s contact information). Nothing wrong with playing in this space, but just remember that if the patron is going to get a benefit (lower cost), they should give up some value for it (restricted days to attend? Obstructed seats? Back of the house only? Use your imagination). But doing these with no restrictions can cause real problems as you might imagine. If the service doesn’t allow you to cap the number of offers sold, then you’ll need to design your offering  so there is some way for you to control the fulfillment.

How can your arts event ticketing system help?

Your ticketing system can play a big part in discounting as well. I’m surprised that I don’t see more promotion-code use in online ticketing, where several unique promotion codes are used through different marketing channels so the arts org can track which campaigns are bringing in the most ROI. That’s pretty easy to do… mention the use of one promotion code on Facebook, and use another promotional code on Twitter, or on radio, or on TV. It’s a great way to look at actual ROI on advertising and marketing spend, because it means you’ve actually sold a ticket.

I also really like that some ticketing systems are now allowing you to “get social” in the middle of the transaction. As part of the checkout process, some systems allow you to share on Facebook and Twitter that you’re buying a ticket to a specific performance, and when the message goes in the newsfeed, it asks your friends if they’d like to purchase a ticket to go with you to the same specific performance. I don’t have any data yet on how often this feature is used, but I am seeing it included in more ticketing systems, and I sure like the idea. I think it will be commonplace in ticketing systems within the year, so if you’re looking at a new ticketing system, make sure it’s on their radar.

Bottom line, there is nothing wrong with changing the price of the ticket to gain other things (trade paying less for buying in advance, trade paying less for giving over your contact information, trade paying more for convenience of last-minute decision making, trade paying more for a premium experience, etc.). Just make sure you’re considering the tradeoff, and including that in your calculations. And above all, experiment, share your results, and learn from any failures, so that you can improve your results over time. For further case studies and discussion on these issues, I recommend you check out the cool site http://www.thinkaboutpricing.com. They are collecting quite a fine library of articles and know-how on the subject.

If you’re looking for a new ticketing system, I’m happy to talk to you and point you in the right direction. You should also check out http://theticketinginstitute.com run by my friend Roger Tomlinson, and read the 2011 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey Report from the smart folks at Technology in the Arts.

Happy ticketing!

-Ron

Like this post? Please share it with others who you think might benefit from it, via the links below, and subscribe via email or RSS to receive future updates. Ron Evans is an arts marketing and consumer psychology researcher, and principal consultant at Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing Consultants in Sunnyvale, CA, USA. He helps arts audiences increase their understanding, appreciation, and frequency of attendance through innovative uses of technology.

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Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing + Technology Consultants assists arts and cultural organizations to increase the audience’s enjoyment, understanding, and frequency of attendance. Principal consultant Ron Evans a leading developer and researcher of arts marketing technology. His current research is focusing on consumer psychology and behavior in the realm of arts and cultural attendance. Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing + Technology Consultants is based in San Jose, CA, USA. For questions on this report, please contact us.

The right discount-ticketing strategy can make all the difference.

Pricing and marketing arts event tickets isn’t easy. When faced with the need to “put butts in seats” it can be tempting to do whatever it takes. In this article, I hope to give you some explanations on why some discounting strategies would be a better choice than others, and help you avoid some short-term successes that could lead to long-term problems.

Picture this. You’re a big supporter of a large cultural music venue, so when you receive an email from the institution that tickets have gone on sale for an upcoming concert, you pick up the phone and buy your tickets (or better yet, buy online). You get your confirmation that you paid the listed price, and since the concert isn’t until a month from now, you go about your business.

Three weeks later, you get an email from the same organization, offering two-for-one tickets for everyone who buys a ticket going forward. But only for people who haven’t bought yet.

Wait a minute.

You bought your tickets early, and now you can’t get the deal. You call the organization, and they tell you this offer is only for people who haven’t bought tickets yet. You’re angry, and understandably so. You think to yourself, “I could really make a scene here and demand that I be given the same offer,” but you probably don’t act on that idea. Instead, you smolder about it and swear to yourself that you’ll never be caught in THAT situation again. Next time, you’ll wait until you get the offer before buying anything.Sound familiar? I see arts organizations do this all the time. And I see the fallout that conditions the patron’s mind right along with it.

