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Howard Levine, Director of Web and Creative Services at the 92nd Street Y since 2001, has over a decade of arts marketing and design experience for organizations including McCarter Theatre Center, The Newark Museum, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive. Howard is part of an executive team responsible for maintaining and increasing the public profile and revenue opportunities for the Y.

In addition to his leadership of creative direction and traditional arts marketing, Howard helped develop the information architecture and design of 92nd Street Y’s e-commerce Web site. He leads a Web department responsible for new media that includes segmented e-mail, the Y blog, the Y Web site, search engine optimization, and Internet advertising.

Howard was featured as our "E-marketer of the Month" earlier in June, and this interview picks up where that one left off. You can read the first part by clicking here.

You’ve grown your list substantially since starting with PatronMail – what methods have you tried, and which have had the strongest results? Is there a particular segment of your list that’s grown the most?

We are very proactive in getting the word out about our e-mail newsletters ("eNews"). Our seasonal print catalog, the Y’s main selling tool, has call-outs in each subject area with a direct URL to get people to sign up to the appropriate eNews segment. Our print ads, posters, flyers, etc. all have eNews subscription pushes. In addition, we announce eNews sign-up in our telephone on-hold messages and from our stage, give out flyers in our classrooms, and insert stuffers in our performance programs and ticket mailings. Our Web site also has a link to sign up for eNews on every page.

Our center-based eNews writers/creators have a real sense of ownership in the eNews segment they send to. This encourages them to find innovative ways to build up their segments and keep their eNews fresh and relevant to their readers.

One program that has been very successful is an usher competition. Ushers hand out eNews sign-up forms at all performances and actively encourage audience members to fill out the sign-up forms which they then collect. Our ushers are given incentive to do this with a contest. Ushers that collect the most sign-up forms in a month win cash and prizes ranging from $50 to two free airline tickets donated by our generous partner JetBlue Airlines. We started this program four months ago and have generated about 1,800 sign-ups to our eNews lists.

Our lists have grown from 13,400 subscribers to 17,600 since we began sending segmented eNews with PatronMail: a growth of 4,200 in eight months. All our segments have increased in size, some of the standouts have been: 119% for Makor Community Service, 73% for Makor Talks and Classes, 57% for Makor Theater, 50% for Makor Highlights, and 48% for Y Children’s Activities. Also, our overall bounce and opt-out rates are very low (.52% and .11% respectively). Low opt-out and bounce rates confirm that we have not overwhelmed our patrons with e-mail and that they are actively keeping their e-mail address current with us to continue to receive their eNews.

A few months into using PatronMail we sent an online survey to our eNews subscribers asking them to provide us with some feedback. 15% of subscribers took the survey and 96% of respondents indicated they were very happy with the new format and frequency of the eNews they received.


What unexpected benefits have you discovered from your e-mail marketing program?

Our greatest achievement with eNews has been the ability to sell last-minute additions to our line-up, programmed too late to make it into our print materials. Most of our events happen one time and many must be marketed as a series (lectures, concerts, readings), not by the individual event. Traditionally, our seasonal catalog has been the driver of sales. It offers the complete listing of programs available for purchase.

In the past, if an event did not make it into the print catalog we had a very hard time selling it. There have been times when great events are passed up for fear of empty houses. With eNews we now have a very inexpensive way to get the word out on these programs, and to a loyal audience. We had proof of this in December when we added several political lectures with Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore, all booked after the catalog went to print. We decided to announce these additions first to our eNews subscribers. The eNews announcing these programs received a 36.4% open rate and 11.4% click through. Over 300 tickets sold in just a few days, directly attributed to this eNews.

Similar success has been achieved with other last minute additions. With eNews we are now confident that late-added events can be properly marketed and sold outside of our print materials. This has had a dramatic effect on how our event programmers think about what is possible for them to book.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share with other large presenting organizations out there? Anything that has worked particularly well for you?

Our eNews are designed to give enough information to entice and tease the reader to click to our Web site to find out more information and make a purchase. We do not simply repeat the same information that is on our Web site.

We are also careful to make the subject line of each e-mail specific to the contents. For example, an e-mail about upcoming lectures with Al Gore and Newt Gingrich would not simply have “Upcoming Lectures” in the subject line -- we would write the subject as “Al Gore and Newt Gingrich.” Names sell.

We have found the more specific the subject line, the more likely the e-mail will be opened.

Visit the 92nd Street Y's Web Site

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:

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Some new insight into just how far-reaching the spam problem is, and why that makes e-mail delivery so complex and difficult.


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