California Symphony goers know her as the sharply dressed orchestra executive who addresses the audience before every concert. To peers in the field, she is a thought leader and sought-after speaker, with a reputation for challenging traditional thinking and established practices in orchestra management. Since becoming Executive Director in 2014, the California Symphony has been Aubrey’s proving ground to try new patron loyalty and marketing strategies—and with audiences growing, performances added to satisfy demand, and a growing family of donors at all levels of support, we think she may be onto something.
Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer. Clockwise from left: Playing tuba at Rice University, TX; practicing in sixth grade (sitting on a pile of books so she could reach the mouthpiece!); with Music Director Donato Cabrera; presenting at a League of American Orchestras conference in July.
We talked with Aubrey about her experience in arts management, her pathway to the California Symphony, and why she believes so passionately in changing the narrative for symphony orchestras.
California Symphony Orchestra: We hear you decided you wanted to be an Executive Director when you were in high school, which is pretty unusual since most people don’t even know this is a profession until much later in life. Tell us more.
Aubrey Bergauer: I was 16 years old. I grew up in Houston playing tuba in the youth orchestra there, after winning an audition for it in eighth grade. Two years later when I was a sophomore in high school, the orchestra went through an executive director change. I remember at the start of rehearsal one day, the new ED was introduced, and they said maybe one sentence about what that role was.
For me that was the lightbulb moment: “There is a job managing this entire operation,” I realized, “and that’s the job I want.”
CSO: Having identified that goal, how did you plot your career to achieve that end?
AB: My background has always been in the arts — from playing an instrument very seriously growing up, to graduating with degrees in music performance and business from Rice University, to my first job out of college at Seattle Symphony. I started there in the development (fundraising) department planning all the donor stewardship activities for individuals of all giving levels, foundations and corporations, and planned giving/bequest donors.
Then one day, Seattle Opera called and wanted me to bring my event planning experience to oversee their young patrons club for attendees in their 20s and 30s, called the BRAVO! Club (originally modeled after San Francisco Opera’s club of the same name). Around that time, digital marketing and social media were emerging marketing tactics, and I became fascinated with them. I so clearly remember being the kid in the office pushing for us to be one of the first major arts organizations to set up a Facebook page and Twitter account, and diving into the data that came from digital advertising — and using that information to inform what worked. Suddenly, things that used to be subjective choices (What color should this ad be? Should the ad have this headline or that one?) became testable, measurable, and completely data-driven objective decisions. That rocked my world and completely changed how I viewed marketing because it took a lot of the guesswork out of it.
After nearly six years at Seattle Opera, my role had expanded to lots of different single ticket initiatives, audience development work, the digital and social media growth and tracking, several technology projects (website content, videos, live streaming, mobile development, among others) funded by a major grant award from the Wallace Foundation, and filling in on managing part of the subscription campaign (a big portion of the company’s $10 Million earned revenue goal) while two senior colleagues were on leave at the same time.
In early 2012, the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival — the nation’s largest urban arts festival which draws 120,000+ people to Seattle Center (think where the Space Needle is) each year — brought me on as their marketing director. At the time, I was so nervous to step outside of classical music, and quickly came to love it because of how it opened my eyes to a broader world view, from the genres of music to the types of marketing tactics I was employing, to the organizational culture. During my time there, revenue grew by 43% — a stat I thought I’d never see again in my career because that’s some serious growth — and little did I know that in 2014 a small symphony orchestra in Walnut Creek, California was ripe for that kind of growth and more.
That year, the California Symphony brought me on as Executive Director, my first time at the helm of an organization, and now I’m in my fifth season here. This was the place I decided to come to put together everything I had learned from my previous jobs, where I had developed a lot of ideas and opinions on strategies for marketing, fundraising, programming, and how to grow and retain a loyal audience. At the time, the orchestra was on the verge of collapse, but I saw the fundamentals were there: a fantastic artistic product, an amazing social justice El Sistema-based education program, and a composer-in-residence program that was nationally known for launching the careers of several of today’s most prominent living composers. “This is a mission I can get behind,” I remember thinking, “one I can raise money for and build a following for.”
Four years later, we have nearly doubled the audience and nearly quadrupled the donor base. Almost every season has ended with a surplus, so we’ve nearly eliminated the past debt the organization had accumulated, and now we’re growing the endowment in addition to continuing expanding our programs and number of people served. I am so proud of all we have achieved here — what a ride it has been!
CSO: You often talk about how we like to do things a little different at the California Symphony. What does that mean to you in practice?
AB: It means a lot of things! Sometimes this means a fairly significant departure from the traditional schools of thought for orchestra management, such as how we are dogmatic about not soliciting someone for a donation [via direct mail and telephone] until they are a second-year season ticket holder. (The standard approach for most arts organizations is to start soliciting for donations and subscriptions after someone’s first visit.)
Usually though, “doing things a little different” means we’ve made many small changes — from trying to eliminate technical musical language or jargon in our materials, to swapping long, effusive marketing copy for bullet points on “what’s interesting about this concert,” to printing in the program book that people can clap when they like what they hear and keep their phones on (and silent) — and all of that adds up to a full approach to serving our patrons differently.
Industry colleagues ask me all the time if we’ve alienated our core concertgoers, i.e. loyal, longtime patrons, by doing these things, and the answer is that the response has been emphatically positive because everyone sees that the concert hall used to be half full and now it’s packed. Everyone, whether that’s new attendees or longtime attendees or the musicians on stage, feels the energy from a full house, and it’s just so much more FUN that way. And our season ticket renewal rates support that sentiment.
Doing things differently: How the California Symphony’s performance stacks up against national averages in recent years.
CSO: You’ve been writing a blog since 2016. What do you write about and why?
AB: I write about all the things in the answer above, meaning I write about the need to put our customers first, the deep need for a focus on patron retention/loyalty in this industry, and how the music itself is not the source of any of those problems.
Yes, I believe that really traditional orchestral programming of all the same old music needs a refresh (and I write about that too), but it doesn’t matter how much we tinker with the product when there are many elements of the concert experience that are unwelcoming, intimidating, or just confusing to a lot of people who don’t have a lot of prior knowledge of the art form (which, because of the declines in music education, is a lot of the population). So I write to help us all collectively as arts administrators put some intention behind what is often unintentionally happening at our organizations.
Lastly, when I started this blog and still true a few years later is that I write to not just talk about the challenges our organizations face, but rather, what we’ve actually done to try to address them. And the hope is that others reading find it helpful in their work too.
