Socio-demographic, consumer, contact or behavioral data... The data you can collect to get to know your audiences is vast and invaluable. It enables you to considerably improve your relationship with them. And that's only if you're equipped with effective tools in line with your marketing objectives and current legislation on data processing.
And there's no shortage of tools to choose from! Whether it's an emailing system, ticketing software, CRM or data-marketing platform, the range of solutions that enable you to manipulate data is vast. Before making your choice, you need to understand what each of them can do. In this article, we'll help you get a clearer picture of which tool is best suited to your needs.
In the beginning : your needs
Before you start looking at a digital solution, it's a good idea to list the needs that might lead you to choose one solution over another. What are your objectives and how will you be able to measure the effectiveness of your CRM once it's up and running?
When we put this question to professionals in the events, cultural and sports sectors, we find 3 main types of need.
THE FIRST NEED: TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
But not intuitively, by taking a look around your venues and chatting to the regulars! In a structured way, by carrying out analyses based on the data collected when audiences come into contact with you. Knowing your audience means knowing more about the buying habits of a particular age group, defining which type of audience comes to see a specific show, or being able to easily consult the purchase and relationship history of a particular contact.
Know your audience with Arenametrix
You need to communicate effectively with your customers and prospects via your own communication tools. Not by sending out a general newsletter to the same people every month, but by adapting your messages, your delivery frequency and your formats to your audience's preferences. Or by automating certain messages (welcome mails, pre- or post-event mails) to deepen your relationship with your audience.
And once again, not by implementing approximate analyses, but by analyzing whether an action has generated ticket sales or attracted a specific audience (young people, residents of certain neighborhoods, etc.). This approach is still too often neglected by some players, due to a lack of tools for assessing the impact of their actions.
Emailing software (Mailjet, Mailchimp...)
Emailing software lets you send campaigns easily, thanks to design tools ( Drag and Drop editors). These well-designed tools enable you to save time designing high-performance, graphic campaigns without having to hire a graphic designer.
In this way, they meet your second need.
Some emailing software packages also offer a "CRM" function, enabling you to integrate your database and segment your campaigns. While these functionalities are useful, they are nevertheless limited and generally ill-suited to your business needs. As your activity is very specific the elements on which you will want to target your audience will not be found in these generalist solutions ("event", "representation", "purchase lead time", "loyalty", "access control", "distance from the venue"...).
Overview of the many filters available in the Arenametrix tool.
What's more, these tools are not connected to your data sources. They therefore need to be regularly manipulated to export email addresses from your box office or website for each new campaign, mobilizing human time each time they are sent.
To put it plainly, emailing software offers some interesting possibilities for sending emailings, but remains limited in meeting your first need: knowing your audience. Above all, they don't make the link with your sales, and therefore can't meet your third need.
CRM "bricks" within ticketing software
Recently, some ticketing suppliers have developed complementary applications in the form of a CRM. As ticketing suppliers are in the business of selling tickets, they generally use buyer databases linked to emailing software (Amazon, Mailchimp, Mailjet, etc.). Their main advantage over the previous solution is that they avoid the need to export a ticketing file before sending campaigns, since targeting and sending are carried out in the same tool.
These modules are interesting for working on your ticket buyers, but they don't give you a global view of all your audiences, because they do not centralize all your data sources but only the data coming from ticketing. But data sources can't be reduced to ticketing software alone!
You can have several ticketing solutions but also other sources of data: Excel files, a registration form for your newsletter, data from competitions on social networks, an online store, an application, a streaming or VOD solution etc....
While these solutions have their advantages, they make multi-channel activation impossible (email, SMS, marketing automation, even retargeting or acquisition on social networks) of all your audiences (buyers as well as non-buyers and non-publics). That's why we recommend you turn to a solution with expertise in multi-source data integration.
In addition to its ability to integrate different types of data, an expert solution will also offer you functionalities not available in ticketing software (very fine segmentation of contacts, ROI calculation, advanced sales management, marketing automation, etc.), which should be of interest to you!
The Arenametrix all-in-one solution
An all-in-one solution is a platform that centralizes your data that enables multi-channel activation and enables advanced analysis of your actions to calculate your Return On Investment (ROI).
As a multi-channel marketing solution, Arenametrix enables you to :
Choosing an all-in-one solution also means evaluation and return on investment. Arenametrix lets you cross-analyze your audiences, your sales and the performance of your campaigns. So you can determine whether a specific campaign has had an impact, and exactly what impact it has had (new audiences? ticket sales? increase in average ticket?...).
With several years' experience in data and marketing strategies for sports and cultural players, Arenametrix has acquired both a vision of what constitutes a good data strategy and marketing expertise in each of its chosen sectors: sports, cultural venues, entertainment and music. Your data is an essential resource, and we can help you retain control of it to build long-term relationships with all your audiences.
When you choose Arenametrix, you choose a tool but also support from experts in your sector who will train you, advise you and help you manage change.
For both you and us, the aim is to help you :
Are you ready to take up the challenge of digitizing your structure and strategies?
Still not sure which tool is right for you?
Contact us to find out more and get a quick demonstration of the tool!
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