Data fuels Audience Development at the Actors Theatre of Louisville
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Many organizations track data on pricing, audience retention, and audience response to different types of artistic programming. But what happens when an organization looks at these categories together, holistically? That’s what Actors Theatre of Louisville did. What they found led them to begin to manage demand, cultivate audiences, and approach the strategic planning process in a completely new ways. This is a story about how data can re-focus an organization around audiences, and how Actors Theatre of Louisville is acting on that data. Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein and Jim DeGood of TRG Arts gave this presentation at the 2015 Theatre Communications Group, detailing how Actors Theatre of Louisville has translated data findings into a plan, how leadership is re-aligning around data and audience loyalty, and some initial results from their efforts. You’ll learn: – How pricing data revealed opportunities for revenue growth -- About a new data-based approach to predict audience behavior based on artistic programming -- Which data points told ATL the most about who its audience is and how that informed strategic planning – Simple strategies for loyalty that you can begin implementing at your own organization
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Data fuels Audience Development at the Actors Theatre of Louisville
- 1. DATA FUELS AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT at the Actors Theatre of Louisville Jennifer Bielstein Managing Director Actors Theatre of Louisville Copyright © 2015 TRG Arts All Rights Reserved Jim DeGood Director of Client Services TRG Arts
- 2. donation data ticketing data Good fences don’t make good data
- 3. Good fences don’t make good data Pricing metrics Retention metrics Audience/ artistic metrics Demographic data
- 4. • How pricing data revealed opportunities for revenue growth • Predicting audience behavior based on artistic programming • Which data points told Actors Theatre of Louisville the most about its audience • Simple strategies for loyalty that you can implement now Today
- 5. Why use data to inform institutional change?
- 6. Key Loyalty Findings at Actors STB Multi transactions Donor Sub Advocate Major donor SUBs declined by 31% over study period Lower-level annual fund recovering Broken steps in loyalty continuum Major donors compensating for declines elsewhere BF Series recent STB decline; High Pops volume
- 7. Photo: Gavin Brogan (CC BY 2.0) What gets measured gets managed
- 8. Benchmarking Patron Data Modeling Programmatic and Market Opportunity Analysis
- 9. Opportunities for growth in pricing
- 12. political reactive Pricing is emotional Data makes emotional decisions logical.
- 13. Pricing should drive patron behavior.
- 15. Jose Leon and Max Monnig in The Glory of the World. Photo by Bill Brymer.
- 16. Ensemble of A Christmas Carol. Photo by Bill Brymer.
- 17. Ali Burch and Randolph Cutis in Dracula. Photo by Bill Brymer.
- 19. Proposed Single Ticket Prices Current Avg Price Price Jump Proposed Price +/- Change Price Jump Premium 52$ 52$ 7$ Prime 41.00$ 45$ 4$ Single Tickets Bingham – Pops Series: Dracula Top price on Halloween: $91
- 20. Impact: Higher Revenues, Units TRG pricing, scale-of-house, and inventory management recommendations yield 36% growth $- $200,000 $400,000 $600,000 $800,000 $1,000,000 $1,200,000 $1,400,000 19,000 20,000 21,000 22,000 23,000 24,000 25,000 26,000 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Revenue Units Single Tickets vs. Revenue Dracula and A Christmas Carol Only Single Ticket and Group Units Single Ticket and Group Revenues
- 21. Predicting audience behavior based on artistic programming
- 22. Entry-Level Tryer Participation Genres reveal affinity patterns within overall loyalty Family/ Holiday 63% HH $30 avg/HH Shakespeare 9% HH $10 avg/HH Premiere 21% HH $22 avg/HH Comedy 20% HH $21 avg/HH
- 23. Genre Avg 57% 47% 59% 18% 62% 47% 72% 39% Shakespeare 6,448 71% 66% 66% 79% 74% 76% ############ 71% 54% Premiere 12,692 44% 50% 51% 52% 49% ########## 18% 20% 15% Musical 8,834 56% 60% 64% 67% ######### Family/Holiday 32,799 18% 21% 17% ############# 35% Drama 9,391 52% 64% ######### 61% 61% 69% 46% 61% 50% Comedy 12,111 44% ########## 50% 56% 44% 52% Musical Premiere Shakespeare Adaptation 9,093 ########## 58% 54% 66% 54% Total HHs Adaptation Comedy Drama Family/Holiday What Genres Have Crossover? Crossover helps in identifying the next best offer
- 24. Who is the audience? Do you know your patrons?
