Paciolan Community Portal. Your tickets, your way.

Plan

Whether you’re trying to increase overall ticket sales, increase online ticket sales or increase attendance, planning your campaign is critical to its success.

How do you plan for success?

• Define your campaign goals
  What do you want to accomplish?
• Define your offer and target audience
  What benefits are you offering to attract patrons?
  Who are you trying to reach?
• Develop your communications strategy
  What are the best ways to reach your audience?
• Build your campaign tactics
  How will you roll-out your plan?

Tips

• Once you’ve defined your campaign goals, it’s essential that the best offers are structured, and then promoted to the right audience.
• Make sure your tactics align with your campaign goals, thus ensuring a successful promotion.

Promote

Once you’ve planned your campaign, it is imperative to employ effective promotional techniques to deliver your message to the right people at the right time.

• Online Communications
  Reach patrons through the email, electronic newsletters, your web site and search engine marketing.
• Offline Communications
  Leverage traditional media to drive patrons online.

Tips

• Use multiple media channels to drive site traffic.

• Appeal to your patrons’ interests in all communications.

• Build a strategic communications calendar to market your site throughout the year.

Measure

By comparing your database at the beginning of your campaign to the end results, you’ll be able to identify how many patrons in your targeted list made the jump to online purchasing.

Continually monitor the results of your campaign and make necessary refinements to offers and tactics by analyzing:

• Increases in overall ticket sales
• Increases in online ticket sales
• Increases in event attendance
• Campaign costs to promote your events
• Response and conversion rates of your communications

Campaign costs

Consider the following costs when analyzing your campaign to ensure a good ROI:

• Online communications
  • Email blasts – no costs, other than development time
  • Electronic newsletter – no costs, other than development time
  • Your website – no costs, other than time to develop
  • Search engine marketing – no costs, other than time to write and code
• Offline communications
  • Direct mail – printing, fulfillment and postage
  • Call Center – call costs and staff costs (if outsourcing)

Response and Conversion Rates

For emails and electronic newsletters, analyze:

• Open rates: how many people actually opened the email
• Click rates: how many people clicked-thru to the embedded URL(s)
• Transaction rates: did your communication convert into a new season renewal, online season renewal, ticket purchase, etc.
• Bounced emails: check email addresses to ensure that they’re valid. If you have a high bounce rate, you will want to scrub the list and update it accordingly. People often change their email addresses every 1-2 years.

For your website’s effectiveness, analyze:

• Visits: how many individuals visit your site, based on promotions, events and seasonality
• Click rates: how many different pages they view, and for how long they stay
• Transaction rates (if measurable)

For direct mail campaigns, analyze:

• Response and transaction rates: if a special website or phone number was offered in the mailer, you can track these
• Return mail: get the current address or pull from your database to reduce costs on future mailings

Tips

• USPS handles 293 million pieces daily — your direct mailings need to be well thought out and distinctive to get attention.
• Direct mail typically generates a 0.5% – 5% response rate (source: Message Media).
• Email (targeting existing customers) normally generates a 10% – 17% response rate. The more compelling your offer, the higher the response rates will be.
• PACMail allows you to easily track open, click and transaction rates so that you can monitor your campaigns in real-time.
• Access Management allows you to easily tie attendance information into Enterprise Ticketing .