If you work in a cultural venue, you have two important objectives: to develop and retain your audiences. Both of these objectives will be more easily achieved if you communicate with your audience, and do so in a way they will find relevant.
And what's the best way to make a message relevant to your target audience? Personalization.
Once you've established your segments, you'll be able to get to know your audience better and refine your communications through appropriate targeting. Segmentation is the perfect tool for sending the right message, at the right time, to the right person.
To segment, you'll need 3 things:
A solution that centralizes your audience data. To segment your audience properly, you need to start with a database that aggregates the information gathered from your various digital tools (ticketing, website, resale, online store, access control, cashless, micro-donation...). This will give you a unified view of what you know about your audience and the points of contact with which they are engaged.
A tool that lets you create segments. To create relevant lists, you can rely on criteria that make sense for the cultural sector. To this end, we advise you to choose a CRM solution specialized in your field rather than a generalist solution. In the cultural sector, we'll see that it's often more relevant to segment based on behavioral and interest criteria than on purely socio-demographic criteria. The visual below is a good illustration of this, isn't it?
Ideas and best practices adapted to the cultural sector. Over and above the tool you choose, it's your choice of segments that will guarantee a relevant segmentation. At Arenametrix, we work with over 190 customers, advising them on their segmentation needs. Here are a few ideas and best practices drawn from our experience and the ideas we've developed with our customers.
Thanks to this dynamic list, you can set up an adapted communication and propose a rich, tailor-made marketing offer to each contact. Does your contact mainly go to folk concerts? Then they love this musical genre. Send them your concert hall's folk program, while remembering to integrate it into communications on other genres too, so as not to lock them into a single type of proposal.
Take first-time visitors: these audiences have only visited your establishment once. Depending on the context of their visit, it's very important to adapt your messages so as to build a progressive and lasting relationship with them. Don't offer them a subscription right away, for example.
Conversely, tailor your communications to loyal customers: offer them a loyalty package, thank them with special offers at key moments (start of the season, launch of subscriptions, opening of preview sales for a popular event...), invite them to special events or private sales... These contacts need to be pampered!
In its segmentation tool, Arenametrix features a "loyalty" filter that allows you to see in just a few clicks who your frequent visitors are.
Who are those contacts who used to be among your loyal audience, but who haven't made a purchase for several months? Create a list of contacts according to these criteria and offer them attractive offers to reactivate them: promotions on upcoming events, "come with us: 1 ticket bought = 1 ticket offered" offers, promotions on food & beverages or boutique...
Opportunistic buyers are contacts who usually buy at the last minute, following a promotional offer. To identify them, target people who buy tickets using promo codes, or those who buy in the two days leading up to the event.
This type of opportunistic viewer is particularly keen on last-minute deals, and quick to react. The best way to contact them is usually by SMS.
Collecting feedback from your visitors is of crucial importance in managing your customer relations. By creating segments based on the level of satisfaction expressed by your visitors, you can fine-tune the message and the nature of the customer relationship you offer.
All feedback should be processed, but an extremely satisfied contact should not be directed to the same content as a dissatisfied one. For example, this segmentation helps you direct your promoters to public rating platforms such as TripAdvisor to capitalize on their positive feedback and, at the same time, reach your detractors directly.
Are you planning to promote a specific product or offer? Have you considered analyzing the buying habits and characteristics of your contact base who have already purchased this product?
By cross-referencing transactional information with the personal data of the buyers of a particular offer, you can identify similar contacts in your database, and thus guide your recommendations!
The reactions generated by your e-mail campaigns play a crucial role in measuring contacts' commitment to your offer. Indeed, when a recipient clicks on your e-mail, this indicates significant interest, whereas a contact who does not open the message has shown no interest in your mailing. Using these indicators to segment your audience makes perfect sense, because the approaches required for these two situations are radically different, and your communication needs to adapt accordingly.
For recipients who have shown their interest by clicking, it may be relevant to generate a sense of urgency to encourage them to make a purchase.
On the other hand, for inactive contacts, it's necessary to persuade them further, whether by providing additional content or offering a discount, for example.
As you can see, relevant segmentation of your audience is essential. It enables you to get to know your audience better and communicate with them effectively, offering them personalized content and services.
Perhaps you don't know where to start? Whether you're just starting out or you want to go further than you are today on this topic, here are the 3 questions you need to ask yourself:
What are your objectives ? Defining one or more specific objectives (increasing your venue filling rate, attracting first-time visitors, building loyalty, developing attendance for a particular type of event...) It will enable you to choose the best approach for segmenting your audience.
What are the most relevant segments and sub-segments to consider ?
Here are just a few examples of what you can imagine. Don't hesitate to discuss these topics with your counterparts in other locations, or to ask for help of CRM and cultural marketing specialists like Arenametrix.
Do you have the right tool and strategy for segmenting and distributing your communications ? To segment effectively, you need a high-performance CRM tool. You also need to define a roadmap to deploy your CRM strategy effectively and involve your teams collaboratively. At Arenametrix, we offer a simple, intuitive tool and a support plan to guide you step by step through these issues.
Contact us to find out how Arenametrix can help you.