“I keep your blog posts printed out on my desk, as a mini-bible of creativity / fantastic outside-of-the-box thinking.”—An Arts Manager fan of Aubrey’s blog
CSO: What is your vision for the future of the California Symphony?
AB: I love that the name of this orchestra is so big. A name like that means we can vision and grow to be almost anything: we can serve more people, expand our geographic presence, and continue to be a leader for our peers across the nation.
CSO: What is the proudest achievement in your career to date?
AB: On a project level, it’s the Orchestra X project hands down, because of the way it so radically changed my own views of the patron experience.
On a larger scale, the turnaround of the California Symphony will always be one my proudest achievements. Five years ago, it almost closed the doors, had massive debt relative to the size of operating budget, and almost no cash to continue. Bringing this organization back from the brink and using all the research, retention efforts, and patron focus I’ve mentioned above to do that has forever changed my approach to orchestra management. I talk a lot about changing the narrative for symphony orchestras, and this organization is proof that it absolutely can be done.
Be a part of the success! Support the California Symphony’s Crescendo Your Impact fall fundraising campaign and when you give by Oct. 31, 2018, your gift is matched dollar-for-dollar and your impact is DOUBLED.Orc
Your donation supports:
A season of exciting concerts featuring amazing professional musicians and stellar guest artists — all right here in Walnut Creek
Sound Minds — providing intensive music training and transforming the lives and futures of local children in one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the state
Emerging composer talent through the highly-regarded Young American Composer-in-Residence program
Three years ago, the California Symphony changed its approach to audience development, employing a long-term strategy that resulted in increased concert attendance, audiences getting younger, and more donors.
The problems in the orchestra world of declining audiences, aging audiences, and audience turnover have been well articulated, belabored even. In response to these problems, we as a field often talk a lot about incremental gains and successes such as an orchestra that sold 5% more tickets than last year or trimmed expenses enough to balance the budget. Make no mistake, these are big successes under the current model, but when we know as an industry that our fixed costs will continue to rise and outpace the operational tweaks and incremental revenue gains we can achieve, the model needs to be reexamined. This is a post about solutions.
To give away the end of this story, over the last three years, after a calculated change in approach to audience development strategy, the California Symphony has seen profoundly different results from the national trends for orchestras:
Through reconstructing a new audience development strategy, in addition to the results above, the California Symphony grew its operating budget by 40% over this time period and ended this last fiscal year with a 10% surplus.
This post discusses first what the current/typical audience development model looks like, followed by reasons why organizations do it this way (spoiler alert: there is a long list of explanations in support of the traditional approach, which are barriers to change for many organizations), and ending with counter points on how and why changing the model is worth it, namely because there is big money on the table, which in turn allows us to better serve our mission.
Arts organizations have a lot to offer to our patrons, which is why when a first time attendee comes to a concert, what ensues is essentially a marketing and development free-for-all: that person goes right into all our campaign mailings for subscriptions (“New blood! They came once so they must be willing to at least consider season tickets!”), right to the phone room for telefunding (“They clearly like us enough to attend, so they might be willing to make to a modest donation!”), into all the single ticket marketing efforts like email and online ads (“They completed a purchase on our website, so we are smart and savvy and have that tracking cookie showing them ads everywhere now!”), and into pretty much every direct mail solicitation for single tickets or for donation appeals (“Recent attendance is a great indicator of future engagement!”). That’s a lot of offers and messages…and by a lot I mean a deluge. Then, this same free-for-all takes place again if that person becomes a repeat attendee (“Now they really must be interested in us!”). Then all again if someone takes a chance on a season ticket package, large or small (“They drank the Kool-Aid! They obviously must want to consider donating now!!”). At some point around the time someone becomes a renewing donor or major donor, we sort of get our act together and often have a pretty clear path of next steps for cultivation and stewardship.
The audience development free-for-all model that is the current approach for most arts organizations.
To a degree, the current model works. Organizations do make money, and a lot of it, this way. But when 90% of first time buyers don’t come back — a well-documented national stat from Oliver Wyman’s “Churn Study,” made famous by former head of marketing at the Kennedy Center and later Vice President of the League of American Orchestras Jack McAuliffe — this is a problem. And when first year subscribers — a critical group because we know that being a subscriber is the number one indicator of future donation proclivity — are the hardest segment to renew, averaging a 50% or less renewal rate for many organizations, that’s a problem. It’s a giant pipeline problem we have created for ourselves.
In short, the California Symphony decided we would do everything we can to create a flowing pipeline. For us, this meant calculated changes to the approach described above, shifting to a strategy focused on patron retention. Now, no matter who you are, whether a first time attendee, or repeat buyer, or new subscriber, or long time donor, or anywhere in between, we have a specific plan for you and a specific next step in mind, and everything we do points you toward that one next step and nothing else. Equally important to what we do now is what we don’t do now, that is to say we do not solicit a donation before a patron is a second year subscriber. (This is usually when jaws drop.) The new approach is a long-term, disciplined strategy, and one that has proven lucrative for us: we’ve grown our audience by a sizable 70% over the last three years — having to add concerts to keep up with the demand — and have nearly quadrupled the number of donor households. We completely reconstructed how we do audience development, and we’re in it for the long haul.
The traditional audience development model versus the model the California Symphony reconstructed three years ago, offering one next step (and only one) to every audience segment in order to maximize revenue over time. Most arts organizations state they would like to see this type of logical customer progression, but almost none deliberately limit the next step offered to each customer segment.
In the latest issue of Symphony magazine (summer 2017), The League of American Orchestras said it best: “Surely, if the military is learning how to become flexible and adapt, orchestras can as well. To do so, they need constantly updated sets of tools and assumptions.” That’s exactly what this is all about.
Earlier this summer, I spoke on this topic — the idea of a focused and strategic audience journey — on a panel at a conference for NPR and public media marketing and development professionals, and during Q&A someone raised their hand and said to me, “Your industry is SO LUCKY to have this research [like the “Churn Study” mentioned above] …so why isn’t everyone doing what you’re doing?” The answer is because change can feel risky, and it turns out, there are several genuine reasons why organizations feel the risk and are reluctant to divert from the traditional model:
1. Revenue attached to old ways. Again, organizations do make money the current way. Some people do subscribe after attending one or two performances, and some people do make a donation when they’re called. And when we are dealing with a pipeline problem, it can be painful to purposefully limit that pipeline at first, such as when you’re pulling a list for a direct mail appeal — let’s say for a fiscal year end campaign when all the low hanging fruit for donations has already made their annual gift — and you know how many more people you could add to that mailing list if you pull recent single ticket buyers. It’s tempting to add those people to the prospect list because some will respond, and those moments make it hard to think about how we’re contributing to that 90% no-return rate because we’re making the wrong ask too soon.