The scenario I just led you through results in a changed patron, and not for the better. It trains patrons to wait until there is a special offer before they commit to buying a ticket. The next show, more patrons will wait, which means fewer tickets sold far in advance, and more perceived need for a “fire sale” of a huge discount near opening in order to sell the seats. It’s a vicious circle, and as a marketing manager, it’s something you should be keeping your eye on. And sadly, it generally creates really bad feelings in your early buyers. It’s the golden rule — as a patron, would you want this to happen to you?

A simple way to get around this? Either discount for people who buy early on (called “the airline model”) or make the discount available to everybody (even people who have already purchased the tickets — always a good idea).

The airline model of arts ticketing

People seem to generally understand that booking your airline ticket early (3 weeks or more before your fly date) results in getting the lowest fare. The highest fares come if you walk into the airport and say “I want to get on the next flight to JFK.” Not only are you fighting the fact that most of the seats may be already taken, but the airlines know that you’ve waited until the last minute to make your purchase, which is a convenience they think you should pay for via a higher ticket price. If you wait to buy your ticket, you pay more. Pretty simple. But consider the following YouTube commercial from Hotels.com, that actively promotes waiting:

Wow. Training consumers to wait is a really good strategy for hotels.com, as they base their business on last-minute shoppers. Not so good for the hotels if you think about it.

For centuries, many arts organizations have followed a similar model, they’ve just called it something different, and priced multiple tickets together: the subscription. In recent years, most arts organizations have seen a reduction in the number of subscriptions, because people seem less likely to want to commit to being in the theater at a specific time/date far in advance. They want the convenience of making the decision to go at the last minute, just like the guy who wants to fly to JFK TODAY. So why do so many arts groups allow patrons to get on-board today’s flight at a discount?

One reason is the idea that an empty seat is an empty seat, and if nothing has worked up until the day of the performance to fill that seat, do whatever you can to fill that seat. On the surface, it makes sense. But in the long run, I believe it just creates more empty seats.

The right thing to do here is create a marketing strategy that offers the most discount to people who give up the most convenience. Those that buy early get the benefit, and those that wait risk a higher price or a chance the show won’t have any seats left to sell. If you get to the performance date and you still have seats you’re tempted to discount, don’t. It’s better that your regular patrons do not have access to them at a discount at this point. Either let them go unfilled (and realize that you need to work on your early-sales strategy) or give them as comps to middle school kids, as special rewards to donors to bring a friend, or anything else you can think of to get a body in that seat. But don’t reward the people who choose to wait and buy late.

Discounted arts tickets: friend or foe?

I’ll be up front; I generally don’t like discount tickets, unless they are for students/seniors or used as an incentive to try out a new arts genre a patron has no experience with. You’ve worked hard to price your tickets at a level where they are perceived as being a passport to a quality experience — less expensive tickets, handled the wrong way, can really alter the perception of the quality of your event in the mind of the patron. Not to mention discounting the ticket means less money in your account at the end of the day.

Many of you may have heard of the ticket pricing strategy that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus uses — I’ve heard statistics that up to 80% of their tickets are discounted down from some much-higher price, so that people feel that they are getting a really good deal. And I think that is an excellent strategy for the circus. Going to the circus isn’t a high-risk concept — you don’t need to prepare in advance and be knowledgeable about Irish playwrights or the history of the War of the Roses. You just go with your family and watch acrobats and elephants, and you’re entertained.

But most of your regular arts events are significantly different. The patron doesn’t know how it’s going to be, and they’re not sure if they want to spend $25 for a ticket if the show is at risk of not being good. At this point in the buying process, consumers “on the fence” are searching for any kind of assurance that their money will be well spent, and that they will have a good experience. They are looking for a quality indicator. And when you discount the price, you are likely lowering the perceived value of the experience.

Researches have investigated the relationship between price and quality and showed that “consumers use price to infer quality when it it the only available cue” and that “price is used as a quality cue to a greater degree when brands are unfamiliar.” (Lambert 1972). While you have to purchase most of these studies online to read them, I found a great PDF of some sample research online by DPS Verma and Soma Sen Gupta called “Does Higher Price Signal Better Quality.” Break out the coffee on these research reports — they take some concentration.

I much prefer the idea of adding value vs. reducing price. Especially value that doesn’t cost you anything. Perhaps there is a new restaurant that has recently opened near your venue? Odds are they would love the visibility of offering your patrons a discount to dinner before your show. Work something out with them, and you can offer that discount as an added value to people who purchase by a certain date, or purchase a number of tickets as a group, etc. All without reducing either the perceived value of the ticket, or the amount of money you get to take home at the end of the day. But make it available to everybody. The people who bought early should always get the best deal, and should never be left behind.

