QCSO sells $20k in tickets with a single email

So much of marketing is about identifying who you want to build a relationship with. The obvious place to start is with the people you already know, but after that comes finding new people to invite into the growing community.

How do you let your people know how much you value them while engaging new and younger audiences to ensure your mission extends far into the future? These questions are at the heart of Quad City Symphony Orchestra’s (QCSO) marketing strategy.

Caitlin Bishop, QCSO’s director of marketing, said: “With each of our different types of concerts, we're looking to reach different people. So with our Masterworks series, those tend to be older folks with more time — often empty nesters.”

“We do some other things to attract younger audiences,” she said. “These groups may not be as interested in our Masterworks. They are, however, very interested in our movie concerts. We just did Beauty and the Beast and that one was a smashing success.” 

Nothing beats an email

Caitlin first heard about Feathr from the Kalamazoo orchestra, who consistently spoke highly of the platform. But from a practical side, cost and budgeting were very much at the forefront of the conversation. Caitlin said that ultimately it was a “no-brainer” for the team to switch.

Because Feathr doesn’t charge per recipient, QCSO is saving money on one of their key channels: email marketing. 

Caitlin said, “Since it's not any additional cost, we were able to lower our Mailchimp costs by $200 per month. We're gonna be saving over two thousand dollars a year by switching to Feathr email.”

She’s already experimented with a few kinds of emails through Feathr’s built-in email templates. One of her first tastes of success was with an email highlighting three of her upcoming shows. She said, “That first day, we sold $10,000 worth of tickets from that one email.” 

And that was only the start. Building on her success, she followed up with audiences that she knew were primed and ready to join them for a night of Harry Potter. 

She said, “We had even more data both inside and outside of Feathr, and we tracked $20,000 worth of tickets back to the email in Feathr.” It sure pays to have the right information!

Leaning into digital channels

Before Feathr, QCSO had partnered with a local newspaper for their print and digital advertising. And it had started off well, but with so many changes in the advertising landscape and with QCSO’s capabilities growing, Caitlin was left wanting more.

She especially needed greater visibility into current campaigns. Through the partnership, even if the campaign was a success, she wouldn’t know until it was over. She wanted to be able to course correct if things were off or double down on the things that were working, and that required transparency throughout the journey. 

She said, “We had been doing some pretty successful digital campaigns so I used a similar spend, but Feathr allowed me to check on it in real time. And if something's not working, I’ll stop it. With an ad agency, you don't have that freedom.”

To get her campaigns off the ground, Caitlin used Feathr’s prebuilt nonprofit marketing plans called Flights. “The Flight templates have been really helpful,” she said. “I tend to use the attendee acquisition one because that's most applicable for us. I generally start there and edit based on our needs. But that's our jumping off point.”

Keeping it simple

There’s an acronym from the military about design, KISS, which stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” It may not be the nicest acronym, but it captures an idea about effective design. Above everything else, it’s accessible.

And the idea doesn’t only apply to design, but to digital marketing in general. Caitlin knows that people require multiple touch points — especially in our noisy digital world — before buying a ticket. So she wanted to get an easy win with the people already attending a QCSO show.

Before or after a concert or movie, the QCSO team may highlight an upcoming program. But on top of this, Caitlin geofenced their own events, so that day when they were going to see Beauty and the Beast, they’d also be seeing ads for the upcoming Tim Burton series when they were browsing the web on their phone.

Some of these people may have already been on an email list, but what about someone who came with a friend? Or what if they showed up and bought a ticket at the counter beforehand? These are the people who are already sitting in the theater, so they’re the perfect people to invite to the next show.

Linking the digital with the real world

Even though Caitlin has taken QCSO’s marketing online, she hasn’t forgotten that people want to connect with them in the real world. At the end of the day, digital campaigns are only as successful as the number of people who walk through the doors.

“I use a lot of tracked link campaigns,” Caitlin said. “Anything that I can't run directly through Feathr, I drop a link on it so I can figure out if it's working. I tend to send out one direct mail piece per concert, so I created a QR code specifically for that. I also have a link on our YouTube ads and our Meta ads.”

This is one of the simple ways that Caitlin links their direct mail campaigns and other digital campaigns to her Feathr reporting. In today’s digital world, people need quite a few nudges before taking an action. And Caitlin wants those nudges to happen through a digital ad as much as she wants them to run into a poster outside the grocery store.

But she wants to see everything herself. And she wants it in one place so that she can quickly put the pieces together and make the best decisions for how to move forward.

Caitlin said, “With Feathr, we’re being more efficient with the money we’re spending. And I’m — like most nonprofits — working with very limited marketing budgets. So the more effective a return on investment you can get, the better.”