2. Wrong metrics. Another reason change feels risky is because we often measure the wrong things. A bigger database is not the right metric, as an example. Bigger databases do not implicitly mean we are serving more people; a bigger database often means we serve a lot of people once, and that’s bad when our jobs are to cultivate loyal lovers of our art form. In the example above, a larger mailing list is the wrong measure. Looking at the response rate would be a healthier gauge of success (more on that below). Bigger is not always better, and bigger is almost always more expensive (more on that below as well).
3. Short term emphasis. True especially post recession, there is incredible pressure to run our organizations with short-term outcomes. When I was first brought in to the California Symphony to lead a financial turnaround in 2014, one major institutional funder said to me that if we did not immediately have balanced budgets for the next two years, consecutively, then they would pull their funding. And they said this knowing the organization was in crisis and knowing I was implementing a three-year turnaround plan (largely built on the audience journey strategy outlined herein); nonetheless, the directive was firmly to balance the budget in one year. (Side note: we did it, but talk about pressure to NOT take a long-term approach to sustainability!) I pick on that one funder, but the truth is nonprofit leaders see that kind of pressure a lot. Not just from funders, but from watchdog organizations like CharityWatch and GiveWell, etc. And from our boards as well. When the budget does not balance, how often does the board want plans and ideas that promise a quick fix? By the way, if there truly was a quick fix (besides cuts, which are the epitome of a short-sighted solution), wouldn’t we all have implemented that fix a long time ago? The short term pressure is real.
4. No culture for failure. This stems straight from the point above. We all have lean budgets with little to no room for any experimentation to try new things. This isn’t because no one wants to experiment, or find a new model that we all know we need, it’s because we usually must have every penny go toward everything else we’ve committed to do as an organization. We all have top notch artists, quality programming, and education initiatives that make a difference. Failure to fund on any one of these fronts because an experiment did not result in a profitable outcome in its first iteration is not an option. As arts organizations, we need money in an organizational culture with no real appetite for failure — or innovation, or even delayed gratification — because a lot of us simply cannot afford to have a miss.
5. Don’t know how to do it differently. Having siloed departments — particularly siloed marketing and development departments — and a focus on acquisition (both patron and donor acquisition) make it so that our staffs don’t always intuitively know how to do work a different way. We are taught that acquisition is key, and in a broken system, it is, because we have to fill the declining audience and short-term revenue voids somehow. We are taught, in different words, to treat new patrons like a land grab. “Who ‘owns’ those names?” we ask when trying to figure out a way for marketing and development to play in the sandbox together, when the reality is that’s the least customer-centric question we could be asking. Patty McCord, who served for many years as Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, recently said (on the FRICTION podcast with Stanford Professor Bob Sutton) about maintaining a customer-focused culture, “Siloes are just gonna slow you down…Companies that are really, truly successful are collaborative and solving for the customer, and you can’t solve for the customer in siloes. You can’t do it.” As an industry whole, we sort of know only one way to do audience development and don’t really know how to do it any differently.
6. Don’t have the discipline. Maybe this is in the category of “Don’t know how to do it differently,” or maybe it points back to an emphasis on short term revenue, or even not having a culture for failure. Back to the example of wanting to run that fiscal year end appeal mailing list, when we first instituted this new strategy, we could have mailed to twice as many people if we had included recent single ticket buyers, and we all know that some of those people would have made a donation. In a time when we were digging ourselves out of the ditch financially, it was incredibly difficult to have the discipline to say, “No, now is not the right time to be making a donation ask of this group. Instead, we will wait until people from this group are renewing subscribers when we know they are times over more likely to respond, give more, and ultimately renew that gift. We’re vying for a higher lifetime value of these patrons.” Also, having discipline takes time, and that’s a currency we don’t really have, which brings us to last reason we keep doing things the current way.
7. Don’t have time. We often don’t have time in two different ways: 1) no time to wait for results of a longer term strategy, and 2) no time in the work day to even think about changing the status quo. To the former, it takes a while for the full process of having a first time attendee come back as a repeat buyer, then get converted to a season ticket holder, and then to renew that subscription, and then finally to have the chance to solicit them for a donation. For the marketing folks, those first few steps from new attendee to subscriber can happen in a year or so if all goes according to plan (which when you are disciplined, it does nicely play out that way more often, but I’m getting ahead of myself). For development folks, however, that’s at least two years of patiently waiting to get their hands on those prospects, which is very different than the current approach. To the later point, changing the approach means time in the day is spent differently — not adding more to the plate (which feels impossible at times), but mixing up that plate a bit.
So when that person at the public media conference asked why everyone isn’t doing things differently like the California Symphony, I actually laughed a little. “You think public radio is slow to change?” I said, “NPR is not even 50 years old. Try working for an orchestra — we’re working against centuries here!”
There may be revenue attached to old ways, but there is way, way, wayyyy more revenue attached to a disciplined, strategic approach. Through shifting our focus from patron acquisition to patron retention, the California Symphony has grown performance revenue by 145% over the last three years. That’s while increasing both single ticket and subscription sales. By comparison, the national average is 4% growth in performance revenue with subscription revenue on the decline (source: League of American Orchestras “Orchestra Facts” report, 2016). Yes, that’s insane. Lest anyone think this is through price increases alone, total subscriber households have grown by 37% over this same time period compared to the national average of 18%. Oh, and our prices have held flat the last two of those three years, except for dynamic pricing on single tickets, which when performances are consistently selling out as they are now, you better believe those last minute buyers are paying a pretty penny because supply is scarce and they didn’t plan ahead. We’re not talking about Hamilton tickets here; we’re talking about an orchestra defying the national trends for the industry by smartly responding to the ample research available to us.
Contributed revenue follows suit despite us actually soliciting fewer people than before. In fact, the California Symphony’s percentage of subscribers who also donate actually surpasses the national average: 28% nationally versus 52% here. If we take out first year subscribers from that count since we don’t solicit that group, this means 71% of all season ticket holders who are asked make a donation — two and a half times the national average. Total contributed revenue has grown 41% for us (national average is 20%) in conjunction with nearly quadrupling the number of donor households. One last data point: after adjusting for inflation, the national average for total income growth 2010–2014 is 5%; yet from 2014–2017 and also adjusted for inflation, the California Symphony has grown total income by nearly seven times that at 34%.