If you find these sorts of questions on pricing and ticket discount interesting, I also recommend you check into the work of my colleagues at The Pricing Institute. They’re using some brilliant tools and scientific know-how to figure out the best ways of pricing tickets and venues.

In the next post, I’ll talk about some real-life examples, discuss half-price ticketing strategies, and explore how ticketing systems can help you to make some of these options a little easier.

Go on to read part 2 of this article

Like this post? Please share it with others who you think might benefit from it, via the links below, and subscribe via email or RSS to receive future updates. Ron Evans is a researcher in consumer psychology and behavior, and an arts marketing consultant with Groupofminds.com in Sunnyvale, CA. He helps arts audiences increase their understanding, appreciation, and  frequency of attendance, through technology.

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Tracking the elusive social media ROI

I hear a lot of opinions about social media these days. A lot of them are positive, from people who have the time to experiment and build real relationships. And a lot of them are negative, from people who “tried it, but it didn’t work us” or from those who say they can’t see any return on investment (ROI). The latter can be due to a variety of issues, but often is due the difficult job of tracking social media movement.

Think about wildlife trackers. They are skilled at seeing small signs and interpreting large results — a bent twig here, a small footprint there… the animal went that way. They see things others do not, because they have taken time to be trained to notice the small details. Tracking ROI on Facebook is similar, and subtle. If you get into the tracking mindset, you can discover a great many things, but even then you have to be ok with animals seemingly showing up out of nowhere at your box office. And the path they took to get there can jump many channels and be all over the place!

Jumping to different arts marketing channels

As an example, recently I decided to see a production of the “musical play” Opus at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, CA. It was excellent — the kind of theatre that changes you. My companion and I left the theater talking about the show from a bunch of different angles (mostly trying to decide if the last scene should have been kept in the show or cut — I favored keeping it). I went home, and jumped on Facebook. I wrote the following:

Several friends of mine commented on this post, saying how they loved it too, as they too debated the last scene. The next afternoon, another friend of mine called me and said “I just called the box office and my boyfriend and I are going to Opus tonight because I saw your great post on Facebook!” I told her that was great, and to let me know what she thought. Late that night, I got a text message from her and the exchange went like this:

I was pretty much in full observer mode at this point, and wanted to see how much further it would go with the “pass along” idea. I’m sure the folks at TheatreWorks are loving me right now. She posted to her Facebook page that she had loved the show, and folks commented on it. That’s where my tracking of the story stops.

So what happened here? Let’s recap.

I saw the show in person, and commented on Facebook (first jump of mediums, from in-person to Facebook). My friend saw my post and called me, and then the box office (2nd jump of medium, from Facebook to phone). She saw the show and then texted me after (3rd jump of medium, from in-person to text message) and then posted on her own Facebook page (4th jump of medium, from text message back to Facebook).

And through all that, two tickets were sold (for her to see the show). But there is no way that the TheatreWorks box office can track the purchase, since it all happened inter-personally and organically. To TheatreWorks, the phone rang, and somebody purchased two tickets. That’s it.

So what does this tell us about social media and the arts?

First, your efforts to reach patrons via social media may have results that you don’t track as being attributed to social media, when people jump mediums and come into the box office a different way. Score one point for social media, even though it is hard to track.

Second, people are using social media to discuss you, and in this case it didn’t matter if TheatreWorks was posting their own posts on their Facebook page, as those posts didn’t come into the ticket purchase equation (although they most likely have an effect in other cases). So having your own posts is important, but positive things happen outside of what you post on your organization’s Facebook page. I’m not saying that TheatreWorks should have gotten in the middle of our conversation or anything — that might have actually broken the spell. But believing that these conversations are happening about you is an important reason to be involved with social media.

