Online Coupons

I get my daily offers from both Groupon and Livingsocial and I always chuckle.  Not because the deals are funny but because this concept was so… frowned upon just a few short years ago in the entertainment marketing world, and some still do. I was part of a concept in 2000 that was way ahead of its time with grouptickets.com.  These sites have taken our concept to the next level.  I was almost a dot-com millionaire!

I love these social coupon sites.  They have taken the idea of group sales and super groups to the mainstream.  You can get discounts for restaurants, car washes, clubs, bars, dental, etc…  The one participant I don’t see a lot is our industry.  Some are doing it, but they are in the minority. What is wrong with us?  Why are we always one step behind?  We should be all over these sites. I just read this morning that even the movie business is using it. Lions Gate Entertainment is offering a half price coupon on Groupon for an upcoming movie release.

Everyone always thinks that coupons make the product look cheap.  It’s all in how you market it!  If you market it cheap, it will be cheap.

If your show performs with empty seats then you should be looking at these sites. Why leave the seats empty.  Why do you try to fill them with comps?   When you paper the house you have no idea how many will cash in the comp. With these sites, the customer has to buy the coupon.  The chances they will redeem it are much greater.  

These sites offer minimum and maximum coupons that can be sold.  They offer time limits.  You can control the flow of coupons.  They do a mass email marketing campaign for you.  Do you realize how many million people get their daily emails?

No I’m not on Groupon’s or Livingsocial’s payroll, just a happy consumer who gets it.

Becareful Of Too Much Free eMarketing

We can all agree that too much of anything can hurt you.  Too much food, drink, drugs, etc…  This also goes for marketing through technology.

As many of you know, I follow event & entertainment marketing peeps through Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.  Many of these marketers are using this social technology to market, which is great.  If you are using the technology too much are you losing your customers interest?

This morning I received a Facebook invite for an event from an arena venue.  They use Facebook on a regular basis to promote their events.  Today’s problem is that I received the same invite at least 10 times.  I am sure this is not the venue’s fault.  Something is probably “whacked” with Facebook.  This is a potential hazard with using other’s free technology.  You depend on them to help you get the message out but you are also at their mercy when they f*** up.

Another potential hazard with using today’s free marketing technology is the question of when is too much?  If you send out emails everyday are people reading them or are they deleting them?    Do you start going unnoticed?  The same goes for promoting your event on the social networks.  If you are pushing every single day, sometimes several times a day, are your customers reading it? 

The internet is very different from television.  When you run lots of TV spots, you hope to reach all your potential customers with at least one of the spots.  When you send messages directly to a customer via email or a social network site, they are most likely getting your message the first time.

Feedback Friday

From: Tweeter is Finally Cool with the Younger Gen 11/02/09

I think it’s interesting to discover how different demographics use Twitter. Perhaps the older generation are using it more for business, and perhaps the younger kids are using it for more social purposes. I think you’ll find this is also relative to mobile phone use. I use Twitter on my phone, but hardly ever log in online. However, I use Facebook more online.  Iain Bluett, Ticket Alternative

From: Want to Move Tickets: Push Group Sales 11/11/09

Joe I believe the reason group sales is not held as very important to the industry is because the industry is far better at order taking and making an additional profit on the order taking transaction than they are on providing and managing a true sales process and staff which is viewed only as an added expense. Those are the thoughts of a very old timer who once knew what the term customer service really meant and worked for employers who did too.  David Rosenwasser

Have a great weekend!

The Power Of Free Marketing

I heard a great example of the power of email marketing and word of mouth when it comes to live events. 

My cousin Annie sent me an email yesterday letting me know that she received an email from Goldstar letting her know they were offering half price tickets to the Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams concert.  The offer was good enough that she reacted and bought tickets.  In fact she called a couple of friends and four of them are going.  She went even further and emailed more friends to tell them about the great offer.

I have no idea how many people this email offer went out to.  I am sure it went to thousands.  The example above is just one person who received the email and a minimum of four tickets were sold.  Her word of mouth email went out to even more people.  This free marketing tool will sell tickets.  It might sell them alot of tickets.  This is a marketing power you can do today.

Email: It’s All In The Message

I like email marketing as long as it’s not spam.  I like it for the direct marketing it offers.  If a potential customer has openly given you their email address, they know that you may send them email.  If they decide they don’t want email from you anymore, they opt out.  Always make sure you honor their wishes.  Don’t send spam!  If you buy email lists, make sure these lists are potential customers that have given permission to be on email lists.  When I get spam, I immediately put them in my “junk mail” list and I never see them again.  Do you want to be a brand that customers think is annoying?

I look at email marketing like roadside billboards.  You have just a few seconds to get their attention.  Like billboards, you can accomplish this either with artwork or with a few key words. You want to grab their attention and get them to read on or click the link you inserted.  If you don’t peak their interest or if you make them work to understand your message, then you will be deleted in the blink of an eye.  I don’t know about you but I get at least a hundred emails a day.  I don’t have time to read all of them.  I look for the ones I am interested in.