- 25. Income Higher income levels than U.S. average and TCG peers Source: The Urban Institute
- 26. Revenue Opportunity Undermined by Low Per Caps Sources: TCG Theatre Facts, ATL Baseline Assessment: FY14 $36.76 6,194 SUBs $27.80 7,764 SUBs $37.27 40,090 STBs $27.60 59,604 STBs
- 27. Where Do Patrons Fall? Actors Theatre statistics National Actors Theatre .5-2% HH 20-40% Revenue 5-10% HH 13-38% Revenue 90-95% HH 38-66% Revenue .4% HH 20.9% Revenue 4.3% HH 28.5% Revenue 95.2% HH 50.6% Revenue
- 28. Fast Facts Buyer # of HHs 2,211 % of Total HHs 4.3% % of Total Revenue 28.5% % of PLI Group HHs Donor 31.5% Subscriber 96.9% Flex 7.1% Single Ticket Buyer 93.7% Average Annual HH Spend Donor $232 Subscriber $364 Flex $144 Single Ticket Buyer $34 Average Frequency (Years) Donor 2.9 Subscriber 4.7 Flex 3.2 Single Ticket Buyer 4 % of HHs with Recent Activity Donor 23.4% Subscriber 94.2% Flex 5.0% Single Ticket Buyer 79.5% What Makes a Buyer? Loyal ticket buyers ready to be cultivated into donors High rates of SUB, STB; 31.5% contribute
- 29. Clear loyalty path for Actors Theatre EXPENSES ROI
- 30. What you can do The Art of the Upgrade
- 31. Photo by Tobias Schlitt (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Where’s your leaky bucket?
- 32. More retention + lower attrition = GROWTH New-to-file single ticket buyer attrition rate Same-season multi single ticket buyers
- 34. Photo by Todd Huffman via flickr (CC BY 2.0) First: Data
- 36. Photo by Tobias Schlitt (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) How? Upgrades every patron’s right next step
- 37. What’s an upgrade? Action Next Step Buy a ticket Buy a small subscription or membership Renewing subscriber or member Buy another ticket Buy a full series subscription or larger membership Add on donation or events
- 39. DATA FUELS AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT at the Actors Theatre of Louisville Jennifer Bielstein Managing Director Actors Theatre of Louisville Copyright © 2015 TRG Arts All Rights Reserved Jim DeGood Director of Client Service TRG Arts
Notas del editor
- Many organizations track data on pricing, audience retention, and audience response to different types of artistic programming. But what happens when an organization looks at these categories together, holistically? That’s what Actors Theatre of Louisville did. What they found led them to begin to manage demand, cultivate audiences, and approach the strategic planning process in a completely new ways. This is a story about how data can re-focus an organization around audiences, and how Actors Theatre of Louisville is acting on that data. Join Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein and Jim DeGood of TRG Arts to learn how Actors Theatre of Louisville has translated data findings into a plan, how leadership is re-aligning around data and audience loyalty, and some initial results from their efforts. You’ll learn: – How pricing data revealed opportunities for revenue growth -- About a new data-based approach to predict audience behavior based on artistic programming -- Which data points told ATL the most about who its audience is and how that informed strategic planning – Simple strategies for loyalty that you can begin implementing at your own organization
- Arts organizations live in separate departments, and sometimes separate databases. We’re all familiar with the problems that separate databases
- Many organizations track data on pricing, audience retention, and audience response to different types of artistic programming. But what happens when an organization looks at these categories together, holistically?
- Jim: You thought about these things and where undergoing a start planning process and staff transition. Why use an outside firm, why use DATA to inform change? Jennifer: Understand marketplace and place in industry.
- Jim: Business context: Observations during baseline assessment. This is the context Jennifer and and ATL were dealing with – likely why they tapped TRG to help them understand their current situation and their options for growth.
- Jim
- Jim: Benchmarking-Baseline Actors Theatre results/activities 2. Patron Modeling A-B-T Analysis, Key Metrics, Loyalty Math 3. Programmatic Analysis, Market Opportunity
- Jim: The first opportunities identified were those in pricing. Jennifer, could you talk about how pricing decisions were made before ATL shifted focus to data-driven, integrated strategies?