In some ways, social media is incredibly easy to track — do a search for your name or your organization, and if people are talking about you, it’s pretty easy to find out. But tracking sales from social media is harder. It can be done, but you really have to be paying attention to lay feedback loops throughout the system — setting up twigs to be bent, and pouring mud in the path to see footsteps. Some examples of ways to do this include:

• promotion codes linked only to social media
• personalized urls to specific campaigns
• separate phone numbers that allow you to track sources of calls
• Facebook applications that help info to go viral
• phone questions by the box office staff, or survey questions during the online ticket purchase
• and for some transactions, you may just find it impossible to track at all, but you still sold a ticket

Believing in social media

To me, belief in the value of social media is like believing in the value of press releases. Although direct sales from a release to the press are hard to track and not exact, you still believe that they are valuable to do right? Because the story may get picked up and have a good effect. Think of your participation in social media the same way — it’s important to get involved in these real conversations. Not only is the conversation itself good, as it leads us to discover more about ourselves and the work, but  those conversations can lead to real results at the box office. -Ron

Like this post? Please share it with others who you think might benefit from it, via the links below, and subscribe via email or RSS to receive future updates. Ron Evans is an arts marketing consultant with Groupofminds.com in Sunnyvale, CA. He helps arts audiences increase their understanding, appreciation, and  frequency of attendance, through technology.

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I’ve been keeping my eye out to the way some of my favorite brands have been changing their messaging recently. Things of course are getting more filtered and specific to me, which is great, but a few companies are really standing out with messaging that is designed to make me feel good or take action. Take this screenshot from a recent email I received after flying with Southwest Airlines:

Nice Southwest! You didn't ask me for $!

Nice! They didn’t try to sell me another ticket right away. They are inviting me to write about my experience, but that doesn’t cost me anything but my time, and at the moment, I’m feeling pretty good about Southwest Airlines (and they just thanked me, so that might add to my decision to

write something good about them). Even though I may not choose to write anything in their travel guide, the thank you is nice and stands on its own.

Can the arts learn messaging tactics from Ebay?

Next up: Ebay. I recently purchased a piece of artwork on Ebay, and Ebay sent me this email message in an effort to get me to leave feedback for the seller of the item:

A powerful message from Ebay!

Whoa! “You have feedback you need to leave” is not kidding around. They are tapping into a lot of things there. I need to leave feedback. It is my responsibility as a good “ebayer.” If I don’t, I’ll be a bad person. It is something I NEED to do. Then they soften it up by saying “Be an Ebay Star — Leave Feedback!” Ok. All I have to do to have Ebay like me is to write feedback. I’ll redeem my irresponsible, dark-side-leaning self, and come back into the light!

This is powerful stuff. This message went through a bunch of research to be created, I have no doubt. It’s a great message for action. Minus one point for using the word “click” as a command to go somewhere. Personally, I really hate “click” and especially “click here” — that’s why we have underlined links, so you’ll know where to click. But I digress. Ebay wins major messaging points for avoiding a wishy-washy message, and for tapping into some primal emotions for right and wrong.

You’ve just experienced it, are you ready for more?

Finally, I recently did an arts marketing webinar with a friend who was using a piece of webinar software from Glance.net. Like most webinar software, it allows you to share your screen to take your participants on a tour, run a powerpoint session, etc. What struck me was the message I saw when I ended the conference:

At a glance, Glance's messaging looks great!

The software was smart enough to know that I was not the person running the webinar software (and was therefore a participant who might be interested in paying for an account) and the messaging is designed to have me realize that “Wow, that WAS really easy to do. This Glance.net thing might be a good choice for webinars.” I liked this, because it was a surprise to see, and the software WAS really easy to use. They are tooting their own horn, but in a way that is real, with a real experience to back it up.

So how does this play out for the arts?

Many times, I see arts marketing messages that don’t take a stand that sells the benefits and defends the value. We should be telling people WHY they should attend our performance, not just sending an ad with dates/times/prices. If the performance is spectacular, we should be parading that fact proudly to all — “Aren’t you glad you were a part of THAT!” — why not? Let’s ask people for action and tap into who they are as people. “How long has it been since you gave support to the arts and saw a good play?” We are all creating wonderful work that we are proud of. Let’s not be afraid to celebrate and champion it in our messaging.

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Get your logins. Store them safely. Celebrate!

Reading time: 10 minutes

Every day is a holiday to somebody. What’s one more to add to the list? Let me give you a little background.

Often, I work with clients who have previously had a volunteer run some important part of their arts marketing arsenal — usually their website, or their email marketing. In many cases, the volunteer is a friend or family member connected to a board member, and the organization is drawn to the promise of free technical help. “My brother is a web developer; let me see if I can talk him into running our website for us!”

The concept of free service

The concept of free service because of a good connection is incredibly attractive to some arts groups where money is especially tight. And sometimes it works out really well for a long time. But it can also easily lead to disaster.