It’s worth mentioning that we’ve realized expense savings, too. Now that virtually every mailing list for marketing and fundraising appeals is smaller and more targeted, it simply costs less. We now put that money toward other things, like talent development and innovative programming.
If the wrong metrics are things like the size of our database and how many new names we’ve added to our list trades, then metrics that reflect how the audience is engaging with us and responding to our work are the right ones. In other words, metrics that measure retention and loyalty matter. If attending our organization is a bucket list item for people — meaning they come once and check us off the list — we’ve done something very wrong. And for 90% of new visitors nationwide, this is exactly what’s happening. Who cares if the database is gigantic if none of those people have any future value to us, especially when all the research shows that converting a customer to a second/repeat visit within 12 months of their first experience makes their lifetime value skyrocket. While lifetime value of a patron is incredibly difficult to measure with most CRMs, we can measure 3-year value or 5-year value of patrons who’ve gone through the old model vs the new model…which is very telling. Or in its very simplest form, we can measure annual patron revenue and associated expenses when the focus is acquisition versus patron revenue and associated expenses when the focus is retention.
People often ask how we have achieved the financial results that so dramatically outpace our peers, and the answer we give is that we’re playing a long term game. We may have said no to some short-term revenue in year one of this transition, but by year two we were seeing across-the-board growth, and now long-term results heading into year four of this strategy are undeniably counter to the trends at most orchestras. When our organizations have such an over-reliance and emphasis on short-term revenue, admittedly the most difficult, risky feeling part is at the beginning. The opposite is also true though: doing it this way — this long term, disciplined, strategic way — feels really right and really smart, and the revenue follows. Our art form matters too much to not be in it for the long haul.
This is easier said than done, but it can and must be done, and it does actually get easier. Going back to that foundation’s mandate to go from years of big shortfalls to a balanced budget in one season, we did it by recalibrating how we spend our money per this reconstructed plan, and that year the budget was indeed pretty lean. But by year two of the new model, the organization had built into the budget several new programmatic experiments. Yes, we actually had risk capital by year two. In year three (this past season), we ended the fiscal year with a 10% surplus and paid off/eliminated a portion of the organization’s accumulated deficit. In year four (the upcoming season), we have the most conservative budget we’ve passed yet and it includes another 10% surplus which will further eliminate deficit as well as pay for a feasibility study to grow our endowment (i.e. which would result in another expanded revenue stream for the orchestra) — what a virtuous cycle!
If siloes make it difficult to do this work, discipline makes it easier. “Process slows you down 100% of the time,” continues Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix (in the same FRICTION podcast quoted above), “But discipline can often speed you up.” At the end of the day, people want to be on a winning team, and sending the right message to the right people at the right time results in higher response rates, lower campaign expenses (marketing and development, digital and direct mail), and a lot more money to fund our mission. We’re no longer scratching our heads trying to figure out how we’re going to make the revenue goals when subscriptions are down, or stressing over who else we can add to that fiscal year end solicitation because we just need more names (side note: we didn’t even run a FYE campaign this year because we knew we were ending in the black, and instead sent a thank you mailing to all our donors…what a change of pace that was). It took us three years to get to this point, but it has worked.
If all this sounds like a lot of work, it is. It does take a lot of work to pull a report of first time attendees after every single concert, and then to send each of those people a postcard inviting them back again, and then to follow up with an email reiterating how much we’re glad to have them and reinforcing the discount offer to come back, and then sending yet another email reminder approaching the expiration date of the offer. It takes work to pull the list of multi-buyers (i.e. repeat attendees) after each concert and send all of those folks a wine voucher to add value to their next experience, or to run three different versions of the season brochure and five different versions of the renewal invoices so the right people get a tailored solicitation for a donation upgrade and the not-right-yet people don’t. But it’s different work than what we were doing the other way. We’re not running all those lists and scripts for telemarketing and telefunding, we’re not paying for all those hours of phone calls because we’re not calling most of the people we used to. We’re not running around doing tons of list trades and flash sales because our acquisition mailings need to be bigger and prices lower if we have any hope of selling those empty seats. We’re not pursuing empty corporate sponsor leads with the board, and instead building the list and file notes for board members to call and personally thank donors who gave less-than-major-gift donations because calls to this group have made a dramatic impact on renewals and particularly upgrades (which is part of the “one next step only” plan to get that segment closer to major gift territory). We cut out all that old, somewhat desperate feeling work and replaced it with work that matters over the long haul instead.
Once again, in its simplest form, this is all about pipeline and solving a pipeline problem. At that same NPR conference session on audience journey earlier this summer, the moderator said to her colleagues in the room that we need to not call the audience journey a funnel, because things drop out of a funnel. “We need to call it a pyramid,” she said, “because that’s building up. Users climb higher when our place in their lives is more indispensable.” She was so right.
An added benefit in tandem with the revenue gains the California Symphony has seen due to reconstructing the audience development model — and also a direct result of the UX work we’ve done on audience experience, which has served to strengthen that first timer foundational level of the pyramid — is that our audience is getting younger. The graphs below show that among subscribers and single ticket buyers, fewer people are in the 65+ category, about the same percentages are ages 45–64, and more people are in the under 45 crowd.
So there you have it: through a new model focusing on the customer over the long haul, an orchestra has realized an increase in subscribers, a growing single ticket buyer base, more donors, and an audience that’s getting younger. Just like the League said in that Symphony magazine article this summer, orchestras can and do adapt, and all we need is an “updated set of tools and assumptions.” I hope this post helps to do exactly that.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-averse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
Originally published at medium.com on August 14, 2017.
In case you missed it, here’s a round up of happenings at the California Symphony, including news of some fine new additions to the orchestra; a behind-the-scenes encounter between a local high school student and our Composer-in-Residence at the May finale concert, and exciting new grants awarded to us in support of the Sound Minds music education initiative.
The California Symphony, now in its fifth season under the leadership of Music Director Donato Cabrera, is a world-class, professional orchestra based in Walnut Creek, in the heart of the San Francisco East Bay since 1990. Our vibrant concert series is renowned for featuring classics alongside American repertoire and works by living composers. The Orchestra is comprised of musicians who have performed with the orchestras of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and others, and many of its musicians have been performing with the California Symphony for nearly all its existence.
