Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

Are you going to Denver? We are!

This is generally the time of year when we, and many of our colleagues, dash around the country to attend a variety of arts marketing conferences. Over the years, we've presented regularly at TCG, Opera America, the League of American Orchestras, etc.

This year, as you may know, all these arts industry groups are banding together for a mega-blow-out National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) conference in Denver. It will take place starting on June 11th, and I hope to meet you there.

Not only will we have a booth at the convention, but I'll be doing several seminars, including a special "add-on" session on Thursday, June 12 at 2:45 PM:

Cutting the Confusion: The Web Marketing Trends & Techniques That Really Matter

E-mail marketing, “Web 2.0,” blogs, texting, podcasts, online video – how can an overwhelmed arts executive sift through all of today’s new technology to find what is really working ? At this session, we'll help you cut through confusion and direct you to the most important things you should be focusing on to optimize your online marketing -- no matter the size of your budget.

• You'll hear research results from a February '08 study of 80,000 arts patrons which reveals what they are looking for online
• You'll get tips on e-mail design & how to deal with spam and delivery issues
• You'll learn how to super-charge your e-mail list sign-up with text messaging
• You hear how podcasting, blogs, and video can help build your Web site traffic to sell more tickets and increase donations.

If you're coming to NPAC, I look forward to greeting you at this session, or at our booth.

Click here to see a list of all the sessions we're participating in.

Senior-itis

I got some flack about my last post, because it didn't seem like it was possible that older folks were online more than younger ones. I do buy that argument, so I'm going to try to make amends here.

Let's have at it from another perspective. Here's a study from Focalyst that does a better job of framing the opportunity to market online to seniors. As you can see below, "gathering information" and "travel planning and reservations" are in the top five categories of what this audience finds useful to do online. And, by extension, we already know that making ticket purchases online is now preferred by this audience.

What's also fascinating is that apparently folks over 62 notice Web advertising more than younger people. My guess is that younger folks are more adept at tuning out these ads. All of this bodes well for our ability to continue to reach and motivate this culturally active generation.

Banishing the Myth: Part 284

For the last six years I've been fighting the myth that older arts patrons aren't online as much as younger people. Many arts executives make the assumption that marketing online really means marketing to a younger audience. To a large extent, that is true - but there's plenty of evidence that older patrons are in fact online as well.

Our research has shown this for years, and the trend is getting stronger. In fact, in our 2008 Arts Patron Research study, 45% of people over 55 said that buying online was their preferred method of buying single tickets for arts events.

As such, I wasn't surprised this morning when I saw this chart from a recent study by JupiterResearch and Ipsos Insight which shows that folks over 55 actually spend more time online than younger people.

I do find this report a little suspect, because it says that multi-tasking isn't taken into consideration. But JupiterResearch is a respected outfit, and since this data squares with what we have seen for years, I think it's more true than not.

I feel like I ought to do a seminar titled "Marketing Online to Audiences over 55." 

Canadian Facebook Fascination Hits Home

I was in Toronto this weekend speaking at the annual TAPA Trade Forum, presented by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts. This was a full day of seminars, all about marketing and other arts-related issues in Canada. I'll have more on my thoughts about Toronto later this week - however, today I want to focus on an incredible statistic I heard at the conference, and an even more incredible experience I had when I got to work this morning -- all having to do with Facebook.

First, according to what I heard at the conference (and this article), Toronto has over 1 million Facebook users. Apparently half of all Canadians are online, and 80% of those people are also on Facebook. That probably describes why during one of the morning sessions, the speaker, Sean Howard, summed up his wishes for the Web this way: "Why do I have to go to any other sites? I just want everything on Facebook!" Clearly I thought something must be in the water up there in Canada more than just the basis of great beer, since so dramatically many Canadians are addicted to Facebook.

But then when I got to work this morning, we welcomed back Lily, who had just spent the last 10 days on vacation in Japan. I happened to take a peek at her Facebook page last night wondering if she had posted anything after she got back. I noticed she had already uploaded some 60+ pictures of her trip, complete with annotations. 

The interesting thing is that I wasn't alone. By 9:15 this morning I had talked to 8 of our staff members, and 6 of them told me that they had already looked at Lily's pictures as well. And the two that hadn't done so admitted that they were away from their computers yesterday, otherwise they would have.

As a marketer, clearly Facebook is a phenomenon to pay attention to. However, something to remember is that nobody is making any money advertising on Facebook. And it's not clear that arts organizations get much more than bragging rights when they create their own Facebook pages. Indeed, Facebook as a company has yet to prove it can do much more than aggregate an audience. It's certainly not a business yet. But then again, neither was Google until it invented AdWords.