When the board member leaves the board, often the strength of the volunteer connection leaves too. Oh, that free web developer can stick around for awhile, but in many cases the response time to get something updated gets longer and longer. Finally it starts to damage the organization’s ability to manipulate their own marketing information, such as being able to update the website, send out the email, etc. And in the worst cases, your volunteer website updater just disappears into thin air, taking your logins and passwords with them. That’s bad. But it is not as rare as you might think — I’ve now worked with four clients who have had it happen to them. The most recent two needed to register totally new domain names and set up brand new websites at considerable expense, because they couldn’t get access from their previous web developer.

Volunteering isn’t a bad thing. Many arts groups wouldn’t be able to get by if they didn’t use volunteers to get things done. But volunteers need to be managed, and they shouldn’t ever have access to things we don’t have access to ourselves. And that means access to all of your login information to your website, Facebook/Twitter, email marketing software, etc., or what I call “the keys to the kingdom.”

If they have passwords, you should know them too — they should be stored in a word document somewhere and marked “to be used in the case that our web developer disappears.” How do you get this information if you don’t already have it? Simple: ask your developer. But do so carefully.

How to get the logins

Now, a lot of developers are a little paranoid about logins and passwords. And you’ll need to be tactful when asking for this information, and do so in a way that does not make the developer feel like you want to can them. Everybody wants to feel useful, and if you put yourself in their shoes, without knowing the reason for the request, you might be a little nervous too.

The easiest way to get this info is to ask for a “check in meeting” with them. First, compliment them on how much they’ve helped your organization, and mention that things are going great, and that you hope they’ll be able to continue to help your organization for a very long time. Then, tell them that the board is going through a process of doing a record keeping/information inventory, and they would like a document with all login information, passwords, urls, etc. so in the *knock on wood* case that something were to happen to any staff member who holds key information, the organization could continue with its work. Then say “Even though it’s a little bit of a hassle for us to gather this info together, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a reasonable and smart request.” That last part is important to gain agreement, as nobody wants to be thought of as unreasonable. Then, set a date that the information is due by, get their agreement, tell them that you’ll be updating the document every 6 months, and finish off with another compliment on their work. Finally, have the info that has been provided to you examined by a different  technology friend of yours, to make sure everything you need is there.

How else can you protect your access?

Potential problems don’t just come from the web developer side of things; the arts organization needs to think in advance and do its part too. For example, make sure that your website isn’t hosted by the volunteer web developer. It should be hosted with a reliable 3rd-party company such as dreamhost.com or mediatemple.com (those are just two examples of many), so that a potential problem with your volunteer doesn’t mean a problem with your web hosting. As you make technology decisions, ask yourself “Will I be relying on only this individual to gain access, or could someone else get access if I needed them to?”

Any reputable web developer or “tech person” won’t hold on to your information. It isn’t theirs — it’s yours. They should only be acting as a steward of your data, making updates as needed. If they balk, find out why, and try to talk to them. It’s always easier to blame the request on somebody else (such as your board) so that you don’t get into a shooting match. But if they won’t give it up, you’ve already got a problem, and it’s better to know about it now than later.

At that point, you should try to get the original board member involved and see if they can come to your rescue to help the situation. But if you follow the outline of the conversation above, you should be able to get all the important info you need without causing any problems, and you’ll still have your volunteer working with you.

But it’s not just for the “problem people”

“Ahh but our tech volunteer is fabulous… he/she would never disappear like that.” Great! In most cases, that will be the case.  Then please consider getting this information from them simply a form of digital insurance. Something you know you’ve planned for, even though it may never happen. And this is no-cost insurance — the very best kind!

Personally I think that volunteers should be only used in situations where the volunteer could be easily replaced with somebody else. The very nature of volunteers is that they are more flexible than an employee, but they don’t have a paycheck governing their behavior or trustworthiness. I’m not trying to put down volunteers. Love them, thank them, count on them, but please don’t risk having them be the only ones who can do “that one thing,” when that one thing can break your organization. Most likely, you now have and will continue to have a great, positive working relationship with your technical person, and this article shouldn’t cast a shadow on that. Just have your info stored for safe keeping!

Spread the word!

