In this article, we'll give you a few tips on the indicators that are relevant to track for a venue. But also some ideas of filters you can use to segment your database and devise targeted campaigns. Because analyzing data is all very well, but putting it to good use in targeted communications is even better!
- Size and quality of your database (share of qualified contacts)
- Completeness rate of socio-demographic fields (age, origin)
- Loyalty and lifecycle (loyalty, frequency, recency, renewal rate)
- Thematic consumption data
- Marketing campaign performance and conversion tunnel
1. Size, quality and qualification of your database
You have 40,000 visitors in your database? That's great! But out of those 40,000 people, what data do you actually have? In the world of data, as elsewhere, size isn't everything! The completeness of certain fields should be taken into account when judging the quality of a database.
A qualified visitor is a contact about whom you have basic information and at least one piece of contact information. Generally a first and last name and an email address. Consider this, will your database be effectively usable if only 2,000 email records exist out of 40,000 visitors?
To improve your share of qualified contacts, consider generalize the collection of emails at the time of ticket sale, even when the ticket is sold at the box office. Your ticketing agent can offer to sign up for the newsletter, but you can also offer it to the visitor at a later stage, as part of a service email (on this subject, see our article "How to communicate with opt-out contacts?").
2. Completeness rate of socio-demographic fields
Of all the socio-demographic data you can collect on your visitors, two are of particular interest : age and origin. This data can be collected when a ticket is sold or when a visitor signs up for a newsletter. However, we advise you to keep your registration forms relatively short, so as not to discourage new contacts from signing up.
You can qualify certain data at a later stage, for example by sending an email encouraging your contacts to complete their profile, or by setting up a competition that will enable you to qualify one or more additional fields such as date of birth or zip code.
Capture from a statistical view of an audience segment in Arenametrix
The origin (zip code, city, country) is a particularly interesting indicator for targeted communications. Whether you're a visitor venue wishing to target a very specific tourist audience, or a museum wishing to inform certain visitors living in the vicinity about a temporary event (opening, performance etc.), this information can be very useful.
The notion of distance, and therefore remoteness from the site, is also interesting.
It was thanks to this indicator that a number of museums were able to offer their services to a very local audience when health restrictions were gradually lifted following the COVID19 pandemic.
Age, through the date of birth, is also a fundamental indicator for all museums wishing to win over young visitors through the introduction of a dedicated price offer or a specific subscription.
Age distribution by audience segment in Arenametrix
For all these fields, remember to regularly check the completeness rate (the proportion of contacts for which data has actually been entered) within your database, and to consider qualification operations when necessary.
3. Audience loyalty and the visitor lifecycle
Having access to consumption data within your CRM tool offers valuable insights into visitor loyalty: is the contact just a prospect, a first-time buyer, an occasional buyer or a loyal buyer ?
Determining a visitor's loyalty status hinges on how a museum defines loyalty and its intrinsic programming criteria. Loyalty varies, whether an institution offers one annual exhibition or a diverse array of events.
Nevertheless, several key indicators help in managing loyalty.
The number of visits over the last 36 months is an interesting indicator.
In Arenametrix, the "Loyalty" filter facilitates extracting this information from your entire database in just two clicks. Utilize this filter to tailor communications aimed at your most loyal visitors, potentially rewarding them (e.g., offering a ticket to any visitor who has purchased "x" tickets in the last 12 months). Alternatively, consider upselling through subscription offers (providing a discount on subscriptions to contacts who have made a significant number of visits in the last 18 months).
Recency also holds significance. This metric measures the number of days since a visitor last purchased tickets. If there have been no repeat visits in the last 18 months, consider sending them an ultra-personalized offer to keep your institution top of mind.
Purchase lead time is an interesting concept. It provides insights into how far in advance visitors buy tickets. It can vary according to your event schedule, and can give you useful information on how far in advance you should plan your communication campaigns.
If you offer subscriptions, there are a number of other aspects of this loyalty scheme that can be monitored. Renewal rate (or conversely, the rate of abandonment - or churn) can be calculated by reconciling your subscriber cohorts from one year to the next.
Extract from a statistical view of an audience segment in Arenametrix
4. Thematic consumption data
In addition to standard statistical metrics like recency, time-to-purchase, or loyalty, delving into the content your visitors engage with provides valuable insights
This allows for tailored communication based on their specific interests.
You can filter your audience by "event". One of your exhibitions worked particularly well last year, and you're thinking of offering an improved version this year? Why not send a highly-targeted email to the contacts who came to the event last year?
In Arenametrix you can also set "event types" to group your programming by audience type ("young audience" or "families", for example), by artistic genre ("classical", "contemporary creation"...) or by major social themes ("feminism", "immigration", "inclusion"...). These filters facilitate offering relevant information to an already engaged audience while introducing new genres beyond their current interests. Targeting communications isn't solely about catering to existing interests,
it can also foster the development of new ones.
If you sell derivative products (reproductions, books...), you can also target people who have already bought this type of product, to offer them your new products when you have them.
5. Performance of your marketing campaigns and conversion tunnel
If you send out emailing campaigns, you're already familiar with the key indicators that need to be monitored in order to evaluate a campaign's performance. Deliverability rate, open rate, click rate or reactivity rate (the reactivity rate is the number of people who clicked on an email out of the number of people who received it) are the great classics.
But generally speaking, things get complicated when it comes to conversion.
If you know how many people opened your emails, do you know who actually bought a ticket online? We're not sure. Online ticket sales for museums are generally carried out via an online sales page offered by your ticketing service, but separate from your website. This does not prevent conversion calculations, but it does require time and technical expertise.
The advantage of a data-marketing tool is to bring up your emailing performance statistics and your sales statistics in the same place. If you send a transactional email pushing an offer for a particular exhibition, you can then determine in just a few clicks your conversion tunnel and know exactly how many people bought tickets for the exhibition among all the people to whom you sent an email.
Better still, track indicators such as "best time to open a campaign" and "best time to buy" to determine the day and time your mailings are most likely to engage your contact base.
Extract from a view of the sales "temporality" table for an event in Arenametrix
Track these indicators with a tool that centralizes your data
Tracking CRM indicators is only really possible with a solution that enables you to centralize all your visitors' data (ticketing data, at the box office and online, store data, sponsorship data, scattered Excel files, sales data for groups and local authorities, etc.), analyze them easily and exploit them directly in the same tool, by sending out communication campaigns whose performance can be easily measured.
A tool that centralizes your visitor data, enabling you to better target your audiences while evaluating the impact of your communication actions, is precisely what Arenametrix offers.
Don't hesitate to contact us to discover the tool's many features during a demo!