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Eric: Playwrights Horizons is a writer’s theater, founded in 1971 as a home for nurturing and developing new plays and musicals by American writers. It was one of the very first theaters on our stretch of 42nd Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues) and paved the way for a revitalization of this area of the city. In its 37 years Playwrights Horizons productions have earned four Pulitzer Prizes and 10 Tony Awards, and launched the careers of countless playwrights, composers, librettists, and lyricists. Since I've been with the organization, three shows have moved to Broadway: James Joyce’s The Dead, I Am My Own Wife, and Grey Gardens.

What's the scope of the organization in terms of budget and activities, and what kind of audience do you serve?

Eric: The organization is considered to be at the forefront of off-Broadway theater companies in New York. We are smaller in size than the non-profit companies with Broadway houses (Lincoln Center Theater, MTC, and the Roundabout), but stand alongside such companies as Second Stage, the Public Theater, and the Signature Theater. We all serve a similar audience (the New York theatergoing public), but along with this broad group, Playwrights serves a subset, a particularly adventurous, literate, intelligent and daring constituency that enjoys new plays and their inherent ‘risk.’  The theater produces six shows annually, four in our 198-seat Mainstage and two in our 128-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater, as well as numerous readings and workshops.  In addition, Playwrights owns and operates Ticket Central, a box office serving the off- and off-off-Broadway communities, and has an affiliated acting studio at NYU, the Playwrights Horizons Theater School.


Can you give us a quick overview of Playwrights Horizons' general e-marketing scheme?

Bradford: Our reliance on e-marketing has increased tremendously over the past several seasons. It’s funny – about a month ago I was looking over our campaign log in PatronMail, and in my first season at Playwrights, we sent out fourteen campaigns. So far this season – and bear in mind that we’re not even open in previews for our second production – we’ve sent eighteen.

And that’s just with PatronMail. We’ve probably sent as many via outside vendors like TicketCentral, Playbill, NYTimes TicketWatch. We’re also on Myspace and Myspace Music; we have a Facebook group; we’ve had bloggers in to see shows. We’ve also radically revised our online presence. We have a new Web site that hosts streaming audio and video, and we’ve created e-commerce options that allow new and renewing subscribers to join us and book their tickets online in a much more user-friendly and intuitive way. 

We’re also the only theater I know of whose ticket lotteries are handled exclusively online – from registration through completion (with high-functioning database programming we’ve developed) – so we don’t have angry patrons who didn’t win tickets to contend with anymore! Of course, this has all been developing at the same time, and we’ve seen major changes in the ways our subscribers are choosing to communicate with us.


With regard to e-mail marketing, can you describe your overall activities - how big is your list, how frequently do you mail and what kind of response rates do you see?

Bradford: We use electronic outreach in fairly specific ways, and generally in tandem with more traditional approaches to maximize impact and the number of impressions we’re making. Our main list is at over 10,000 names, which is way up from where we started, and as you can guess from previous answers, we mail to our list pretty regularly, and response rates can vary greatly. Right now our average open and click rates are 27.32% and 2.82%, respectively. Of course, it really, really depends upon the categories we’re sending to, what the offer is, what recognizable name is in the subject line or what celebrity face is in the graphic. Some campaigns that go to subscribers only have had open rates and click rates as high as 44.7% and 6.8%.

We still utilize direct mail, but the same single ticket buyers ("STBs") who receive our flyers are also getting offers electronically, then later – after we’ve opened and reviews have been published – those same STBs are receiving e-mails with quotes. Our subscribers, on the other hand, are notified via snail-mail when to book their tickets, then a few weeks later, we e-mail them to urge them to book tickets if they haven’t, and then we follow up again with a snail-mail postcard. Of course, whenever we have an amazing Patron Technology-created video posted online, we let all of our members know they should check it out.


Let's talk a little bit about those online ticket lotteries you mentioned earlier. Can you explain how those work?