So, to help spread the word that arts organizations should walk through this process and recapture access to their own login information, I am declaring this Thursday, September 24th, “National Know Your Arts Marketing Logins Day.” On this day, across the land, I want arts groups everywhere to open their email, and contact their tech helper to get this information. Store it for safe keeping in a couple of places and/or share it with another staff member in your organization for redundancy. What will take your 5 minutes to do could help spare you weeks of lost time, ticket sales, and happiness.

So spread the word! This Thursday is “National Know Your Arts Marketing Logins Day.” Will you celebrate with us? (And if you’re reading this after Thursday, please just go and gather the info now!)

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Only follow folks who post content you're interested in.

I usually write from the perspective of helping arts organizations in a promotional aspect, and I wanted to change lanes for a moment and talk about Twitter use by arts administrators as individuals who may be struggling with “why.”

“Why do I want to use Twitter?”

“What’s the point of knowing what somebody had for lunch? I really don’t care.”

“I followed everybody and now I can’t handle all the tweets.” (Or “twits,” perhaps if you’re referring the the people who tweet stupid things.)

To help answer these questions and more, I’m going to tell you a bit about how I use Twitter. Now, I’m coming from the perspective of using Twitter as a professional and artistic resource, not just another place to gab. More on that below.

1. Use Twitter as a human filter.

Many of you are I’m sure aware of Google Alerts, which is a service by Google that will deliver content via email to you, based on the keywords you select. I use Google Alerts to bring me all sorts of information. As an example, Google sends me alerts based on the keyword “Arts Marketing.” Most of the time, what is sent to me as something to do with the arts. But sometimes, Google does its best and sends me webpages about “Martial Arts Marketing” since it contains the keywords I told it to look for. That’s a little annoying, and I’m sure I could enter more information into Google to get it to subtract “martial” from any searches, but the point is, Google is programmatic and brings back literal results without any consideration to how valuable it will really be to me. Kung-fu is great, but not in my inbox when I was looking for something else.

My Twitter friends however, are smart. They come across a ton of interesting arts articles each day, they scan them, and then tweet about them on Twitter to spread the word. I do the same. Suddenly, I have a “human search engine network” of people that only pass along the really cool arts stuff that is exactly what I am looking for. That saves me time sorting through stuff that doesn’t matter, and fosters collaboration.

But what if your friends are tweeting things you’re not interested in? That’s simple.

2. Only follow people that post content you’re interested in.

The idea that you should follow everybody that follows you on Twitter is just a recipe for information overload. I’m sure you’ve seen people with 15000 followers, who are following 15000 people. How can you realistically keep track of the constant updates of 15000 people? It’s not possible and you shouldn’t waste your time trying it. I’ve always thought its a little rude actually — since I know the person is following 15000 folks, how important are my individual posts to them? Not very. So, follow those people who provide information you’re interested in most of the time, so that you can really use Twitter as a resource for information.

3. 90% of your posts should be information that is useful to those that follow you.

The lunch updates, the random quotes, the posts that don’t mean anything — just don’t post them. People follow other people for useful information, and I ruthlessly unfollow people who don’t post useful content or who I’m not personally connected to. On the flip side, I try to make each one of my Twitter posts link to an interesting article, useful website, great statistic or other resource that arts folks will find helpful. Cut the noise — make your posts helpful, and don’t follow folks who’s posts aren’t helpful to you.

4. Only use about 120 characters in each post, which leaves room for others to retweet.

Twitter gives you 140 characters, which I know is short. But for people to be able to pass your tweet on to their networks, they need to be able to “quote the source” and mention @groupofminds or @yourname or whatever as the originator of the tweet. If you use all of the available space for your message, there won’t be room for them to add their footnote. This drastically reduces the viral-marketing aspect of your tweets. Just use the Twitter character counter to tell you when you’ve used up 120 characters, and leave the rest.

5. Use a url shortener.

I’d like to hug the person who invented url shortners — you may have heard of one of the most popular: http://tinyurl.com. A url shortener is just that — it takes a really long url such as:

http://groupofminds.com/articles/arts-marketing/dear-facebook-want-a-new-revenue-stream-that-will-help-arts-marketing/685

and makes a shortcut to it that lives permanently on the web, that looks something like:

http://tinyurl.com/n4s7lw

because a shorter url means fewer characters used in Twitter. Pretty smart eh? There are many url shortening sites; a quick search of Google will reveal a bunch of them.

Twitter can be extremely useful to arts administrators, as a way to keep up with people they respect in the field, and as a source of knowledge about trends in the arts. With these simple rules of the road, you’ll be able to tame the Twitter information overload beast, and really get to using the system for the elegant communication it was designed to create.

