Orchestra X: The Results

The Orchestra X discussion about newcomers’ experiences at the California Symphony lasted 1 hour 20 minutes. They had a lot to say.

Back in August, we rolled out a new program called Orchestra X with the idea that arts organizations must change the way we think about new audiences, and specifically, must change our willingness to have hard conversations about the things newcomers hate, are turned off by, or are just uninformed about. We decided if we at the California Symphony are serious about cultivating new audiences, we better stop talking about how much we care about this elusive group like so many organizations do and actually take an interest in what this group has to say. So we put out the call for people who should go to orchestra concerts — millennials and gen-xers that are smart, have expendable income for entertainment options, and are generally culturally aware — but for whatever reason don’t attend. The set up was simple: come to a few California Symphony concerts and then tell us about it, and we promise to 1) listen only and not jump to defense (an exercise that proved tremendously difficult), and 2) share our findings with the rest of the world. This is that post about sharing our findings with the rest of the world. Get ready, arts administrators.

First, it’s worth pointing out that we held the discussion group at a local craft brewery and served pizza and beer. No wine. No hors d’oeuvres. No pretense. After dinner, we jumped into a facilitated discussion. Some of what we heard was expected and some was not. Sometimes the group agreed on certain elements of the experience, and sometimes they did not — proof that all millennials are not alike, and we should stop lumping them all together every time we talk about them. That’s lesson number one, and below is rest of the feedback we heard, organized by general topic.

“It seemed a little like ‘inside baseball;’ insiders would know these things, but seems like you might be able to engage people with more layman terms.”

“Every time you [change domains, as when buying a ticket], it makes the overall event seem like less of a professional operation if it’s not as seamless.”

“Is this piece going to be more fast paced? Is this one going to be more romantic?” “We can’t tell from the composer…It’s almost like ‘is this a romantic comedy or is it a tragedy?’”

Smart people want information. Some smart people are willing to take extra steps to find it, such as in the case of one Orchestra X participant who manually looked up every piece on the program on Wikipedia before selecting the concert he wanted to attend, but most people aren’t willing to make the extra effort all on their own. This is not lazy when you consider that they’ve already taken the steps to 1) decide that coming to hear an orchestra is something they might enjoy versus other entertainment options (a huge marketing victory — yay brand awareness!) 2) come to our website (a huge marketing victory — go-go gadget remarketing campaigns!), and 3) browse around to find the concert(s) they are moderately interested in attending (a huge marketing victory — a navigable website!). Then, they get to step 4): make a decision on why they want to attend a specific concert, and our response is essentially “WHY CAN’T YOU FIGURE OUT WHY RACHMANINOFF’S SECOND SYMPHONY IS A BIG DEAL? LOOK IT UP IF YOU WANT TO KNOW!” (marketing failboat — why do we set up our sites this way, and then wonder why the sales funnel is getting choked up at the add-to-cart step?).

Through the discussion, it became clear to us that we buried way too much information in paragraph or sentence form. “Some information was in the paragraph language,” said a participant, “but when you don’t go to these things regularly, that made it harder to know what makes going to this concert special.” We’ve since updated all our concert landing pages (examples here and here) to have bullet point content, use less technical language or jargon (or explain those terms when we do use them), and in a time where, as one participant put it, “You’re competing with 140 characters on Twitter about Trump and Hillary,” we made these bullet points much more casual. For the arts administrators reading this thinking that swinging the copywriting pendulum too far could alienate your core concertgoers, consider that your most traditional attendees — your subscribers — aren’t the ones looking at single ticket pages. These pages are (or at least should be) specifically designed for single ticket buyers, who generally know less about the art form, hence why they’re less connected to the organization in the first place. Plus, we can be informative to smart, curious people who want to learn and want to know very much why each concert is special without dumbing it down. Casual and approachable does not equal dumb.

We also decided to link every piece to its Wikipedia article (opening in a new window so people aren’t navigated away from our site). There are several more ideas that emerged that we’d still like to implement, and we’ve included the full list at the end of this post.

“It’s really hard to find a seat next to a friend that’s already bought their ticket. And it’s hard to figure out what is a ‘good’ seat.”

