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12.27.2005
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Volume Three
Issue Twelve
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For our final newsletter of the year, we're interrupting our normal pattern of interviews with arts marketers to offer you a wrap-up and predictions by Gene Carr, Patron Technology's president. His comments are meant to be a thought-provoking way to start the new year! Read on...
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Year End Wrap-Up with Eugene Carr
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Eugene Carr is the founder and president of Patron Technology. PatronMail, the company's e-mail marketing software system, is used by over 600 arts and cultural organizations in the U.S. and the U.K.
Gene is a regular guest speaker at arts industry conferences and is the author of Wired for Culture: How E-mail is Revolutionizing Arts Marketing (2003), Sign-Up for Culture: The Arts Marketer's Guide to Building an Effective E-mail List (2004), and Web Sites for Culture: Essential Principles for Great Arts Web Sites (2005).
Prior to founding Patron Technology, Gene was the founder and president of CultureFinder.com, an award-winning arts information portal, which was funded by America Online and Comcast.
In the Q & A that follows, Gene shares his insight into the big picture of e-marketing for 2005, and predicts where the medium is heading for 2006 and beyond...
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Q & A with Eugene Carr, President of Patron Technology
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Gene, to begin, tell us what online trends and developments you've been watching closely over the past year.
Let's start with some history, ancient history in Web terms. About a decade ago when I was working with the then-upstart company AOL, I attended a conference in which the big buzz word was "convergence."
The idea was that eventually all information (whether in text, audio or video format) would eventually be digitized. Then, that information would be accessible on a compact and affordable device - like a telephone or Palm Pilot, which was wirelessly connected to the Internet with a super-fast connection. In essence, your wireless experience would be as fast and would have as much quality as your radio or television does today. I believe this vision is what fueled the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
What's been unique about this past year in my view, more than any other year recently, is that we're now seeing the light at the end of the convergence tunnel.
Let me give you a few examples. Apple has released a video iPod, and has forged arrangements with TV and movie studios to allow users to download content that plays on it. The iPod was initially a music player, but it's clearly evolving into much more.
It will be interesting to see how Apple handles the wireless challenge, since there are already services that allow you to download streaming media directly to your telephone. Will the iPod morph into a telephone? There are now mini-computers that are all wirelessly connected, all leading the charge towards disconnecting the Internet and putting access to the Web at your fingertips essentially 24/7.
A few weeks ago, AOL made an announcement that they were creating a service called In2TV, which will stream re-runs of television shows which cannot command airtime on traditional television or cable. They are betting that this "back-catalog" distribution of content will have the same effect Amazon found when it put a world of back-catalog books and CDs online. They found a huge demand for items not immediately available in the stores. I'll bet this will happen with television and with movies. It's going to be a few years more before this 'convergence' reality hits home for the masses, but I'm convinced it will.
How do you see this 'convergence' impacting the arts and nonprofit industries?
From an arts perspective, this has all sorts of implications. I'm not a believer that technology will replace the live event - but rather that it will enable and motivate more sales and visits. The creative use of video, from event previews to interviews and other more creative ideas, is bound to motivate patrons more than simple text and pictures.
As well as keeping an eye on online trends, you're a seasoned watcher of e-mail and e-marketing in particular (for both the corporate and not-for-profit worlds). What trends have you seen developing in e-mail technologies over the past year?
I do follow the industry carefully and I think this past year has been a turning point in the validation of e-mail as a bona-fide marketing tool in every marketer's toolkit. Witness:
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E-mail is now recognized universally as perhaps the most powerful online marketing tool. Savvy marketers are making increasingly large investments in technology, list-building and staffing of this new medium as the payoff is clearly warranted. We're definitely past the stage where people still think e-mail marketing is spam.
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Spam continues to be a problem, but more for ISPs and for e-mail companies like PatronMail in that we have to be diligent in ensuring that our clients' mail gets delivered. Unlike some corporate e-mail providers, we take responsibility for our clients' mail being delivered and we maintain excellent relationships with ISPs and are part of the coveted "Bonded Sender" program, which helps ensure good deliverability.
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Spammers are being counter-attacked: There is a huge amount of investment in the corporate and venture capital world to solve this problem. Both entrepreneurs and ISPs sense there's a lot of money to be made if they can find "the cure" so to speak. There are all sorts of schemes and protocols being invented and tested. I'll bet 99 of 100 will fail, but one will work and the tide will turn.
As 2005 is coming to a close, give us a sense of how the year has wrapped up for Patron Technology. Tell us some of the notable developments for the company over the last year.
By any measure, we've had an extraordinary year. Our efforts to lead the way in helping the arts and cultural industry recognize the value of e-mail marketing are working. Our client base has doubled in size since this time last year, and we are thrilled to now work with over 600 clients in 45 states and 7 foreign countries.
Our partnership with Purple Seven in the United Kingdom has given us a presence in that country that is beginning to blossom, and during the next year we'll be giving demonstrations of their powerful Vital Statistics marketing analytics software system here in the US.
Their product is jaw-dropping in that even if you have disparate databases (fundraising, ticketing, marketing) it allows you to have an instant dashboard - giving you an overall picture of your organization's data as if you've got everything in one system. And, you can run countless reports to understand everything that dashboard is telling you - customized to your organization.
We've also been very active in the arena of education. Earlier this year, I published my third book on e-marketing, titled "Web Sites for Culture: Essential Principles for Great Arts Web Sites." I've also traveled around the country giving over 20 seminars as well as 8 seminars in cities in the UK. This past summer we offered a day-long seminar in New York, Chicago, LA, and DC which was so successful that we're offering it again this January in Boston, Philadelphia, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Seattle, and San Francisco.
We believe that educating the field about e-marketing is a critically important part of our mission and one that we'll expand during the next year. (We're even working on an idea for an e-marketing conference to be held in New York next fall).
We've also built several Web sites this year, most recently for Chanticleer and Washington National Opera, and we're becoming more active in that arena.
Our PatronMail E-marketing Add-ons (online donations, event registrations, contests, surveys and viral marketing tools) have all really taken off. And, finally, two weeks ago, we co-produced, with the Washington National Opera, the first-ever Internet-based press conference in the arts. Placido Domingo announced the WNO's new season which drew press reps from all over the country. We'll be talking more about this early next year in a special e-mail describing exactly how this works, and what the possibilities are for our clients.
If you could have one (business-related) wish come true this year, what would it be?
I'd like all our clients, and anyone that is thinking about becoming our client, to subject their current marketing to a strict ROI analysis -- because I know that when they do they will see that e-mail marketing (and e-marketing in general) when done well can provide the best return on investment of anything they are doing.
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Coming in January -- Full-Day E-Marketing Seminars with Eugene Carr, President, Patron Technology
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Jan 09 -- Boston
Jan 10 -- Philadelphia
Jan 17 -- Ft. Lauderdale
Jan 18 -- Houston
Jan 20 -- Seattle
Jan 23 -- San Francisco
The seminar is packed with facts, figures, tools, and techniques:
- Understand how arts patrons use the Web
- 10 smart tips for effective e-mail marketing
- Proven techniques to develop your E-mail list
- How to improve your Web site
The seminar is for anyone who is in charge of building relationships with a group of patrons or customers online. You'll learn what works and why, based on research and case histories from arts clients.
Register now!
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Click here for more information and to register online
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