Ron

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(Author’s note: this is an unreleased post from February 2009, which I’ve recently updated due to Zoomerang making some good changes to their website [good job Zoomerang!]. The process is a good exploration of user interface design consultations we do).

Do you have an easy-to-navigate arts website?

What information can we glean for our arts websites from the homepages of commercial companies? Turns out, quite a bit. Let’s look at online survey providers Zoomerang and Survey Monkey as examples. It’s a no-brainer that your website should be easy to navigate. People should be able to find the information they need, with a minimum number of clicks, and there should be as few things to steal my attention away as possible. No annoying ads (are you really making any money with google ads on your site? If not, take them down), no “website hosted by” badges, etc. Just the facts about your organization ma’am. But as I’ll show you in this article using Zoomerang and Survey Monkey as examples, we need to go deeper to make sure we’re displaying what are patrons are looking for right away.

I needed to do some research on online survey capabilities for one of our clients, an ethnic dance festival. I know that Zoomerang and Survey Monkey are the Coke and Pepsi of the online survey world, and for this round, I just needed to know:

• How much does using the service cost  for how long
• Does the service offer secure, encrypted surveys via SSL (https:// style), and how much was that in addition to the regular cost.

Pretty simple laundry list. Before I go into this article in detail, just a note to say that I have no real affiliation with either Zoomerang or Survey Monkey, other than I have used both of their products in the past for various reasons, and found them both to be robust, capable, online survey programs. I do have an acquaintance at Zoomerang that I know through a previous position, and at one time we discussed some potential contract work related to Zoomerang, but I didn’t end up doing any work for them.

I took a look at SurveyMonkey first:

Survey Monkey's homepage as of 2-15-09

I saw the pricing button right away, and after clicking on that, I was able to see that my client could pay for a couple months of service and that would work for them.

Survey Monkey's pricing page

Survey Monkey didn’t have anything on the homepage about SSL being a feature, but they did have a “need help” in the upper right corner, and so I clicked it and got a search area. I typed in SSL and got the response “What is SSL encryption and what level do you offer?” where I found that I could add it for $9.95 a month. That’s all the info I needed.

When I went to Zoomerang, I searched the homepage, but couldn’t see any clear area to go to see pricing information:

Zoomerang's homepage as of 2-15-09

So I clicked on “online surveys” thinking I would get more information (which was a little odd because I originally thought that online surveys is all that Zoomerang offers, but that is not the case it seems). On that page I could see some pricing information, but it was written in such a way that I couldn’t tell for sure if I needed to sign up for a whole year at a time, or if I could just pay monthly:

Zoomerang's "online surveys" page

One might be tempted by the multiple “sign up now” and “use it free” buttons, but we all know that the free version isn’t going to have everything the paid version does. We want to know what those differences are before we sign up for anything. SurveyMonkey gave us a nice chart, but I don’t see an obvious chart on Zoomerang.

I also got stopped up for a minute considering the links on the left for “Event Planning,” “For Business,” “Non-profit,” etc. It seems that Zoomerang wants me to self-identify with one of these categories, perhaps to offer me a special deal. But as a user, let’s say I’m a small theatre company. I’m a non-profit, so that fits. But aren’t I also a business too? And if I’m doing a survey about an upcoming event, does that mean that I am “event planning”? Author Barry Schwartz (watch him in this video) in his book “The Paradox of Choice” says that when people are presented with too many options, they become paralyzed to taking any step. One of the reasons they become paralyzed is that they are unsure if they will make the “wrong” choice and miss out on the “best” option.

I never did find any search on Zoomerang that allowed me to look for SSL as an option, or any feature page that mentioned it. But I didn’t look for more than a minute or so. That’s about all the time you can ask somebody to search for something on your site.

How does an easy to navigate site impact your arts group’s website?

What information are people looking for on your arts website? And how is that information being displayed to the user in a useful way? If you are a presenting organization, people are probably looking for an easy way to see how much tickets cost (including fees, people don’t like surprises). Do you list the ticket prices with associated fees right on the page for your event? Or do you just have the user find out the actual costs once they start to buy a ticket in the checkout process? Displaying the former will lead to more people doing the latter.