Outside of the concert hall, the symphony actively supports music education for social change through its El Sistema-inspired program at Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, CA, which brings intensive music instruction and academic enrichment to Contra Costa County schoolchildren for free, in an area where 94% of students qualify for the federal free or reduced price lunch program.
We also host the highly competitive Young American Composer-in-Residence program, which this year welcomes its first female composer, Katherine Balch.
California Symphony was the first orchestra to collaborate with Postmodern Jukebox, whose vintage cover songs have garnered over 500 million views on YouTube.
“You say you want to change and want to attract new and younger audiences, but everyone says that. Do you actually mean it?” asked Aubrey Bergauer of Board President Bill Armstrong as she was interviewing for the job of Executive Director in 2014.
“Well, we just cancelled our longstanding annual gala if that’s any indication,” Bill replied.
Fast-forward a few months: Bergauer took the job with the directive to “get new people in the doors” and knew there was a giant revenue line in the budget for some sort of new, to-be-determined fundraiser event in place of the old gala Ball. Her first week on the clock she reached out to Postmodern Jukebox — a band with a tremendous YouTube following for their vintage renditions of pop songs, led by trained jazz pianist Scott Bradlee — and asked if they would be interested in collaborating with an orchestra for a Roaring Twenties style party. What a “supremely awesome request” was the response from the band’s manager. The event went on to achieve triple the attendance of the last gala with more than half of attendees being new to the organization. And, here’s the kicker: the average revenue per patron who returned in the year after the event (i.e. their value to the organization in the 12 months following their first interaction with us at this event) was $438 in ticket sales and donations, all completely new money the organization had not previously seen. That’s not chump change, especially given these people’s previous value to us was zero. In fact, the ROI per each returning patron was 1403% in just one year.
Unpacking this success, there were a lot of things we did as we revamped our special events. In this business, it’s never build-it-and-they-will-come; it’s always work, and a lot of work in a very short period of time is what we hustled to do:
Location/venue. We knew if we were going to attract a different demographic, the country clubs of yore were out. Instead, we held the event on a rooftop in nearby Oakland.
Location = 3 acre rooftop garden with a view of the tops of Oakland skyscrapers
Introduced a new ticket type. Not everyone can afford a $500 ticket, so we introduced what we called a “Cocktail Ticket,” which was $125 and included the performance, plus two drinks, plus appetizers. No full dinner, and no guaranteed seat, but plenty of ambient seating options and cocktail tables to gather around. We sold a lot of these, and this was the entry point for most new people. We also offered our standard $500 dinner ticket and hosted tables, and those folks enjoyed the best seats at tables right in front of the stage, a full three-course meal, and hosted wine all night as usual for high-end special events at that price.
Left: Dinner ticket buyers (higher price more typical of a gala with prime seating and dinner); Right: Cocktail ticket buyers (lower price with drinks, appetizers, and dance floor)
Intentionally sought out young volunteers. Younger audiences need to see others that look like them lest there be any hope of them returning. So we sought out young, fun, smart volunteers. They dressed the part, and we received many compliments from our long-time patrons that the volunteers brought a great energy and were incredibly friendly and helpful.
Volunteer selling raffle tickets. Guests took notice of the young, friendly faces.
Black tie, schmack tie. Newsflash: some people like to dress up and some people don’t. So we said either way was ok. And we encouraged dressing up in the theme even though we weren’t sure how that would play out among our guests. Almost everyone dressed up — whether as the embodiment of the Roaring Twenties or in their designer gown — and everyone looked pretty fabulous either way.
Attendees young and old dressed up, some in the theme and some black tie.
Memory elicitation. If you’ve read our other posts on patron retention, you know this is something we care about a lot (even more than attracting new people). We knew that getting these new attendees to come back again was where the real challenge resided in terms of making all this work worth it, so we created a station where guests could write postcards (fitting with the theme and the new invention of airmail in the 1920s), to themselves or to friends, to whoever and as many as they wanted. After the event, we stamped and mailed all of them, and all those guests received their own memory elicitation device reminding themselves what a great time they had. Note: we also followed up with our regular first time attendee retention efforts.
Station for writing postcards (that we actually stamped and mailed after the event), because the new invention of airmail is the fastest way to communicate in the 1920’s.
Stellar performance. We (i.e. all performing arts organizations) blow people away at our regular concerts, and we (i.e. the California Symphony) wanted to do that here, too. Postmodern Jukebox is known for putting on incredibly entertaining shows (they even have a professional tap dancer!), and we knew that adding an orchestra would only enhance their performance. And we were right; PMJ and the musicians of the California Symphony rocked it. A question we’re often asked is how the musicians felt about it. The answer is good, and almost all their comments were in fact very similar to what we heard from patrons: “What a fun show that was! That was so awesome to see so many new people! Everyone was really into it!”
Performance with Postmodern Jukebox, their first orchestra collaboration.
Didn’t call it a gala. Never once did we call this event a gala — not internally or externally. We gave it a name, Speakeasy Symphony, and we developed a new vocabulary for how we talk about our events. Instead of saying “gala,” we use words like “fun” and “entertaining.” We know, this is [not] deep. But before you think George Merriam and Noah Webster are rolling in their graves, consider the business we’re in, the entertainment business, and at the end of the day, we are vying for people’s entertainment dollars. In other words, we now don’t ask, “What can we do for our next gala for it to really be a great fundraiser?” Instead we ask, “How can we create a program or event that is interesting and entertaining and FUN?” We have proven that if we can do that, people come and then the money follows.
What do you do after an event like that? How do you follow it? Two main tracks emerged for us in our event follow-up:
1. Use the data to see what worked.
2. Plan next year’s event to be just as good, but different.
We have said again and again on this blog that new audiences are NOT the Holy Grail. New audiences matter, and yes, as a field, we must be cultivating new audiences; however, getting someone to attend for the first time is not the end goal. Most orchestras are very successful at getting people to come once; it’s getting those people to come back a second time and ultimately cultivate a longer-term relationship where most of us actually need to focus.
So we did that. We invited those newcomers to return again and again, and it played out like this: now, two years, later, 11% of those first time attendees have returned. In the first year after the event, only 5% had returned, which on the surface, to us sounded really horrible at first. We dug deeper and learned that for those who did return, the average revenue per patron over the following year was $438 in ticket sales and donations. As we said at the top of this post, that’s $438 in new revenue per person in just one year that the California Symphony had not previously seen, and it’s a lot higher than the one-time ticket price that patron paid originally (remember, most of those new people originally came in at the $125 cocktail price….one year later they are spending $438 a year on average, which is nearly two and a half times what they originally spent — THAT’S not too shabby we decided.).
