Arts and Heritage – Capturing the visitor!

Approaching, maintaining and managing audiences is something that performing arts organisations know a lot about. Katy Raines and Sarah Gee explain how organisations that have traditionally captured very little data from their attenders can develop better long-term customer relationships.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a hot topic in the performing arts at the moment. It provides a valuable framework for managing relationships with customers, changing an organisations emphasis from acquiring new customers to concentrating much of its resources on retaining existing ones, saving money in the process. It can also deliver a visitor base that understands and appreciates your work more over time  people who are more willing to take artistic risks, to tell or bring friends, and to become engaged advocates for your organisation. As frequent ticket-buyers are often the same people who will support your company through a friends scheme or individual giving campaign, it is desirable to co-ordinate marketing, membership and fundraising communications to ensure that youre maximising income from each customer. The crucial thing in CRM is knowing who to approach about what, so that it is meaningful, appropriate and relevant.

For organisations that do little, if any, advance ticket booking, the question of how to track customer behaviour through attendance is a difficult one, but there are some clear benefits of doing so:

– More information about what and when people are attending will make direct communication with them more relevant, and reduce marketing costs.
– Visitor surveys could be scaled down, as organisations would already have a wealth of information about who was attending.
– Large numbers of good prospects are generated for the fundraising campaigns, since we know that people who come more frequently are more likely to give larger amounts.

Various techniques can be used to gather the all-important customer data. A voluntary, free membership scheme, which encourages visitors to join and give their personal data and gallery preferences is one. Customers can be issued with a card and encouraged to swipe it each time they visit an exhibition or make a purchase from the shop or café. Each interaction (including a free visit) accrues points, which can later be redeemed for other benefits, such as free catalogues and refreshments. In addition, members can be invited to special events, depending on their preferences  such as previews, or behind the scenes events. The free membership scheme acts as the point of data capture and unlocks the possibility of tracking frequency of attendance, in order then to drive the fundraising opportunities. It is the mechanism by which the organisation can begin to build a relationship with its visitors based on their frequency and preferences.

Katy Raines and Sarah Gee are consultants for DixonRaines Ltd. t: 07703 257701
w: http://www.dixonraines.com

Tyne & Wear Museums (TWM) is a major regional museum and gallery service comprising 11 venues and collections across five local authorities in Tyne & Wear in north-east England. TWM welcomes 1.6m visitors each year, but as the vast majority of the museums operate a free, un-ticketed access policy, little was known about each of those visitors. The museums had a good track record in attracting new visitors but needed a strategy to encourage customers to return. And so efforts began to set up one centralised database to manage all relationships with customers. This is now nearly complete and the team at TWM are already seeing a difference in their ability to streamline and target their communications more effectively, along with greater opportunities for individual fundraising. In future the CRM tool will help with centralised lists for exhibition openings, a new online shop with customer purchase information being linked back to customers records, an e-bulletin and linking feedback to customer records. The biggest impact has been in time saved by staff, and this is expected to continue as the systems are refined. Staff even commented on the process being a good way for them to learn about each others approaches to their work, which has led to more cross-organisational working and fewer departmental silos.