“It wasn’t clear where the stage was until you looked a little closer. Had to assume that ‘A’ was the first row, but it never actually says…”

In general, this group is doing is what every ticket buyer always does: trying to weigh how much they want to spend versus how much value they receive in return. They were incredibly thoughtful about where was the right place to sit, and they admitted to what they called “being spoiled because of the seating apps for sports and concerts” that let you see where your friends are sitting and the view from every seat. Some arts organizations have fairly robust select-a-seat features, but for us, this was one of those areas where we had to just listen instead of jump in with the limitations of our venue managing this part of the sales path. Nonetheless, when LiveNation is the competitor for a lot of high-end events where the ticket prices are on par with ours, the standard is an easy login-with-Facebook feature where you can see which of your friends have already purchased and where they’re sitting, easy see-the-view from any seat in the venue, and easy checkout process that’s finished in 30 seconds. Oh, and then an easy email confirmation that adds the event to your calendar on desktop, phone, iCal, Outlook, or Gmail. Be honest: arts organizations of all sizes generally make it a lot more difficult than that to purchase a ticket.

This is a tough one for us. We have tried working with our venue to move ticketing in-house so we can fully control the purchase path, and we have come to a compromise that we fully manage the process for season subscribers during the renewal period. While this is a big step critical to serving our most loyal patrons, it’s not serving single ticket buyers — which now amount to more ticket revenue per year than subscribers in the latest nationwide data — so we have some work to do. Our venue’s website does have views from the various seating sections, albeit apparently not obvious at all as not one person in the discussion group realized this feature did exist, so we’ve identified this as a feature we can better promote. Additionally, we have made our website match the sales domain as much as possible, and we’ve sent the venue images to use in the sales path that match the style guide of the rest of the images on our own site. We have also added basic pricing info (a comment that came up multiple times: they had to get pretty deep in the purchase path before really knowing what a seat cost), and we took that as an opportunity to talk about dynamic pricing and why you can get a better deal when you don’t wait until the last minute to buy. Again, more ideas on what we’d like to do are at the end of the post.

“I wore my ‘Mr. Rogers’ sweater.”

“You hear ‘symphony’ and you think ‘oh my god that’s so expensive.’ Just the word ‘symphony’…knowing the pricing options that are available would probably aid or dismay my willingness to go.”

“I wanna pluck an oboe…do you pluck an oboe?”

The conundrum of what to wear brought about more drama and stress than we ever imagined. We never knew that attendees were that worried about how to dress for the symphony, especially in cool and casual California. And while we could laugh it off, we shouldn’t, because for multiple people, this really was an issue causing stress and concern, two negative emotions related to the experience we’re trying sell before the experience ever began. Additionally, we wrongly expected people to have a basic understanding of all the instruments in the orchestra, or at least what they’re named. Why, we realized, as arts administrators, do we preach that the decline in music education in this country over the last several decades is one cause of the decline in attendance, and at the same time, do nothing to help grown adults — the products of this lack of education — know “basic” information such as the names of the instruments. It’s not basic if it wasn’t ever taught in the first place.

One participant asked if there is “a separate webpage for younger people we could make?” What was so interesting about that comment is that this person assumed that they were in the minority as far as understanding answers to these types of questions. The assumption was that other, older people are much more familiar with the symphony when in reality, there is no magical age at which one suddenly becomes an aficionado. Yes, there are people who know a lot about the symphony, and many of that kind of person are already subscribers, so when we’re thinking about our single ticket sales (this conversation, this type of page on the website), maybe nobody (or very few) really have any sort of foundational understanding of the symphony concert experience? It’s our job to fix that.

We made a Newcomer’s Guide on our website. Plenty of other arts organizations have first timer pages, so there’s nothing revolutionary here, except that every question on it came from this group. That helped us write answers that are less stale and more honest; we felt like we were talking to a real person on the other end, and we were. We also reexamined our pre-concert emails (i.e. Your Upcoming Concert This Weekend). This is another area of working in partnership with our venue that needs more attention on our part. Currently, our venue sends final courtesy reminders to ticket buyers, but those reminders, we learned, don’t even include the California Symphony by name (!!!), or include other FAQs such as how to pre-order drinks or how you can listen to the music in advance on Spotify. Funny enough, we used to send our own in-house version of the performance reminder email but then stopped last season thinking it wasn’t a helpful service to attendees. We learned that couldn’t be farther from the truth when all these questions came up in the group discussion. Needless to say, our in-house performance reminder customer service emails are back in play now.

“It [program notes] sounds like a wine description.”

“It was so impressive — I didn’t expect it to feel THAT different than Spotify.”