As we set out to plan the following year’s special event fundraiser, we loved the idea of using a non-traditional venue and knew we wanted to keep that element. We also knew we wanted to strike a better balance between new attendees and our core audience. Side note: perhaps this is a consideration more relevant to small and mid-size budget organizations because when you only have 6–7 concert sets a year, it’s really difficult to argue that any of those shouldn’t serve your core audience well.
A new event, called Cirque du Symphonie (think Cirque du Soleil with live orchestra), was the answer to that, and we did land a healthier mix of new attendees versus core audience:
More of our core patrons wanted to come. Closer to a 60/40 (returning/new) split instead of over half being new like it was for Speakeasy Symphony.
New attendees = 37% (again, reflecting a better balance of new and returning patrons)
New donors realized through the event = 30%
New patrons who have since returned (at the time of this writing, we are nine months after the event) = 6%, which is on par with, albeit slightly ahead of, the trend we saw after Speakeasy Symphony (which was 5% first timer return in 12 months following the event).
This season, we are coming up on our third year of this revamped special event series as we celebrate the orchestra’s 30th anniversary. The theme is “Symphony Surround,” and the orchestra will literally surround guests at dinner tables as they perform. Lined up is superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers who had a connection to our orchestra when she first performed here at the young age of 24; she returns now in gratitude for the California Symphony’s role in launching her career. Plus, it’s at another rad venue: the Blackhawk Automotive Museum full of one-of-kind classic cars (even the non-gear heads will enjoy the vintage bling on these cars).
Symphony Surround is the third iteration in the California Symphony’s newly designed special event model.
In summary, special events — like almost everything else we do as arts organizations — are hard and getting harder. Board consultant Chuck Loring said it best at a recent board development seminar produced by the League of American Orchestras, “We have to ask ourselves how special events fit in with our overall stewardship plan. We have to make sure we are creating repeat donors. Before you ever plan another event, you should first decide what the second date is AFTER this event before deciding to do the event in the first place.” Here, we are constantly asking ourselves if the juice is worth the squeeze, and at one point nearly four years ago, the board decided the answer was no, it wasn’t worth it, at least in its then format. We took a risk (which in hindsight wasn’t really much of a risk since something needed to change) to hit the reset button and completely re-imagine the way we thought about fundraising events for our organization. And we’ll never look back and say the word “gala” again.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-averse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
Pictured: a mock-up of the envelope used in the California Symphony’s July 2016 fundraising solicitation.
Just about every arts organization runs a donation campaign as they approach the end of their fiscal year. The California Symphony is no exception as it’s the last chance we have to raise the funds necessary to end our season in the black. The problem is that this mid-summer deadline where we close the financial books on one year and begin another is important for us as an organization, but not in any way relevant — even arbitrary, perhaps — in the eyes of the donor. In other words, this is among the worst times and reasons to raise money.
Despite all that, not running a fiscal year-end fundraising campaign this year was not an option. We needed the money. An added parameter was that we needed to continue broadening our donor base, because our database of potential donors looked like this:
So this summer, we decided to run an experiment to answer the question: how can we tap the largest segment of our database — the people who have had no interaction with us in the last three or more years? No concert attendance, no donations, no special events, no free tours of our education programs, nothing. Zero interaction. Think about that. The largest group of untapped potential in our database is the people who care about us the least. Ouch. To make this even more painful, this absent group is not MIA for lack of us trying: they receive mailings with information for every concert, invitations to special events, and of course other donation appeals about three times a year. And if they’re on our email list (which a little more than a third of them are), they’re hearing from us even more. That’s a lot of effort we spend to invite people to engage with us, and for whatever reason it has all fallen flat for this group. In fact it has fallen flat for three years (and longer for some!).
So what do you do to get this group’s attention? Offer them a chance to have us leave them alone.
Usually, giving someone a chance to opt-out of communications is marketing suicide. That’s why unsubscribe links at the bottom of emails are so tiny and buried…no one wants to actively direct your attention to the place where you can escape all their wonderful marketing and fundraising messages. However, we rationalized that when everything else we’ve done for the last 3+ years has had no effect on this group whatsoever, something — anything — needed to change.
At about the time we were coming to this conclusion, Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer came across the work of University of Chicago Economics Professor and Department Chair John List. He and his team had published a handful of case studies where they partnered with a few large non-profits who purchased mailing lists for their fundraising solicitations. They frequently refer to these purchased lists as “cold lists,” as opposed to “warm lists” which contain people who have made a donation in the last three years. John List and his team experimented with these large non-profits, and in a mailing to 800,000 names (that’s a huge solicitation by the way — nearly a million people!), they offered a test group an option along the lines of “give now and we’ll never bother you again if you check this box.” They also mailed to a control group without the “once and done” option, as they aptly called it (give once and you can be done with us forever). The results were fascinating to us:
They raised 3 times more money from the “once and done” group than the control group
Only about 30% of the respondents actually checked the box
It did not reduce future mailing results
We decided we would try this with our own cold list. Not a purchased list of strangers, but with our own database of people who had gone cold, that large segment of people who had no interaction with us in three or more years. Risky? Perhaps. But what was the worst-case scenario, we figured? Worst case #1: someone who had no desire to interact with us anymore mails us back without a donation and checks the box. In that case, we agreed, we’d remove them from our mailing list per their request and we’d stop wasting money on someone who not only doesn’t want to hear from us, they’ve not produced any revenue for us in at least three years. Worth it, we decided. Worst case #2: people give, but a lot of them ask to be removed from the mailing list. Let’s just stop at the first phrase there — when has “people giving” ever been a problem? Especially in this scenario when these people were otherwise basically dead to the organization. Worth it, we decided. Worst case #3: People just don’t get it, don’t care, or it’s not an effective piece. That would be no different than everything else we’ve tried for the last 3+ years with this group. Worth it. Best case: some people who were cold as ice suddenly jump back in with a donation. Not even a ticket sale, but a cash-is-king donation. WORTH IT.
Over the next three months, we got to work executing the campaign. We developed special campaign materials for this group with “Once & Done” branding. We even added a line to the envelope that said “Make one gift now and we’ll never ask you again,” just to help ensure the open rates were as high as possible, because the first hurdle with a cold group like this is to get them to even look at your envelope for more than two seconds before tossing it into the recycle bin, let alone get them to actually open it and — gasp — read it.
Sample of the appeal letter and actual return slip from one of the “cold” prospects who made a donation after having no account history with us for several years. The red check on the return slip was made by a staff member when they processed the gift.