Make sure the message is understandable.  Don’t confuse your reader.  I received an email last week from a minor league sports team.  The subject line read: “Buy 2, Get 2 at 50% off”.  I opened the email and took a look.  Again, the headline of the artwork gave the offer.  I then asked myself, buy 2 of what?  Why do I have to have to buy 2 of something to get 50% off on the other two?  The offer was on eight game packs. I am still confused with the offer. Why can’t I buy two and get one free?  If I am in the ticket marketing business and I am confused, imagine what the average customer is thinking?  Sometimes when we create the marketing message we are too close to it.  Give it to someone else to read.  See if they get it.

Email Is A Blast

We all have new marketing technology at our disposal and yet many of us still don’t use it effectively.  Why?  The easiest and most useful tool is email.  How much effort do you put into this cheap but effective marketing tool?

As marketers we are always looking for an effective way to reach our potential customers especially in a direct way.  Over the years we have created a number of direct marketing approaches including direct mail and telemarketing. 

Direct mail has become very expensive.  We now look at what it costs per piece to obtain our customers business.  Printing has gone up and postage continues to rise every year. Telemarketing became so annoying that most customers get on the “opt out” list.  I hate telemarketing.  I know that it is big business and it works but I will not do something that I don’t like.  So, telemarketing is never in my marketing plans. 

Email is working.  Yes, you can “opt out” if you want and people do.  But most do not.  This is because the list (unless its spam) is made up of customers or the interested.  When you give your email address today to anything, you know it will end up on the “list”. If a company uses this list for its sole purpose then it remains a useful tool and the customer may read it.

The power of email marketing was evident to me over the last two weeks.  I am promoting a show for a client.  In one of my markets we have sent out two email blasts.  One list came from potential fans of the show and the other from the venue.  The results are fantastic.  We have already sold 20% of the available tickets.  Keep in mind we have done no other marketing to date just email.  The cost to our budget: $0.  These lists are targeted to the potential customer. 

I am always preaching about not just collecting data but use it and use it while it is fresh.  This is one good example that is paying off.

 

Didn’t You Capture Customer Data? Use It!

An easy way to market upcoming shows to your patrons is to email them. What blows me away is how few are doing this.  Once you capture data from a customer you should start sending them info right away.  They gave you their email address or mobile data.  They know you are going to use it to market to them so why aren’t you?

Non-profits are great at using their data to market.  I am on the board of a small non-profit theater.  The Center for Arts in Natick (TCAN) has very few marketing dollars to market to patrons so we capture data from our patrons.  With this data, we use both email and direct mail to reach them on a regular basis.  We send out email to them at least once a week with upcoming performances.  We use direct mail about once a quarter. We have also trained our customers to use our website. As a non-profit and an arts venue, we do not have the budget to market the way we would love to do.  So we go after the “low hanging fruit”.

Some venues or promoters rely on the ticket selling company to send out the email.  This is all well and good but you are just one show among the tons of other stuff they are selling.  Don’t you want your show or your venue shows to be at the center of attention?

I get a weekly ticket alert via email from Ticketmaster.  When I signed up for it, I gave them entertainment preferences of family shows, sports, and concerts.  Today’s email arrived on schedule.  The top event (based on my preferences I guess) was Disney On Ice coming to the TD Banknorth Garden in February.  Under this event was “Lord of the Dance”, “Blue Man Group”, and “A Celtic Sojourn”.  Not quite sure why they fit but ok.  Under this were other shows that Ticketmaster thought I might be interested in.  Almost all of them were in New York City.  I live in Boston.  Are you telling me that Ticketmaster doesn’t have enough shows on sale in Boston that they have to email me NYC shows?  Why am I not getting more Boston area sports and events?  Why am I only getting my email marketing messages for upcoming shows from Ticketmaster? 

The point I am making is that promoters, venues, and show producers are not doing enough to market their own shows with simple, easy, and cheap marketing tools they already have.  This is a “no brain’er”. Start using your customer data!

 

Let’s Keep The Customers We Have

In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article about marketers going after loyal/repeat customers.  What a cool coincidence that I wrote about newspaper reader loyalty yesterday and how they should work to keep their current loyal readers.  This is all part of a continued theme that as marketers of brands we need to spend our time and efforts on keeping our customers.  It takes more money, time, and effort to find new customers.  If a company wants to look at cutting costs in marketing then this could be a place.  I am not recommending slowing down on your marketing efforts; I am re-directing your efforts to keep the customers you have.

The article talks about using non-traditional marketing to reach your current customers.  Companies have been collecting data on customers for years but they have not used this data properly.  The technology just wasn’t there to merge all the data together.  But we have it now.  Companies are using this data with very targeted email blast campaigns.  For example, if a customer buys a product on the company website, the company not only captured the email address but what product they purchased.  Now instead of sending out an email blast that goes to everyone, they can send a very pin-pointed message to customers based on previous buying habits.  This is hitting the “bulls-eye” that I am always writing about. 

The article also mentions that eMarketer is predicting that consumers will spend $30.3 billion in November and December on ecommerce.  This represents a growth rate of 4% over last year.  This prediction is changed from the earlier number of a 10.1% increase.  The good news is that with the economy in the toilet there will be growth in online spending.  I bet and so should marketers that a big chunk of those customers will be repeat loyal customers.

I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!