- Jim: we often see organizational structures that operate in silos. Marketing, Development, Ticketing, Finance, Artistic. As we previously mentioned, silos are sometimes reinforced by segregated data systems. Jennifer, how did this manifest at Actors Theatre? Jennifer: Siloes and decisions on how to manage inventory. Marketing and development needed to understand each’s influence on ticket inventory. Artistic might plan programs without thinking about order or curating of timing might help deepened engagement of audience they have and pathway of loyalty, and Jennifer was not involved in an integrated way either. The reporting structure of Box Office: not reporting to marketing Jim to spike: Why collaborate here?
- JIM We know pricing decision-making can be subject to emotional, political, and reactive forces within an organization – none of which can be denied, BUT… CLICK
- JIM None of which is productive, especially if STRATEGY is built on fear that your prices are too high or too low OR, worse yet, based on assumptions about what you believe patrons will or won’t do…. CLICK
- Jim: Pricing should drive patron behavior. Intuitively, most arts managers understand this rule. Too often, however, using price as a patron motivator gets lost in those emotional, political, and reactionary forces we just talked about. Jennifer: Reflect on how pricing was one of the first things addressed Reinforce that pricing decisions were based on gut instinct Talk about the Immersive multi-day process and plan. How much time wrestling with price point specifics. Talk about some assumptions you were making because there was not data on marketplace analysis.
- Jim and Jennifer riff here on being realistic about capacity: Discounting and papering the house. 46% of all tickets sold were discounted; now 26%. Set expectations on time and resources on revenue-generating activities.
- Jim and Jennifer riff here on being realistic about capacity: Discounting and papering the house. 46% of all tickets sold were discounted; now 26%. Set expectations on time and resources on revenue-generating activities.
- Jennifer: Revenue pacing meetings. What they look like at ATL , who’s there, what’s discussed. At first, difficult. Now, like clockwork Jim: talk about leadership; ask Jennifer how she’s focused the team and mitigates backslides…
- Jim: What the price was, what the price became. Jennifer: $91 ticket. Assumption that the audience was price-sensitive and discount-motivated. The increase was a data-informed risk that paid off.
- Jim: introduce results Jennifer: Talk about how early successes with pricing an revenue allow the team to feel confident about moving other aspects of work forward Pricing didn’t suppress single ticket unit sales – we grew single tickets to these two productions even despite the new pricing structure New lower discount rate, if we have the data point (previously 46%)
- About a new data-based approach to predict audience behavior based on artistic programming Jim: Jennifer, set the context. Artistic and data, do they play well together? Jennifer: There’s the assumption that artistic teams would be not be interested in this data. The sensitivity and approach to presenting the data was important (Jennifer, can you elaborate?) - We haven’t methodically used it moving forward, but it’s something keeping it in mind.
- When consultants come in or when the administration tries to talk to artistic about programming, that the recommendation is to do blockbusters. That’s NOT what the data says. Jim: Artistic goals vs. revenue goals Family – driver of new audiences and revenue Premiere – community continues to invest in and value. Least engaged are still engaged in premieres. Shakespearean work is less of a draw Jennifer – I’ll want to ask for your reactions, insights here. What was surprising? What did the data affirm? Jim: Jennifer, this is just a slice of the total programmatic analysis you and your team received. How will analysis like this inform your future planning?
- Jim: Jennifer, previous to your work with TRG, what would happen to a STB to a Comedy? Would they be marketed another comedy? Marketed the next chronological production? What if you had data that told you who’s more likely to attend what kind of performances? Use for follow-up offers.
- Jim: Which data points told ATL the most about who its audience is? How has that changed your perspective and informed strategic planning?
- Jennifer: As arts managers, we SUSPECT that our patrons are affluent. Even knowing, we want our tickets to be accessible. Now we know that 22% of audience earned under $50k. We always have entry-level price points, which we don’t dynamically price. What else can we do to optimize the revenue we earn on the earned income side to sustain our organization? Balancing act of preserving entry level prices for accessibility and acknowledging demand when we have it. We now know how our market compares with others…
- Jennifer: …and we know how our prices compare with other theatres, through per capita revenue. ATL is $10 below peers on per cap, and sell a higher volume of tickets. This data allows the team to be informed in revenue pacing meeting.
- Jim: Introduce ABT. Jennifer: Learning point for us—we’re good at getting people in the door, but not as good at retaining and upgrading. This finding has become a priority for us moving forward – keeping patrons engaged once they try us and continually enticing them to become ever more loyal.