“You go to a place to experience culture, but the lack of diversity made it feel un-cultured.”

“I was in awe. I felt awe.”

In an era where symphony orchestras keep trying to think about how to improve the concert experience (shorter programs! new formats! non-traditional programming!), we were blown away that this — the musical presentation — might be the last “problem” we as arts administrators need to be spending our limited time on solving. Almost every single comment about the performance itself was very positive:

“The music was GREAT.”

“It was so impressive to see it in person. The musicians are so good.”

“I liked the splendor of how it all comes together to make music.”

“I liked the slow build to the full orchestra playing. That was a nice ‘wow’ moment.”

“Live music — it was so good to see it.”

“Seeing it live was so different.”

“I enjoyed the performers performing and the complexity and passion about what they are doing.”

“It was nice to see the passion of the musicians and how much they were into what they were doing.”

“It was weirdly cool to not have to focus on other things.”

“[The composer] thought of all of this in his head so many years ago…that’s amazing that we are hearing this now, today.”

“Complete awe.”

The sentiment of complete awe was echoed by almost every person at the table. We were reminded that symphony orchestras do something that almost no other entertainment option can hold a candle to: be an immersive engine, this incredibly passionate (to use their word) force of sound and emotion, and this music — whether written hundreds of years ago or newly written — is hypnotic yet energizing, and untouchably beautiful when performed at the highest levels as our musicians so often deliver. The programming itself is not the problem.

Diversity is a problem though. So much so that it was the topic at last summer’s League of American Orchestras annual conference. It’s a problem in our audiences and on stage. The comments on this for us were validation. Not that we really needed it, but it hit home that all of us in this industry talk about how white we are, and yes, a first time attendee at our orchestra picked up on that right away, and yes, it did impact that person’s experience.

Other elements of the concert were a mixed bag. Program notes in particular had varying opinions (and a lot of discussion) from this group. While they all wanted more information in advance, some did not want to read the program book to find information once they were there, preferring to simply enjoy the experience and “take it all in.” Others did want to voraciously consume the information in the program book, but were universally quick to tell us how dry it can be. One program book success, we learned, was in storytelling. Almost everyone in the room remembered that Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony “should have never happened,” as one person said, “…it took a lot of gumption to write it.” We recognized the notes for that particular piece were largely focused on the narrative of Rachmaninoff’s life and that his first symphony was a disaster. One participant even said, “Whoever wrote that page should write them all!” To which we replied, “He did.” The fact was that the same person wrote all the program notes for every piece on the concert, and as the conversation unfolded, we realized they want to hear the story behind each piece, NOT the music theory behind it.

We’ve stopped stressing over the concert programming. We don’t have to do a movie concert, or ask if we need to do more pops, or wonder if we can get away with programming a lesser-known composer instead of Beethoven on every other concert. Not one person said, “I need a shorter concert.” Or “I don’t want to hear [insert any classical composer name here].” They do want to learn about all that though, and we as an industry don’t cater to that very well. As such, we have doubled down on our program book. We have already been in a transition over the last year and a half to make our book and the notes in it more accessible, and we have one of the greatest musical scholars who writes those notes; we’re now going to focus that writing on the juiciest parts of the stories behind the music (of which there are plenty of behind-the-scenes and salacious stories to tell in classical music!).

Lastly, we just completed a big push for diversity in the application pool for our composer-in-residence program, which will be its own topic in another blog post, and ideas for diversifying the audience through our marketing plans are in the still-want-to-do list at the end.

If you’re like us and totally geeking out over all the ways we can honestly listen to and act on the ideas from this audience segment we must grow, here’s the remainder of our to-do list.