Eric: This season, to replace our Pay What You Can program, which we felt was no longer accommodating the audience it set out to address, we founded the Live For Five program, which offers $5 tickets to our first preview through an online lottery. About a week before the performance, people enter a lottery by entering their e-mail address, etc. on a form they access via a link on our homepage. Everyone is entitled to one or two tickets. Then, a couple days before the show, we draw as many as we need to fill between 25 and 50 seats for that show.  Once the names are drawn, they are given a link to purchase their tickets. Oddly, we're finding that not everyone who wins purchases tickets, so we go to a waiting list -- and even then, we don't sell out. So even though we're getting between 400 and 500 entries, we're still working through some issues. But it's a huge improvement over the Pay What You Can night, as people can purchase in advance, and don't have to stand in line for an hour or more.


What have you learned from your e-marketing experience, and how has your approach changed over the years? 

Eric: I think it’s mainly just an awareness of the way the world of marketing is changing, and how more and more people are going online. Our e-mail lists have grown exponentially over the past few seasons, which is directly proportional to the fact that more and more people are doing their business online. It’s a cheap, fast, and mostly effective means of getting the word out.  And as we become more savvy, we’re utilizing PatronMail in new ways, both in its look and implementation. Aside from the single ticket and subscription blasts, we’re utilizing e-marketing to keep our subscribers in the loop about various in-house and outside events, partnering with other theaters to provide discounts or information about their events, and occasionally directing our patrons to press about the theater.

Bradford:  I’m all about visual impact, consistency of look and feel, and elegant execution.  We’re a 37-year-old institution with a strong brand.  Unless the intended audience or the point of the piece necessitates making the PH brand secondary to the message, we always insist upon prominent logo placement and adherence to our identity rules. We build our campaigns with a keen eye toward color and graphic design, and since PatronMail continues to evolve and provide more options, it allows us to create increasingly complex and aesthetically pleasing pieces.  Since earlier this summer, we’ve been tying our header, main graphic, and footer images together using hexadecimal colors suggested by either our institutional branding or show-specific artwork, and I’ve been really pleased with the results and the responses. Which, I suppose, is my way of saying that the best results have come from knowing the capabilities of PatronMail’s technology and really taking advantage of every new option. This flexibility, which always continues to improve, is really what sets PatronMail apart from its competitors.

Visit the Playwrights Horizons Web Site

Please join the Patron Technology team at one of our upcoming seminars. These seminars offer arts professionals introductory through advanced techniques on e-marketing. Click the links to find out more.


E-marketing: Beginner & Advanced
Produced with the Northwest Connecticut Arts & Business Council
October 13 -- Torrington, CT


E-marketing: Beginner & Advanced
Produced in conjunction with the Arts & Business Council of Greater Phoenix
October 31 -- Phoenix, AZ


Arts E-mail Marketing: What Every NAMP Attendee Should Know
Open to all! Register here:
November 4 -- Miami, FL


Patron Technology's E-marketing E-mersion E-vent
All the know-how you need, in one info-packed day
November 8 -- New York, NY
(Formal announcement by e-mail coming this Thursday)

Patron Technology is pleased to be presenting at the following upcoming conferences. Please note that you'll need to register for the conference to attend.


The Arts Reach National Arts Marketing Conference 2007
October 27-30

Our Account Executive Greg O'Neill will present "Are You an E-blaster or an E-marketer?" on Sunday afternoon, October 28.

Click here to sign up for the conference.


2007 National Arts Marketing Project Conference
November 2-5

We will be at the NAMP conference! We'll have a booth, and Gene Carr will participating in two sessions. We're also hosting our own "off-site" e-marketing session on Sunday the 4th, announced above.

Click here to register.

Now you can read and subscribe to regular 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.

If you haven't been reading, here's a quick look at what you missed last week:

E-mail Marketing is Top Online Marketing Tactic: Proven: 72% of U.S. Marketers know that e-mail marketing is the way to go. Here's a chart to demonstrate the power and popularity of e-mail.

Technology Nirvana: Sometimes everything actually works like it's supposed to, and we realize that the future really is now.

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