We hope this year’s Ticketsolve Forum’s in London and Dublin were inspiring - we thought the content and speakers were really outstanding. We're delighted that so many arts industry professionals could attend, but we know times are busy! So we wanted to give you a taste of one really stand out talk from the London Forum.
Katy Raines is regarded as one of the UK’s leading consultants on CRM and Segmentation for the Arts, and she loves data like us - so it was a no brainer for us to invite her to talk about a subject near and dear to her heart - and ours - segmentation.
Segmentation is not new in marketing or arts marketing. But it is a complex area and is more relevant now than ever. Segmenting allows you to create groups within your audiences that have shared traits. Each segment might have a primary hallmark - something that defines them - that you can then use to create meaningful engagement.
The most common way to segment audiences is often demographic or genre-based.
As Katy explained it is important to split audience segmentation from population segmentation. That is, audience segmentation focuses on the audiences that represent your customers - population segmentation is all others.
Katy took us through how to really look at your audience development priorities. The real insight here is understanding cost (effort plus actual money) and time as it relates to the different types of your audience segments.
In the picture above you can see that the low hanging fruit here is building loyalty with existing customers, but if we look deeper you can another area you can address is deepening engagement with existing customers. Still, in both instances we are focused on existing customers.
Why Segment?
The truth is that not all of your customers are valuable. And there is a cost to going after different types of customers. Add to that the fact that not all customers need the same thing - you can begin to understand why segmenting is really critical.
We need to shift our thinking from sending everyone everything to sending different audiences different things - ultimately that means that you are sending audiences fewer things but more relevant things.
Personalised Marketing is Where it is At!
Another reason to really take a hard look at your segmentation strategy is that personalised marketing is on the rise. The combination of digital marketing and data has led more and more organisations to deliver one-on-one marketing strategies and communications.
The benefit here is that your marketing matches the needs and expectations of customers - ultimately delivering what your customer wants, lowering your costs and driving sales.
Personalised marketing is not new. We've all experienced it from personalised ads in online supermarkets, Amazon showcasing items and offers related to your recent search, or targetted emails. In all likelihood, you are doing some form of personalised targetted marketing already.
Getting More From Segmentation
What we loved about this talk is that it really delved into the depths of segmentation and how to look at your segmentation differently, so you can reduce costs and better target your communications to the relevant audiences, which in turn leads to better sales overall.
As Katy explained, it is important to look at segments and how they relate to your specific venue or arts organisation. So rather than having straight genre-based segments you need to also look at demographic data as well as other data to build a fuller picture of your segments.
So rather than straight genre-based segments:
- Comedy
- Dance
- Drama
- Children’s
Instead, you might have:
- Classical (Classic Drama, Classical Music, Opera, Ballet, Fine Art)
- Contemporary (Dance, New Writing, Physical Theatre,
- Family (Panto, Children's Shows, Workshops)
- Mainstream (Rock and Pop, Comedy, Musicals
Interestingly, as Katy pointed out 80-90% of people stick to their lane! But as you can see you can really target each segment with a strong, clear message.
Katy also shared some interesting research around segmentation and showed us that looking at differences between segments such as leisure pursuits and motivation to attend can all help in developing targetted marketing strategies and tactics.
Katy finished up with helping us all understand that good segmentation should:
- Segment all your audiences
- Simple to understand
- Simple to implement
- Can be measured
- Can be refined as you learn
Whether you are just starting out with segmentation or a segmentation expert, our fantastic Customer Success Team is here to help you get into your data and get better segmenting. Give Aoife or Sarah a shout to get started with the Customer Success Team and get more from your segmentation!
Big thank you to Katy Raines for her great presentation! Find out more about Katy and Indigo Consulting here.
Also a big thank you to Project Arts Centre and Leicester Square Theatre for hosting the Ticketsolve Forums this year!