The mailing hit homes right after Independence Day with a deadline of July 31 (i.e. the end of our fiscal year, which was the impetus for this whole campaign), and the letter talked about the successes of the past year and how we were 94% towards our income goal for the season. (Side note: this idea of listing the highest percentage toward goal possible also came from John List’s research; his data showed that the closer you are to your goal, the more people are likely to give and the higher the average gift received. This is contrary to most nonprofit “best practices,” whereas usually, the industry standard is to publicize when you are at 60–70% towards a campaign goal. So we included that stat as a secondary test — it was true, we were very close (94%) to balancing our budget for the year — in every version of our appeal letter, not just to this Once & Done group.) Here’s how it all played out:
The Once & Done group resulted in 24% of all campaign donors. Of our other segments solicited (i.e. other appeals to people who did not get the “once and done” message such as ticket buyers, subscribers, recently lapsed donors, etc.), only our current, existing donors came in with a higher percentage of campaign gifts.
The Once & Done group made 17 timesmore gifts compared to the year prior, and generated nearly 15 times more revenue.
The side experiment of listing our very high progress towards goal in every prospect group’s letter resulted in exceeding last year’s totals in every category.
[Updated 9/19] Seven different households of the Once & Done group purchased tickets to attend our season opener concert. Extra fascinating given that they had gone at least three years without attending.
How many people checked the box to have us never contact them again? Only 5.
Just for fun (and full disclosure): we did have one donor mail us back an envelope containing only a dime and two pennies. But they didn’t check the box…
A few more clarifying notes that hopefully are helpful to those who have read this far:
For this experiment, we mailed to a lot of people. Normally, we don’t mail to every person in the database (too costly to always do that!) and generally target people who have interacted with us in the last 4–5 years. We wanted to make a special exception for the purpose of this experiment and mail to accounts that were older and colder, just to see how it would pan out.
This fall we are taking a deeper look at which “cold” people are better prospects to come back into the fold than others. For example, is a person who purchased season tickets three years ago but not since more likely to donate with this type of solicitation than a person who donated five years ago (but not since)? And how do these people compare to someone who came to a special event fundraiser dinner three years ago but hasn’t interacted with us since? Is there any difference in likelihood to donate between a donor who gave four years ago versus five years ago? All of these questions are being explored as we head into our next big fundraising campaign this fall.
And speaking of our next big campaign…shameless plug: through November 4, we’re running what has proven to be our largest fundraising campaign of the year for the last three seasons, a matching challenge where every donation up to $200,000 will be matched dollar for dollar. If you’ve enjoyed reading about the work the California Symphony is doing in this or other posts, please consider supporting these efforts by joining the campaign at any amount and having your donation doubled by the match.
Lastly, we have another plan for this inactive/cold group that we’ll be implementing before this year is over with the specific goal to get them back into the concert hall. We’ll tell you all about it in a future post.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-averse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
To be fair, getting new audiences is part of the answer, but it’s not the full answer, and that’s where so many arts organizations miss the mark. And that’s also why we’re starting this blog: to tell others what we’re working on, sharing information with our constituents, the community, and the orchestra world at large. For whoever is interested, really.
Pictured: Music Director Donato Cabrera with the California Symphony after a fundraiser concert in June 2016. Photo: Lindsay Hale
Three years ago, the California Symphony was about to close its doors. Donations and ticket sales were down, concerts were half empty (or filled by papering the house, i.e. comping tickets), the original founding music director and the Board parted ways, and the organization was without an executive director for about a year. Then the Board did two very smart things: 1) hired Donato Cabrera as the new music director and 2) hired Aubrey Bergauer as the new executive director. Cabrera was at the time the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony just 25 miles away from the California Symphony’s home base in Walnut Creek, and Bergauer came from Seattle where she had a decade in management experience at the largest performing arts organizations there. In 2013, Cabrera got to work rebuilding the relationship with the musicians, and one year later Bergauer came on board and got to work rebuilding an audience.
In just two seasons, the California Symphony has grown number of tickets sold by 140% and has nearly quadrupled the number of donor households (180% increase). Looking at earned revenue strictly from subscription concerts (i.e. ticket revenue from our regular season and not counting ancillary events), the California Symphony is up an average of 25% per concert. So how exactly did we accomplish this? We looked beyond getting new audiences, and instead focused on audience retention. Most orchestras don’t have a problem attracting new people. It’s getting those people who give it a try once to come back again that’s a challenge. Now, no matter who you are, from a first timer just checking us out, to a season ticket holder, to a long time donor, the California Symphony has a thoughtful and strategic plan for you, and this post examines two of the groups we have deemed essential for retention. Some of these tactics are things other orchestras are doing. Some are not, and even at the nation’s largest performing arts organizations, rarely are the marketing and development departments working together and taking all of these steps.
Definition: People who are brand new to the organization, or who have not attended in four or more years.
How do we find/track them: new and different ad formats (digital, mobile, remarketing); direct mail via list trades with other organizations; earned media. After each concert, we run a list of new ticket buyers from our database to determine patron history.
This group is in many ways the most work and even the most critical in that we as arts organizations have a limited window of time to capitalize on a new person’s first interaction with us, and if we miss the boat, the consequence is that we can miss out on thousands of dollars of revenue over the life of that patron. Each new attendee receives a postcard as soon as possible after they attend for the first time thanking them for joining us plus inviting them to return again with a discount offer valid for their choice of the next two concerts. It’s worth mentioning that this postcard is designed using the color scheme of the marketing materials for the concert they just attended, thus reinforcing the experience they just had with us. Also, there’s no picture of the music director because new people don’t necessarily know or care much about who the person is waving the baton (not to worry, we focus on developing this later); this postcard is all about coming back at a discount. We have these postcards pre-printed and ready to go for each concert, so as soon as we have the final ticket buyer list, we can send these cards out right away.
A week later, this group gets an email with the same information and discount code, making it easy to click, click, click and get their next ticket. We also include a deadline on the discount (on the printed postcard and reiterated on the follow-up email), because the response rate is always higher when there’s a deadline creating a sense of urgency. And creating a sense of urgency to return is exactly what we want: research shows that the lifetime value of a patron who returns to an arts organization within one year of their first attendance skyrockets compared to when the organization can’t secure that return visit. With this group of people, we are taking every step we can think of to get that return visit.
Examples of first time buyer postcards, color coordinated to match the marketing for the concert they just attended. The message is always “Thank you for coming! We love you and we want you back again soon!”
