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03.28.2006
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Volume Four
Issue Three
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Welcome to our March Monthly Update. This month's Client Feature focuses on the World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame in Colorado, where Marketing and PR Manager Linda Famula is using e-mail to help build the profile of the newly independent organization. Read on...
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Client Feature: The World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame
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A recent exhibit featuring a costume display of former World and Olympic champions
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PMail Client Since: March 2005
Starting e-list size: 2,697
Current e-list size: 3,592
The World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame was established in 1965 in Boston and moved to Colorado Springs in 1979 when the United States Figure Skating Association relocated its headquarters. Originally operating as a department of U.S. Figure Skating, on July 1, 2004 the Museum became an independent, non-profit corporation.
With approximately 10,000 square-feet of exhibit space, the Museum is the only institution in the world devoted exclusively to the preservation and exhibition of materials related to the history of figure skating. Its collection includes nearly 20,000 photographs, hundreds of skating costumes, an extensive library and much more. The Hall of Fame was established in 1976 and celebrates individuals who have made lasting contributions to the sport. Together, the Museum and Hall of Fame receive about 10,000 visitors each year.
As Marketing and Public Relations Manager (and part-time ice skating teacher), Linda Famula coordinates all national and international promotional efforts including skating competitions, communications, and community outreach programs for worldwide audiences.
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Q & A with Linda Famula, Marketing and Public Relations Manager
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Linda Famula, Marketing and PR Manager
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As a Museum and Hall of Fame, are ticket sales central to your operation or do you have a broader mission?
Since becoming an independent organization in 2004, our goal has been to establish our own identity so ticket sales have been of secondary importance at this stage. We have been working to establish a presence in Colorado through a variety of initiatives.
For example, we donated framed posters and promotional material to each of the five public rinks in Colorado Springs and donated books, luggage tags, and set up an information booth at two major annual USFSA skating competitions held locally. We also ran a six-month outdoor campaign featuring a rotating billboard with the potential of reaching up to 68,000 viewers daily.
As a "world" museum, what is your main demographic? Do you target local visitors only (Colorado) or does your reach extend nationally and internationally?
Our long-range objective is to reach out much more to international visitors. But we do already have a mix of visitors depending on the time of year and event.
For example, last year the city of Colorado Springs hosted the "State Games of America" which drew over 8,000 participants from 24 sports, including figure skating, to this city. We had several thousand visitors that week alone. This past January, in conjunction with the 2006 ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, the Museum hosted a breakfast for competition officials. The majority of the visitors during this week were international.
How do you connect with the patrons outside the Colorado area?
One of our long-range plans is to implement a large scale e-communications strategy. We began using PatronMail a year ago and are very pleased with the general feedback we've received from readers. Our "open rate" is currently 39.49% - above the benchmark statistic for other arts' marketers of 27.53%. Because of the international focus of the Museum, e-communication is the most cost effective and efficient method to reach our worldwide audience.
This
year we also focused on national and international figure skating
competitions as a way to promote the museum to a wider audience. For
the first time, we are hosting information booths at major competitions such as the 2006 State Farm U.S. Figure Skating
Championships in St. Louis, Missouri, or the 2006 ISU World Figure
Skating Championships in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As well as serving as a promotional tool for the Museum, we use our presence at these competitions to grow our mailing list by conducting raffles where we capture e-mail addresses!
Who is on your e-mail list and how have you grown it over the past year?
We have a diversified e-mail list which I keep segmented by group or organization. This is the most cost effective way to target our mailings. Our inaugural newsletter was sent early last summer to about 2,700 recipients (comprising donors from our 2004 annual appeal campaign, international skating federations and lists from U.S. Figure Skating).
Our most recent mailing was an e-postcard sent in early March 2006 about our online auction. It was sent to just over 3,900 recipients - a 44% increase over our inaugural mailing to 2,700.
We've grown our e-list in three major ways: patrons who sign up through the website; people who sign up through U.S. Figure Skating; and names collected from promotions or raffles at major national/international skating competitions throughout the year.
The raffles and promotion have been particularly successful. In
January, we held a weekend raffle at the 2006 ISU Four Continents
Figure Skating Championships in Colorado Springs to capture names for
our e-newsletter Reflections on Ice. We collected almost 500 names over the course of the weekend.
What has been your overall e-marketing strategy so far and how do you hope to develop it further in the near future?
E-mail is a large part of our overall marketing mix - even though we are just getting started! So far, our e-communications center around our e-newsletter Reflections on Ice which we mail bi-monthly. We also use e-postcards and news releases for specific event communications.
Our responses to these campaigns have been positive. For example, we used an e-postcard to send out information about a new book that the Museum co-published with the University of Illinois Press called, Figure Skating: A History, encouraging pre-orders before the book had been published. The e-postcard generated about 300 pre-orders of the book!
We are also using PatronMail and an online auction company, cMarket, to promote the Museum's first online auction which opened March 21 (www.worldskatingmuseum.cmarket.com) in conjunction with a benefit that Scott Hamilton is doing for the Museum on May 5, 2006. We plan to use e-mail heavily to promote both the event and the auction.
Beyond that, we plan to increase our e-marketing during 2006 - sending more e-newsletters and revising our website to achieve a consistent graphic look. We're also investigating ways to keep growing our e-list - a key factor in reaching our worldwide audiences!
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Announcing: National Arts Marketing Conference & Marketing Technology Pre-conference (April 29 - May 2)
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National Arts Marketing Project Conference: TECHNOLOGY SATURDAY - Pre-conference
April 29 - May 2, 2006, Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel
We invite you to register for the Technology Saturday pre-conference, a day focused on arts marketing technology, on April 29th. How are your Web marketing skills? Whether you're just starting to get into e-marketing, or want to branch out into more sophisticated media like blogging or podcasting, you'll find the Technology Boot Camps and Case Studies to be right up your alley. Visit the Web site now to register for your pre-conference!
Register before March 29 and get the Early Bird discount for both the conference and either Technology Saturday or Sponsorship Saturday. Don't miss one minute of the conference, with sessions on Branding and Re-Branding, Pricing Strategies, New Tools in Data Mining, Building Latino Audiences, Audience Retention Strategies and much, much more! Visit Americans For The Arts for a full list of sessions, registration and hotel information!
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Click here to learn more and/or to register
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Please watch for our next Monthly Update, coming April 25, 2006.
Our mailing address is: 850 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019
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