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Welcome to our July E-Marketing Organization of the Month, featuring PatronMail Client: the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
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E-Marketing Organization: Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs
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Maggy Fouché, Director of Marketing for the Chicago Dept of Cultural Affairs
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PMail Client Since: July, 2002
Starting e-list size: 294
Current e-list size: 14,670
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs was created over 20 years ago as a municipal department dedicated to providing arts and cultural services for the city and its citizens and visitors. With a huge programming mandate that includes supporting a wide range of cultural venues, events, arts groups and individuals, the department aims to serve the people of Chicago by nurturing, enhancing, complementing, and marketing the city's cultural resources.
Maggy Fouché, Director of Marketing, is responsible for overseeing a large part of the department's promotional initiatives including their flagship event (Grant Park Music Festival) and venue (Chicago Cultural Center). With the help of e-mail, Maggy and the Department are seeing some great results...
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Q & A with Maggy Fouché, Director of Marketing
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To begin, Maggy, describe your role at the Chicago cultural office and the different programs that fall under your jurisdiction.
I am the Director of Marketing for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs which means I handle all marketing activities for Grant Park Music Festival - the nation's only free, municipally-supported, outdoor summer classical music series. Founded in 1935, the Festival is a beloved Chicago summer tradition, performing about 35 classical music concerts from June to August each year. These free concerts are made possible in part by a membership program that provides access to a reserved seating area for individuals who donate to the Festival.
Also, I am responsible for audience development, membership, and visitor services for the Chicago Cultural Center, one of the most comprehensive free arts showcases in the United States. The Chicago Cultural Center annually presents hundreds of admission-free exhibitions and performances, and is one of the top ten cultural attractions in Chicago.
How has e-mail factored into the marketing strategies for these two programs in particular?
E-mail is a significant part of the overall marketing strategy for both the Cultural Center and the Grant Park Music Festival - it has allowed us to save on costs for marketing materials; increase the quality and frequency of communication with our constituents; gather audience demographic data; and increase audiences.
The Cultural Center issues a monthly event e-newsletter to approximately 10,000 patrons. Sending these e-newsletters has not only increased public awareness of all the many programs available here, but has also helped promote an identity and "personality" for the 100+ year-old building, once a public library and now a cultural gathering place for the citizens of Chicago.
For the Grant Park Music Festival, the importance and success of the e-mail newsletter has been particularly dramatic. During the performance season (June - August), we e-mail program updates and other season news on a bi-weekly basis. From the campaign reports, we know that our readers are very interested in receiving our information, with open and click-through rates that usually exceed the PatronMail benchmarks.
You've made some interesting discoveries about the kinds of information your patrons are looking for in the newsletters. Tell us what you have found out about the Grant Park Festival constituents.
In focus group research conducted at the end of the 2005 Grant Park Music Festival season, we learned that access to the music and the artists was the most important feature desired by members and potential members (more than special offers and discounts). And e-mail has become a key feature of our campaign to provide this access.
Because of the patrons' great interest, we decided to continue the e-mail newsletter during the off-season, switching to a monthly mailing schedule. The newsletters contained information about off-season activities, audition announcements, artist profiles, etc. Campaign reports proved that interest in the Festival remained high; open rates were consistently at 40% or higher.
We recently participated in an audience-building initiative with other Chicago-area classical music organizations, promoting each other's events by including ticket offers, discounts and Web site links in our e-newsletters. This successful cross-promotion was a win-win for all participants, promoting concerts to interested patrons and generating additional revenue for participating organizations at no extra cost. However, while response to ticket and discount offers was always satisfactory, click rates made it clear that our readers were most interested in the Festival's season and membership program.
You had great results to your membership drive for this year's festival. Tell us about the success, and how e-mail played a role.
For this year's festival, electronic media, including e-mail, formed an integral part of our membership campaign - with very satisfying results. In March (a few months before the festival opened) a print brochure was mailed to past members, providing various methods for joining the program again, including online. This was followed in April by a mailing to new prospects.
A membership solicitation e-mail was timed for release with the second mailing and the response to the e-mail was extraordinary: the click rate was close to 10% (far above the PatronMail benchmark of 4%). Visits to our website jumped, and the number of members who joined online was the highest in the Festival's history - 55% of total membership sign-ups, as opposed to 45% for the year before. This is remarkable considering that the majority of the Festival's membership are in the over-50 demographic category - exactly the group that everyone thinks doesn't use the Internet.
In the May issue of our e-newsletter, news about an upcoming season preview on the local fine-arts radio station drew a click rate of 8%. Online membership sign-ups remained strong, and in early June the membership program reached capacity and had to be closed - much earlier than in previous years.
How have your discoveries about your e-marketing strategies affected your plans for future campaigns and online initiatives?
During the 2006 performance season, e-mail continues to play an integral role for the Festival. We've added a new benefit where members receive a weekly e-mail of special offers, last-minute updates, and complete and unedited program notes. The open rates for these exclusive e-mails remain high, and we frequently hear from members about how pleased they are with this service.
The e-mail program has helped the Festival provide the "insider" access that members want. It has helped generate an increase in our membership program while keeping acquisition costs low. The obvious success of this program demonstrates the importance of electronic communications strategies, even for older patrons, over traditional direct mail and print methods.
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Watch for our next E-Organization of the Month, coming August 22, 2006.
Our mailing address is
850 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019
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