Sometimes you need to look backwards in order to move forward. That’s exactly what London’s critically-acclaimed Albany Theatre did last December when it borrowed a trick from its neighbours in nearby Deptford market. Setting out a pop-up box office in a market stall linked to the theatre’s CRM system, the Albany sold £1 tickets for their Spring season on a first-come, first-served basis.
With 10 tickets available for each show, the theatre sold almost the entire season’s allocation that day, with an estimated 70% of those being first time bookers.
At a pound a ticket it clearly wasn’t an exercise in boosting margins or quick incremental sales. In fact the campaign was designed to deepen engagement with the local community, overcome brand misconceptions and drive first-time attendance.
Cloud technology helped the Albany be more nimble on the marketing front – moving from campaign idea to execution quickly whilst tying in CRM and analytics to measure effectiveness and improve targeting. But this isn’t really a technology story. It’s about a globally-respected UK cultural industry getting to grips with modern marketing techniques at the grassroots level – with characteristic British verve and creativity.
The Albany has an outstanding history of engaging a diverse audience representative of its local demographic, however the organisation has consistently sought innovative ways to engage local residents and bust myths that the arts are a middle-class redoubt, out of reach from the area’s working class and minority communities. The idea for the £1 Ticket Scheme came about following a conversation in Deptford Market.
“I got chatting to a lady with a young daughter who knew all about the Albany but had never visited,” recounted Amber Massie-Blomfield, the Albany’s Head of Communications. “She felt the risk of spending money on a ticket when she didn't know what to expect was too great.”
The £1 ticket scheme was a direct result of that conversation. If a pound-a-pop seems drastic as a pricing strategy then you have to consider the unique challenges of marketing in the arts sector, where ticket prices rarely reflect the true cost of staging a performance. While box office takings make up a significant chunk of revenue, most theatres generate income from a mix of sources: commercial, state, charitable and philanthropic.
This makes marketing performance a slightly more philosophical undertaking than purely private-sector consumer offers. Sales count, but it’s also about fairly reflecting the work of the artist; being clear about who you want to see the work, and how you want that work to be received.
Convening a quick brainstorm session that afternoon, Massie-Blomfield and her team took inspiration from the market setting, where face- to-face engagement is the lifeblood of trading success. Mixing old marketing approaches with new, they created a pop-up box office in the market, selling tickets from a bright pink stall on their Spektrix system, from wifi-connected laptops.
The results? Two thirds of the allocation was sold in person on the market stall in one day one, with ca. 70% going to first time bookers. The campaign had an impact on regular ticket sales as well, with full price tickets sales steadily climbing for shows where £1 tickets had sold out.
The Albany also saw a 40% increase in website traffic whilst the campaign was running, more than 300 tweets, and generated a slew of positive news coverage in local and London press.
The scheme is a great example of innovative marketing tactics, technology enablement and audience engagement that more arts organisations need to embrace – mixing traditional and modern to connect with audiences and embed themselves more deeply across their natural demographic base.
By Libby Penn, director at Spektrix.
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