Include pricing info on acquisition campaigns. We have gone back and forth internally on the right way to talk about price. On one hand, what we offer is not a cheap form of entertainment — as any arts administrator knows, ticket sales cover less than half of what it takes to produce a concert. And at the California Symphony we are staunch believers in the idea that people pay for what they value. Even the discussion group brought up (on their own, without any prompting) the idea that they’ll all shell out big bucks for Taylor Swift. So price alone is never an isolated issue; it’s all about the perceived value one is receiving in exchange for that price. What we did find interesting was the comment of, “I’m more likely to go to three $25 performances than I am one $75 or $100 performance.” Many others chimed in with agreement to that statement. So we’re trying to work through listing a starting price of $25 or thereabouts, or better promoting small package deals such as “Buy 3 concerts for $99.” In probing the group for thoughts on listing a price on marketing materials, we learned not to list the starting price if it’s in the $40s — that’s just too high and will not grab their attention, but in fact cause them to mentally move on as something not worth their consideration.
Include the running time on the program page of the program book. Approximate timing of each piece is ok, as is approximate intermission length. While regular symphony goers know that just about every concert is usually a predictable formula of ~10 minute overture, ~25 min concerto, intermission, ~45–60 min symphony, we realized new attendees have no idea. And why should they? In their quest to be informed and educated listeners, we can assist by including this info and helping them set their listening expectations.
For next season (and beyond) — the title of the concert matters; make it catchy and helpful at the same time. This goes back to comments we heard about participants wanting to know what made each concert special. Just calling it “Opening Night” helped nothing, except to further exacerbate the stress about what to wear!
Add something additional to the experience. Participants want a full evening experience and want social interaction. They don’t necessarily want to spend $200 to do that, but they do want to meet other people interested in the same thing. We asked the group if they would be willing to pay for this added experience, and the group said yes, and that it can be simple: “It’s fine to just say ‘We’re having drinks before hand here’ or ‘Afterwards we’re all going here.’” This matches research released about a year ago at the national level from the League of American Orchestras and Oliver Wyman stating that new audiences are indeed craving these types of supplemental activities and are willing to pay for them.
Fix seat selection so it’s easy and awesome. Could we do this like LiveNation where it connects to your Facebook account and you can see if your friends have purchased tickets and where they are sitting? Or you know how on TripAdvisor, it says next to every place or attraction which of your friends had been there? Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have this on ticket pages before the sales path, so people could see on the homepage, for example, that many of their friends had been to the Symphony before? And then on specific concert listings it would show if any friends were going to that particular event. Seat selection needs to be on par with any major sporting event or high-end entertainment experience; we are charging too much for our tickets to deliver anything less.
Make changing domains seamless. People can tell, period.
Add sound clips on every piece possible. Prospective buyers want it and need it; they simply do not recognize the piece by title or composer alone.
More info on each piece in advance: hover-over pop-ups or any way to deliver this information. What if we could implement a feature where each concert listing had a hover-over pop up of the Wikipedia summary (rather than our quick fix of directing people away from the website) — and call out that it’s Wikipedia too so people feel familiar with the source of the information (in other words, it’s not like program notes, it’s just Wikipedia which people use all the time, so there’s a comfort and trust level).
Event calendar is important — they look for this and want it to be user friendly and obvious.
Concert suggestions — “You might also like” feature.
Targeted marketing to different races. In the same way we target specific messages to acquisition versus repeat buyers versus donors, or target family ads versus the annual gala, we should do the same for different cultures and races if we truly care about attracting diverse audiences. For example, for our upcoming performance with Rita Moreno narrating Peter & the Wolf with the orchestra, we are running ads targeting families (“fun for the whole family; puppet making in the lobby”), targeting new attendees (“it’s the perfect introduction to the symphony because you learn about the different instruments”), and targeting pop culture aficionados (“Rita Moreno is only one of 12 Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony winners”). We could easily run a campaign to Latino audiences, for example, using the same ad as the pop culture group even; it’s just that we’re intentionally showing that message to people who look like her and might be interested in this performance if we spend some of marketing dollars making them aware of it.
Every performance must be great. While we said that the program itself is not really a problem we need to solve, whether a large or small organization, we do need to be cognizant that every performance needs to be good, “epic” even, as one participant articulated. We can never dial it in, as performers or as administrators. New attendees — heck, all attendees we’d venture to say — deeply want a full experience where they learn, feel inspired, and feel un-intimidated about it. As professional, top quality arts organizations, we need to deliver this every time.

So there you have it: an hour and twenty minute discussion which produced for the California Symphony 11 full typed pages of notes, 4 pages of direct action items, and this blog post we’re sharing with the world as promised. Oh, and tens of thousands of dollars saved over hiring a consultancy to tell us all these same things. We hope you enjoyed it, we hope you will share it, and we definitely hope that as a field, we will take more seriously and act on the feedback we’re hearing from the new audiences we so desperately need.

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-adverse 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 by Aubrey Bergauer / California Symphony at medium.com on November 21, 2016.

Changing the Narrative

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.

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 by Aubrey Bergauer / California Symphony at medium.com on July 30, 2016.