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Can you tell us a little bit about the background/history of MMDG?

The Mark Morris Dance Group was formed in 1980 and gave its first concert that year in New York City. The company's touring schedule steadily expanded to include cities both in the U.S. and in Europe, and in 1986 it made its first national television program for the PBS series Dance in America. In 1988, MMDG was invited to become the national dance company of Belgium, and spent three years in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The company returned to the United States in 1991 as one of the world's leading dance companies, performing across the U.S. and at major international festivals.  In fall 2001, MMDG opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY, the company's first permanent headquarters in the U.S., housing rehearsal space for the dance community, outreach programs for local children, as well as a school offering dance classes to students of all ages.


Since touring forms such a large part of your seasons, what avenues do you use to connect with your different audiences? What role does e-mail play in spreading the word?

Our strategy is to stay aggressive in e-communication without becoming an "annoying e-marketer."  We have segmented our mailing list by donors/non-donors and give all the opportunity to opt-in for performances specific to our hub-venues on tour and to activities or general news from New York City.  To expand our online mailing list, we work at performances and community events to capture more names and addresses with sign-up incentive programs and raffles. We table at performances on tour, and whenever possible, obtain a ticket-buyer list from our engagements.

To promote our tour engagements, we use e-mail as a primary performance notice to the general public on our mailing list in the market specific to the tour site and as a secondary performance notice to our donors who also receive performance postcards.

E-mail plays an equally important role in promoting our programs at the Mark Morris Dance Center to our home community - monthly notices of our weekly dance classes, bi-monthly promotions of our adult workshop series, and last-minute reminders for semester enrollment for children/teens.

E-mail has also opened up the possibility of targeting specific groups on our mailing list for last-minute special workshops and proven to be the most cost-effective marketing for free events like our Open House.

We also build e-blast campaigns for institutional marketing - to notify MMDG fans of Mark Morris-led karaoke night during last year's BAM season, Morris hosting Met Opera Quiz, Morris works being performed by ballet companies, or Morris receiving the New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs Mayor's Award.


You've recently launched a new Web site. How does it differ from your old site? What were your goals for the new site and has the early feedback and results been positive?

Our old site had been fashioned to promote our 25th Anniversary.  With the conclusion of the celebration in December 2006, it was important to start with a fresh new look.  It is more dynamic than our old site with more flash features and advanced programming including online school registration, donations, an extensive Resource area with search function capability, and a more thorough representation of all aspects of MMDG including the Dance Center.  In a later phase, the new Web design will also allow us to have a "Members Only" section.  The early feedback has been extremely positive regarding the clean design which does a much better job of showing off our images.  It's only been a month, but analysis shows that from December 2006 to January 2007 we already increased the number of visits to our site by 4,492, or 19%.


You tried a novel approach to the release of your new site. Can you tell us a bit about how you handled the announcement of the launch?

It had been our observation that when organizations revamped their Web site, it was almost done stealthily.  You could visit an institution's site every couple of weeks and then one day it would have a new look without warning.  We consciously included an unveiling date in the e-campaigns leading up to the launch, our press release, and January performance postcard that went out to 25,000 people.  After we launched our new Web site, we included an e-scavenger hunt in public newsletters during the first month.  Questions encouraged viewers to seek out the answers on our new Web site; driving them to surf the site and experience its new features.  I was constantly amazed; as little as seven minutes after the newsletter dropped we would receive responses from recipients who wanted to play.


As a big company with a small staff, how does e-marketing (Web and e-mail) fit into your overall marketing strategy? Why is it important?

In larger organizations, many marketing departments are the earned income departments working alongside development (contributed income) departments.  In MMDG, marketing and development are a combined department.  With this in mind, our marketing strategies often benefit all development strategies because they are created in tandem.  For this reason, I am very interested in e-fundraising strategies in addition to e-marketing.  MMDG also tries to work closely with the marketing departments of all our presenters and commissioners of Mark's work.  Overall, e-marketing provides us the greatest flexibility to react quickly to share great reviews, news, and co-opt presenter marketing campaigns for our upcoming performance engagements.

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