|
Welcome to our August E-Marketer of the Month featuring Violin Maker, Charles Rufino.
|
|
Featured E-Marketer: Charles Rufino
Violin Maker and Owner of the Long Island Violin Shop
|
|
|
Charles Rufino
|
As a Classics major at NYU in the early 1970s, Charles Rufino was drawn, as he says, "to follow a different drummer." So, in 1974 he traveled to Europe to begin his training in violin-making.
After studying at the Newark School of Violin Making, in Nottinghamshire, UK, and leading London violin shops, Charles returned to New York to work with Vahakn "Nigo" Nigogosian in his well-known 57th Street studio - right across the street from Carnegie Hall. Three years later he accepted a position with Carl Becker and Son of Chicago, one of today's most recognized instrument makers. With the Beckers, Charles participated in extensive instrument restorations as well as the creation of numerous Becker instruments.
In 1985, after an exhaustive 10 years as apprentice and journeyman, Charles returned to his New York roots to found his own studio.
|
|
Q & A with Charles Rufino
|
Tell us about your two businesses and how they got started.
When I returned to New York after years in the Midwest (with Carl Becker), my focus had shifted significantly towards making new instruments. I started working from home, doing repairs and learning bit by bit about business, tinkering with the operation of my shop. I learned to eliminate everything that did not support my primary goal of making instruments professionally - I stopped doing big, fancy restorations, because they consumed the same spiritual energy I needed for new instruments. I focused on simple instrument maintenance (which I can do in my sleep) and started dealing in instruments.
All this time, my entire enterprise was called Rufino Violins, but as my studio prospered I struggled with the tension between the creative work of new instruments and the business of running a full-service violin shop.
Finally in 1999 I split off the "shop" side of my studio into the Long Island Violin Shop (LIVS). This allowed me to "get serious about business" while not tainting the art of new instrument making. The LIVS has several employees who see customers, handle administration, and do the majority of the instrument work. I concentrate on marketing and pitching in where I am needed with any of those functions and still find time for my workshop and the art of making violins (Rufino Violins).
How long have you been an e-marketer? What made you start focusing on e-mail as a tool?
As soon as I figured out how to operate my computer I was doing e-mail blasts - this was a natural outgrowth of my history of vigorous promotion and I liked being able to do something that was virtually instantaneous and less bother as well as more affordable than direct mail.
In 2005, I received an e-mail through the Chamber Music America group message service, and it piqued my interest. I attended one of Gene's lectures and my goose was cooked. It took me many months to get ready to act on all the things I learned at that seminar, but by June 2006, my e-mail program was launched to immediate success.
Who makes up your target audiences and what information do you send to them?
In the LIVS the focus is on teachers (K-12 educators, private studio and conservatory prep school teachers) and their students. For many years we marketed with postcards and letters on different subjects (special items, sales, Public Service Announcement-type educational messages). I think these PSAs helped build our reputation for being good people, but in retrospect, gave a poor return on investment of time, treasure and talent.
Now that we can send e-mails our costs (time and money) are reduced, so educating our clients is very feasible. Similarly, our experience in the LIVS has taught us that parents need help getting comfortable with the strange new world of violins their kids are in. Nobody enjoys paying for something they don't understand! So we provide a lot of educational material to assist non-musician parents in becoming educated consumers.
Rufino Violins focuses on conservatory teachers and their students as well as professional musicians. It's a smaller (and very challenging) market with nuance being all-important in every aspect. Violins are extremely personal instruments, and people choose an instrument with the same care they give to choosing a spouse.
Because education is so important to both businesses, my current strategy is to build my brand with an e-mail "magazine" that carries articles about violins and related topics. I can then target specific groups within the readership with "postcard" announcements and specific offers on different products.
As a shop and small business, how do you collect e-mail addresses?
My staff is instructed to collect addresses from everyone who enters the shop. If we do any public events, exhibitions, lectures or festivals, we ask for addresses. We have an invitation to sign up for our e-mail magazine on our Web sites and are also planning a campaign to mail out printed copies of the magazine to our list of best prospects with no e-mail, with a message like "See what you are missing because we do not have your e-mail?"
We are also strategizing ways to increase the forwarding of the magazine as a way to build our e-mail lists. For example, we are talking to our suppliers who sell ancillary products for musicians (strings, cases, accessories, etc). I reckon if they have a product they want to clear out, or a new product they want to puff up, they should be able to provide a limited quantity at something close to cost. I can then pass it along at that price, and my customers will think "Gee, maybe Bill or Sue would like to see this offer too." Sounds good in theory, we'll see what happens.
How has your e-marketing approach changed since starting with PatronMail? What kinds of feedback and responses have you been getting?
Several new concepts came to me from Gene's seminar. First of all, the idea that arts organizations are perceived as Friends Whom We Want To Help rather than Businesses That Want To Rob Us, had me strategizing about how to shift the way that my studios are perceived before I had even arrived home from the lecture.
The notion that Web sites are primarily marketing tools has been an incentive for me to rethink the way my sites are designed. The LIVS is primarily and frankly commercial, but my RV site is much more restrained. The paradigm of "send an e-mail to get the patron to visit the site, site visitors sign up for e-mails, (repeat)" is so obvious but to many, even some pretty sophisticated business people, it is a revelation. This now dictates how we aim to inform our clients about us. Finally, text-only e-mails seem pathetic now when I get one. Plus, I have come to understand all the administrative work that is now automated by PatronMail's servers... saving so much time and so many headaches.
As for the responses to our messages through PatronMail: Everybody loves them! I've had responses that indicate people perceive it as a service rather than an advertisement, so I'm very happy with that. Also, two local teachers who had been getting my postcards and other promotions for over five years came in within days of seeing the magazine and gave me a very substantial amount of business. Two big sales after my very first magazine! I have NEVER had a response like that before on any promotion of any kind. Talk about ROI...
|
|
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.
Watch for the next edition of our E-Marketer of the Month, coming September 12, 2006.
Patron Technology
850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 801
New York, NY 10019
212-271-4328
|
|
To forward this e-mail to a friend or colleague, use this link.
|
This email was sent from Patron Technology
Immediate removal with PatronMail®
SecureUnsubscribe.
|
|
To change your e-mail address or update preferences, use this link.
|
|
|