Are there useless choices on your arts website, that clutter things up and increase my choices to click, without helping me to buy a ticket or find the info I need? Remove them. Google ads that aren’t bringing in any money? Remove them. Links to individual past shows on your homepage? Put them on a separate page called “Our Past Shows” and link to it from the homepage.  Are there directions to get to your location as a link from the homepage, or are the buried under a “contact us” page? I shouldn’t need to contact you to ask for directions on how to get to your theater, so why would I expect to find that information under the “contact us” page?

It’s these sorts of things that when done right, give patrons the subconscious idea that you have a “good” website. They are able to find what they need quickly and easily, with a minimum of thought. “Bad” websites “make you think” as you hunt to find the information. Remove anything that is unneeded and dilutes my choices. Allow me to search your site for a keyword I may be looking for so I can find the information. And put things on pages where I expect to find them (such as finding directions on a page called “directions” and not on “contact us”).

Ultimately, it was my recommendation to the client that they use SurveyMonkey, because I was able to find the information I needed quickly, and that gave me the confidence that using their system would be just as easy for the client. Don’t get me wrong, Zoomerang is a great system, but their website could use improvement to the ease of getting the information I’m looking for.

How does your arts website stack up as far as ease of use? Want to have it evaluated? Email us and we’ll take a look. We may even feature it on an upcoming blogpost!

UPDATE — August 25, 2009

Zoomerang has made a few changes for the better to their homepage design:

Zoomerang has made changes to their homepage -- you can find pricing easier now.

They’ve reduced the clutter, added an attractive face, and most importantly, included a choice to get to the pricing information quickly. This is a great improvement. There still is no search capability that I can see, and under the “Online surveys” tab at the top they still have the difficult to understand list of the surveys they have for different groups (nonprofit, business, etc.) but I think what they’ve done in this round is a good step towards a more friendly and easy to use site. Keep it coming Zoomerang!

What incremental change for the better can you make to your site? Have us review your web presence and tell you simple, low-cost user interface improvements. Contact us to have us take a look.

Ron

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We estimate roughly 10% of your arts audience is playing around with Twitter.

By now, you know about Twitter. You can’t avoid it — the mainstream media has picked up the love affair and is spreading the Twitter love far and wide. I recently did a bit of analysis on the Twitter account saturation in the email subscribers a few of our clients, and the results were intriguing.

I scanned the email address databases of five of my arts clients, looking for people who were in their email database, who also had a Twitter account. The five arts organizations were a variety of genres and budget sizes from small to large, so it was interesting to see the same statistics across the board.

Twitter statistics

• 10% of the email subscribers had a Twitter account associated with their email address.
• Roughly 1/2 of those patrons with Twitter accounts had not uploaded a picture to use as their Twitter avatar.

I interpret the latter to mean that those people who have not uploaded a picture are still in the “sampling Twitter” phase — just logging in and “lurking” around trying to figure it all out. That’s actually good — we want our audiences to be playing with the new tools. But I don’t count these folks as being “power players” yet, as they probably won’t be following a lot of people or participating to any great degree until they decide if they want to fully get on the bus, which I measure by the action of them uploading an image of themselves. That action is sort of “staking a claim” on your own little corner of Twitter, and letting everybody know you’re ready to play.

Twitter use by all arts organizations?

So, if you’re ok with making the jump to roughly apply the above data to all arts organizations, Twitter campaigns currently reach about 5% of your existing audiences who are active Twitter users. That’s pretty low currently, but it’s growing rapidly, and you should participate and continue to help it grow, as more and more focus is moving towards up-to-the-minute feedback and reviews after a performance for example.  Also, the ability to acquire new Twitter followers through friends of current followers IS a powerful reason to keep using Twitter, along with the generally younger audience base that comes with Twitter. But it is important to remember that “recently new” communication tools like email marketing are still the workhorses of arts marketing, reaching a much higher percentage of your arts patrons, so you definitely don’t want to slack on the “tried and true.”

I’m sure the above stats are changing as time marches on. Those 5% that are just experimenting right now may jump on board, and new folks will take their place experimenting. In a year, I expect more than 10% of arts audiences to be “actively” using Twitter (with their image uploaded) and a new 10% will be in the experimentation stage. We’re planning to repeat the same experiment in a year with these five clients, to see how the numbers changed. If you have any stats of your own on Twitter saturation in your arts audiences, please leave a comment and let us know. Also, groupofminds is on Twitter, so if you’re not currently a follower and would like to see more of the in-the-moment posts, please follow us.

Ron

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