- Jennifer: Buyers 93% buying tickets and 31% donate Previously, Development data and ticketing data lived in separate databases; TRG’s PLI jump-started the look at holistic patronage for ATL while we were going through a CRM conversion This look at Buyers struck Development immediately – the potential impact of 1,500 subscribers ready to make a gift And, it helps us understand what the initial ask might be – since the average gift for a donor in the Buyer category was $232, we knew not to ask for a first-time gift of $50 This analysis has inspired the entire ATL team to think about the next transaction – the next “ask” – we want the patron to consider
- Jim: The data work helped ATL map a pathway for loyalty, increasing ROI and driving down expenses.
- Jim (takes it from here) What can you do at your organization? This study illustrates the importance of loyalty and retention.
- Arts organizations under-retain. In other words, they’re often so focused on getting new audiences in that they forget that they need to keep them once they’ve got them. When you’re trying to build a sustainable organization which relies on engaged, fanatical audiences, this is really bad news. You’re going to end up spending all kinds of time and energy filling and re-filling a leaky bucket. When you start focusing on loyalty and retention, you can begin to focus on patching up the holes instead.
- A good way to think about loyalty is to compare arts organizations’ patron relationships to dating. It’s rather like a love story that goes like this: You meet a patron when they first come through your doors. What happens next can be a one night stand or a long, committed relationship. Together, you have a great first date—or a dud. You decide to call the next week to ask on a second date—or not. It all depends on what action you take to keep the romance going. We compare patron relationships to a romance because it IS a passion-based connection. It’s about a patron’s love for the art, and for the organization that presents the arts they love. Like any good relationship, its strength depends on LOYALTY. And..
- Your audience has already written the plot line for their love story with your organization. Every record tells an individual’s story of ticket-buying, subscription, membership, donation, and more. This, of course, is where good data collection, hygiene and keeping that data in a good system become absolutely critical. Your caretaking of data is vital to loyalty and therefore vital to the health of your patron relationship. Let’s talk about what we typically see in a patron record as the sparks fly and a patron love story develops. Change is hard. Change takes time. How do you know you’re on the right path? Data. [Photo by Todd Huffman http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddwick/2126909099/ ]
- We know that you can’t hurry love. Patrons progress in their relationship and that progression takes time. That is, in order to become a donor, patrons move through ticket buying and subscribing. Usually, in the performing arts, a patron isn’t going to donate without having seen a show, and more often, they will subscribe before they donate.
- There is an “upgrade” for every patron at every phase of their relationship with your organization. Not every patron will move in a linear fashion, but EVERY patron has a right next step—the thing that you’re most likely to get them to do with you. Let’s look at some examples.
- There is an upgrade for every patron at every phase of their relationship with your organization. Here are just a few examples of upgrading. CLICK If I’ve just bought a ticket or an admission to your exhibit, the next step is to get me back again – to buy another ticket. CLICK If I’ve attended multiple times through several ticket purchases or a flexible subscription or entry level membership, my next step in our relationship may be a full series subscription or a higher level membership package CLICK By the time I’ve been a subscriber or member for a couple of seasons, I’m ready for deeper engagement – we’re going steady now –ask me to add on a donation, or a ticket to a special performance, exhibit or Gala. CLICK
- Upselling is everyone’s job. Each department can look at the same data in your patron histories. Each department has a slightly different role to play – whether that role is strategic like planning a campaign or tactical like speaking with patrons. Every department has a turn at leading, following and….sometimes….getting out of the way. Our point here is that it’s everyone’s job to develop more loyal patrons. And loyal patrons are the key to sustained, sustaining revenue and growth. Next step at Actors Theatre: Patron Pacing Meetings, with upgrades at the center!
- Many organizations track data on pricing, audience retention, and audience response to different types of artistic programming. But what happens when an organization looks at these categories together, holistically? That’s what Actors Theatre of Louisville did. What they found led them to begin to manage demand, cultivate audiences, and approach the strategic planning process in a completely new ways. This is a story about how data can re-focus an organization around audiences, and how Actors Theatre of Louisville is acting on that data. Join Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein and Jim DeGood of TRG Arts to learn how Actors Theatre of Louisville has translated data findings into a plan, how leadership is re-aligning around data and audience loyalty, and some initial results from their efforts. You’ll learn: – How pricing data revealed opportunities for revenue growth -- About a new data-based approach to predict audience behavior based on artistic programming -- Which data points told ATL the most about who its audience is and how that informed strategic planning – Simple strategies for loyalty that you can begin implementing at your own organization