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Oberlin Conservatory Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall Photo credit: © Steve J. Sherman

Oberlin began its e-mail marketing a bit late. What were the barriers that stood in the way of getting started?

Time is always an issue; no matter what type of institution you are a part of you are always pulled in more directions than you have time to explore. E-mail marketing was an area we knew could offer us tremendous returns on our investment, but there was always a battle between knowing and actually doing when trying to juggle multiple responsibilities.  “Timing” was our enemy and prevented us from exploring new solutions to old problems, but it became a salvation as the planning schedule for a major event gave us the perfect excuse to launch our first e-mail marketing campaign.


You kicked off your e-mail marketing program in December, with the announcement that the Oberlin Orchestra would be performing at Carnegie Hall. What kind of results did you see?

The Oberlin Conservatory Symphony Orchestra performed at Carnegie Hall on Friday, January 26, 2007. Due to the scale and size of this event, the planning began far in advance and involved coordination between multiple campus departments. From the very beginning we were well aware of the fact that this event would require a new take on marketing, as we were reaching out to a sophisticated and varied audience beyond the campus borders. The large and ranging nature of our audience, and the need to reach them in a timely and efficient manner, combined to give us the perfect opportunity to launch our first e-mail marketing campaign.

Traditionally we marketed our events with mailed invitations and/or e-mail reminders. The e-mail reminders were generated from our campus system, so though they're informative, they were not “pretty”.

Several months in advance of this performance we utilized PatronMail to ask our alumni, donors, and friends to “Save the Date” of the upcoming performance on their calendar. We then sent a separate e-mail about three weeks before the event. PatronMail allowed us to design e-mails that looked very similar to our printed invitations, providing a consistency in message and imagery for the event which we’ve never been able to achieve previously.

The first e-mail went out to about 16,000 people, and had an open rate of 30.3%, and a click rate of 3.2%. Once the campaign went out we started hearing about a spike in ticket sales almost immediately. The second e-mail had a slightly higher open rate, 33%, but about half the click rate.

Our results were very easy to judge – we filled Carnegie Hall, and we think that e-mail was a big part of making that happen.

Marketing with e-mail allowed us to spread the news about this impressive event to our entire online population in a very cost-effective manner. We were able to provide a very attractive announcement of Oberlin’s prestigious accomplishment of “making it” to Carnegie Hall.

We were able to communicate with a much larger audience via e-mail than we would ever have been able to afford by sending a direct mail piece. We filled the hall and we created a buzz among our alumni and donor population; two important goals we had from the early planning stages.

For others who are just now coming to e-mail marketing, what would be your most important piece of advice?

Choose your opportunity for your first e-mail blitz carefully, especially if you plan to utilize the same mailing list repeatedly. By making the first announcement/invitation for an event that is substantial or impressive, you pique your readers’ interest and they are more likely to open the next e-mail message they receive from you.

Now that you've seen how effective e-mail marketing is, how are you changing your overall marketing approach for the future?

We are now looking at ways we can use e-mail marketing to target specific populations and provide information, invitations, and make important announcements. As a college, we have an exceptional amount of information about the demographics and preferences of the patrons on our list, so we can target our mailings accordingly. A message about an athletic event or an environmental concern can be targeted to those patrons who have indicated an interest in such topics; we can also decide to target only young alumni, graduates of the last ten years, to invite them to special events.

With PatronMail we now have many new ways to evaluate the response of the individual recipients, not just the campaign as a whole, thereby providing guidance for future mailings. It's valuable to see who opened each e-mail and who clicked on the links, and such a new experience compared to direct mail.

Print publications will always have a place within Oberlin College’s Development Office marketing endeavors, as the College is almost 200 years old and our older alumni still expect and respond to print more than e-mail; however, e-mail marketing has taken on a new importance and we are exploring ways to integrate it more comprehensively into our overall communications. Without question, e-mail is the future!

Now you can read (and/or subscribe to) updates from Patron Technology's President, Eugene Carr. Gene's blog provides a snapshot of his perspective on what's going on in the e-marketing world now, and how it relates to arts marketing.

Last week's posts included on-site updates from the MarketingSherpa conference in Miami, new data points from the revised edition of Gene's book, Wired for Culture, and exciting news about e-mail marketing ROI from the Direct Marketing Association.

Click here to read the blog, and submit your e-mail address in the upper left corner to subscribe to get updates e-mailed to you.
 

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