Why e-blasts don't work

To please the modern customer, you need to make your product and your marketing strategies personal and convenient for your target audience.

A lot of e-blasts do not succeed in attracting customers for the very reason that they are not personal. If all you are sending are event or promotion reminders, if there's nothing more interesting or useful for the customer, your e-mails will be labeled as spam and deleted without a second thought.

Joanne Scheff Bernstein writes in her book "Arts Marketing Insights,"

"E-mail, like all other marketing tools, requires strategic and creative planning. Sending out an occasional e-mail message or blasting patrons with a series of frequent e-mail promotions when, for example, the organization wants to announce a special program or sell a large number of tickets to a production that has not sold well to date will not sustain interest and loyalty for very long. Each organization should develop an overall plan for e-mail marketing, just as it does for advertising, regular mailings, public relations, and other marketing efforts."

Besides being more personal, what are some of your plans for successful e-mail marketing?

Reaching the younger audience... without ads

According to "Arts Marketing Insights" by Joanne Scheff Bernstein, Teens are extremely marketing savvy, "having been exposed to more than 1,200 advertising messages per day."

Therefore, advertising needs repetition for the audience to notice, but because there are so many ads out there, advertising may not be your best route. True awareness likely comes from other sources like publicity and branding.

How do you reach the younger generation aside from ads?

Arts marketing and education cuts

I just started reading "Arts Marketing Insights" by Joanne Scheff Bernstein. I'm finding a lot of interesting tidbits in addition to the larger picture presented by Bernstein, and I want to share some of these marketing tidbits and my thoughts on them over the future weeks as I read this book. Here's the first:

"The lack of arts education in the schools in recent decades has created at least one generation of young adults who feel that the arts are not for them, that the arts are elitist and something not easily accessed or appreciated." (page 13)

Educational program cuts seems to be an increasingly controversial topic, and here we find its consequence in the arts industry. Younger people don't feel like they can be a part of the arts because they don't spend as much time around the arts as they grow up. The media portrays the arts like opera as a high and mighty thing not to be shared with the casual, average people.

The problem presents arts marketers with new opportunities, however. It is our job to fill the gaps left by a lack of arts education. Thus, many arts organizations are offering new educational opportunities to parents, schools and their children. Some companies are also focusing on reaching out to the more casual person who would not dress up for a concert.

It's time to adapt.

How are you adapting to the modern trends? How can marketers educate and reach a younger audience?