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?

E-mail versus Social Media

Which is more effective? E-mail or social media?

More and more people are saying e-mail is old and not worth using, but Hubspot pointed out in a recent post that the two are good partners in keeping customers active. This is why it is so essential to MAKE CUSTOMERS AWARE OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. In addition to using e-mail newsletters to promote your events and products, use e-mail to promote your accounts. I can't emphasize this enough. And you can always use your social media accounts to promote your e-mail list, as well.

What are the most important elements for a successful e-newsletter?

Tips for best e-newsletter practice

E-mail newsletters are about more than making customers aware of events. You need to personalize them and send them out on a regular basis in order to make them feel genuine and to keep them from making it to the SPAM folder. Use intriguing headlines, but short headlines, and put the most important information "above the fold." Provide features and stories, how-to's, anything that isn't just boring events. Give readers a reason to open the email, and give them an even better reason to read the email and click on its links.

Harmony Wheeler would like to share a passage from Breaking the Fifth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century "If you're really committed to building a relationship with your patrons, you've got to send them engaging, relevant, and timely information that will grab their attention and bring them closer to your organization. You're going to need to think beyond the common practice of sending "e-mail blasts" that go out at the last minute to drive ticket sales"