A few more notes on this group: after this initial follow-up, these patrons are added to our regular email and mailing lists for future ticket solicitations. They are NOT, however, added to any fundraising solicitations or even season ticket solicitations. No subscription offers, no donation appeals, no telefunding. The only next step we desire for this group of people is for them to come back again to another concert, and that’s the only thing we offer them…again and again with open arms. This is very different that most other arts organizations.
Definition: People who have attended more than one concert in the same 12 months, and preferably within the same season.
How do we find/track them: This group is found from our database; we pull this list after every concert.
Once someone has attended a second time in the same season, this person becomes the most promising lead for a new season subscriber; therefore, we want to do everything we can to show this patron how awesome and wonderful it is to come to the California Symphony again and again. After each concert when we pull the list of first time buyers, we next pull the list of multi-buyers. Within one week of their second attendance in the same season (or year), this group receives a snail-mailed thank you communication, which this time isn’t just a postcard, but a card inside an envelope (a little more fancy) that says we’ve noticed they’ve joined us a few times recently, and we want to thank them with a voucher for a free glass of wine on their next visit. By the way, this voucher has a clearly printed expiration date for the end of the season, again creating a deadline and sense of urgency. This group is flagged in our database as a multi-buyer and goes right onto the list for season ticket solicitations going forward. For people who become multi-buyers at the end of the season (i.e. their second attendance with us is at the end of the concert season), we still send their voucher with an expiration date for the upcoming season, and then over the summer they are included in our season ticket mailings.
Examples of Multi-buyer thank you cards, designed to incorporate the musicians and maestro. The message is always “The Symphony keeps getting better; let us enhance your experience and help you form a habit of coming here.”
Note that this piece does now include Music Director Donato Cabrera and the orchestra. By the time someone has come twice in the same year, we want them to start getting to know the artists that make the music happen. Not that we didn’t want that to happen before per se, but the mental shift one makes after coming for the first time (“crossed that off my bucket list”) to coming a second time (“this is an activity I enjoy enough to repeat”) warrants the distinction in how we try to market to each group.
This past spring when we were in our renewal period for current season ticket holders, we tried a little experiment where we mailed our multi-buyers from the past two years a season brochure and subscription information at the same time as all our existing subscribers: We allowed them to subscribe to the number of concerts of their choice and pay up front for their desired seating section, and we took notes on all their seating preferences (not too close to the front, outside aisle would be ideal, in the balcony is fine but only the first three rows, etc.) so that when the renewal deadline for existing subscribers hit, these multi-buyers who had chosen to subscribe were first in line for us to assign their seat. This resulted in getting season ticket materials in front of these top prospects earlier than if we had waited until after the renewal period was over (a typical timeline for many arts organizations), as well as providing them priority to be at the top of the queue. AND, whenever any of these patrons asked why they couldn’t be assigned a seat yet, it gave us an opportunity to explain to them that one of the benefits of being a renewing season ticket holder is that you’ll have first right of refusal on keeping your seats next year, so by becoming a season ticket holder now, you’ll be ahead of the pack and guaranteed your same seats this time a year from now. Most people really liked that we were so protective of subscribers’ seats and wouldn’t give anyone else’s seat away until after the deadline, and we made a lot of money this way, converting more patrons to season ticket holders earlier than normal.
Lastly, if you’re reading all this and thinking, “what’s the point in all this?” or if you work for an orchestra with limited resources (newsflash: we all have limited resources, so you’re not alone), then follow this exercise to see why this matters to us: Let’s say for each concert, we have 120 first time buyer households (this is about right for the California Symphony), and we know our return rate for first time buyers is 18% (some are responding to the discount card they received, and some are purchasing at full price since we look at people who have returned within a full 12 month period). That means 21 households from any given concert return in the same year. We send those people drink vouchers and a little over 10% of that group becomes season subscribers (2–3 households) at about $1000 each. That means we’ve generated $2,000-$3,000 in just one year from patrons at ONE concert off an original cost of $330 (that’s $150 for the first timer postcard + $75 for the multi-buyer card + $105 beverage vouchers redeemed per concert). Multiply that times the number of concerts in the season, and we’re generating thousands of dollars in incremental revenue from these efforts and seeing an ROI of up to 800%. And that’s just in one year. That’s not even scratching the surface of the lifetime value of these patrons.
This is a look at just two segments of our audience, and we hope you can see how the California Symphony has dramatically changed the way we think about these important groups over the last two years. For us, the call is not to “get new audiences;” it’s about how we can be laser focused on getting those newcomers to return again. We have plans like those described above for every audience member, including groups we didn’t talk about here like first time subscribers, renewing subscribers, first time donors, renewing donors, special event attendees, and the less fun segments of lapsed donors, subscribers and ticket buyers. Some of this we’ll share in future posts (update: like this one), as we have tons more data, tons more stories, and tons more ideas that we’re working on now as we’re looking to the future. The theme through it all is that we’re an orchestra doing a lot of things differently than we used to. We’re changing the narrative, and it’s working. More to come.
Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director, California Symphony Aubrey Bergauer defies trends, and then makes her own. In a time when most arts organizations are scaling back programs, tightening budgets, and seeing declines in tickets and subscriptions, Bergauer has dramatically increased earned and contributed revenue at organizations ranging from Seattle Opera to the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival to the California Symphony. Her focus on not just engaging — but retaining — new audiences grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club (young patrons group for audience members in their 20’s and 30’s) to the largest group of its kind nationwide, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to quadruple the size of its donor base. From growing audiences, increasing concerts, and expanding programs to instilling and achieving common goals across what are usually siloed marketing, development, and artistic departments, Bergauer is someone you want to follow — on the nationally-recognized blog she created to discuss what actually works in a changing arts landscape, and in real life, too.
A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, for the last 15 years Bergauer has used music to make the world around her better, through programs that champion social justice and equality, through ground-breaking marketing and audience development tactics on the forefront of technology, and through taking strategically calculated risks in a risk-averse field. If ideas are a dime a dozen, what separates Bergauer is her experience and record of impact and execution at institutions of all sizes. Praised for her leadership which “points the way to a new style of audience outreach,” (Wall Street Journal) and which drove the California Symphony to become “the most forward-looking music organization around.” (Mercury News) Bergauer’s ability to strategically and holistically examine and advance every facet of the organization’s mission and vision is creating a transformational change in the office, on the stage, in the audience, in the community, and going well beyond the industry of classical music.
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