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4.12.2005
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Volume Three
Issue Three
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Welcome to April's Arts Marketer of the Month.
In this issue, we visit New Haven, Connecticut and the Yale Center for
British Art where PR and Marketing Manager Amy McDonald explains how
she is using e-mail to build audience attendance with great results.
Enjoy!
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Featured Arts Marketer: Amy McDonald
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Amy McDonald, PR and Marketing Manager at YCBA
Photo by Richard Caspole
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In her role as Public Relations and Marketing Manager for the Yale Center for British Art, Amy McDonald says that "the museum setting is the perfect convergence of my love of art, non-profits, and public relations."
Amy graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in journalism and a minor in art history. After college, she worked as a Public Relations Assistant at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY while finishing a masters degree at the University of Rochester in Visual and Cultural Studies (with a focus on museum marketing). After graduation, she moved to Boston to work at the New England Museum Association which she says "was an incredible opportunity to be in contact with museum professionals from all disciplines."
Three years ago, Amy became the Public Relations and Marketing Manager at YCBA in New Haven, Connecticut where she is responsible for overseeing media relations, PR and advertising, market research and analysis, the museum web site, and the volunteer program.
In the Q and A that follows, Amy discusses how the Museum is improving audience relations and attendance with a little help from the internet and e-marketing!
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Q & A with Amy McDonald,
PR and Marketing Manager at YCBA
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YCBA 4th floor galleries overlooking the Library Court
Photo by Richard Caspole
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To begin, Amy, tell us about the Yale Center for British Art. How does the Center fit in with the University structure and administration? How much autonomy do you have in marketing?
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Its foundation is the gift of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts presented to Yale University by Paul Mellon (Yale Class of 1929). The collection explores the development of British art, life, and culture from the Elizabethan period onward. The Center offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions and educational programs, including films, concerts, lectures, tours, and special events. The YCBA also provides numerous opportunities for scholarly research. Academic resources include the Reference Library and Photo Archive, Conservation Laboratory, and Study Room for examining works on paper. One of the Center's greatest treasures is the building itself. Opened to the public in 1977, the Yale Center for British Art is the final building designed by internationally acclaimed American architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974). Approximately 100,000 people visit the Center each year.
The Center is fully integrated into the life of the University. Our director reports to the president of Yale, and the Center is considered a department of the University with its own funding source. While we do work with Yale's office of public affairs, I have full autonomy over the Center's marketing efforts. We are one of the few departments on campus that uses e-mail as a marketing tool.
Who makes up the YCBA marketing department? How does the department divide its resources between the different marketing mediums? What do you find works best?
The marketing department is comprised of myself, one other full-time associate, and a part-time student worker. As you can imagine, we are a very busy office! We work constantly to publicize exhibitions, programs, and collections; build awareness about the museum among our various audiences; and drive attendance to the Center.
Our main advertising mediums are print ads, radio ads, outdoor advertising, and some direct mail. Within the last two years e-mail has become a significant part of our marketing program and is an important communication vehicle for the Center. We find that e-mail, radio advertisements, and print advertisements are our most effective mediums. Needless to say, I don't want to shortchange the importance of placing stories in major publications. You don't build credibility through advertising alone, and a lot of our energy goes into building relationships with the press (media previews, private tours, etc.). E- mail is useful in this respect, too. We are now working to convert our press mailing list to an e-mail list.
Have you developed a specific e-marketing strategy? How do you structure and schedule your e-mail communications and what results have you achieved?
We send out a set of e-newsletters at the beginning of each month. Each one is designed for for a specific area of interest: lectures, concerts, family programs, educator programs, student events, films, and the Museum Shop. Focus groups with Yale undergraduates confirmed that e-mail was the desired method of communication. We also learned that our audience wanted e-mails that highlight a specific event in addition to the comprehensive e-newsletter. Throughout the month, the Center sends e-cards that promote individual programs.
The e-cards and e-flyers have been extremely successful in building audiences at lectures and other events, especially with students who require very little advance notice. We are now working to modify our monthly e- newsletter to make it as effective as possible. We plan to include more teasers, more links to our web site, less text, and a header that reflects our new graphic identity.
You said that e-mail has helped build attendance to the Center. Can you give us an example of how and why e-mail has become so instrumental?
Without question, e-mail gives us the best return on our investment. It costs us relatively nothing to send, is immediate, informative, and goes directly to the people who are most interested in our programs. E- marketing helped us to increase program attendance by more than 35% in the first year of using it (October 2002 vs. October 2003).
When I came on board in fall 2002, attendance at lectures was low. We didn't have an effective way to get the word out to students and faculty about special programs. We began collecting e-mail address at student fairs, open houses, and from membership renewals. We added faculty members and university staff. We put an announcement in our newsletter and had sign-up sheets at our events. The e-cards were immediately successful.
I recall one incident in early 2003 when we agreed to host a lecture for another department. We learned two days before the event that the organizers had done nothing to promote it, not even to Yale students. We pulled together an e-card and sent it out the day before. To our delight we had nearly 70 people attend (a very good turnout for a middle-of-the-week lecture). I know that without our use of e-mail we would have been lucky to see 25 people show up. Even though it was not our event, such a turnout would have reflected poorly on everybody.
We've continued to refine our e-marketing program since we began tracking attendance in 2003. Turnout at evening events increased nearly 32% from 4,608 in 2003 to 6,768 in 2004. And of course, we plan to continue growing our list by having our volunteers collect sign-ups from visitors, as well as place forms in the Museum Shop. Also, we have a sign-up option on our home page, which we are about to add to additional web pages, such as our calendar, exhibitions, and programs pages.
In thinking about what you've achieved so far, what lessons have you learned that you think might help other organizations - particularly smaller ones?
I can't stress too strongly how important it is to talk to your audience. We don't do it enough at the Center, but we're getting a lot better at it. Find out how often your audience wants to hear from you and what information interests them most. E-mail is an extremely cost effective method of communication. If you do use e-mail, an opt-in function is key because it ensures that you are reaching people who have an interest in you. When budgets are tight and every dollar counts, it is critical to maintain your core audience. Print and radio advertisements are wonderful if you have the budget, but e-marketing definitely gives you the best return on your investment.
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Visit the Yale Center for British Art's web site
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Ready to Learn More about E-mail Marketing?
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Do you want to learn more about how to do professional e-mail marketing?
Are you still doing your e-marketing in-house? If you're using Outlook, your mail probably looks like the first image - not exactly the kind of professional image you'd like to project. In addition, you're probably having to handle opt-out requests and bounced e-mail in your inbox.
If you'd like to move up from your "in-house" method, we'd welcome the opportunity to explain more about how to do professional e-mail marketing, and to demonstrate PatronMail to you.
With PatronMail you can:
* Create and Send professional looking e-mails without knowing HTML
* Track & Compare your results with other arts organizations
* Build your list automatically on your web site
* Ensure your mail is not mistakenly blocked by ISPs as Spam.
* Manage undeliverables and "remove" requests automatically
We invite you to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with us.
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Click here to request a 15-minute consultation & PatronMail demonstration
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If
you have interesting and creative initiatives that you would like to
have featured or know of an arts marketer that you would like to
recommend for one of our upcoming editions, please contact
info@patrontechnology.com.
Please watch for the next edition of our Arts Marketer of the Month, coming May 10, 2005.
Note:
The CAN-SPAM act mandates that all commercial e-mail contains a
physical mailing address, and ours is: 850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 801,
New York, NY 10019
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