momorantings

Congratulations are in order for two of my colleagues here in DC! Kevin Moore , Managing Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company , has accepted a new job as the Managing Director of the Cleveland Playhouse . Kevin has been the Managing Director of Woolly Mammoth since 1998, during which time the company raised over $9 million for the construction of their new theater. Patrick Madden , Vice President of External Relations for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters , has accepted a new job as the Executive Director of Sister Cities International . Madden has served as the vice president of external affairs and the publisher of Inside Arts magazine at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters since 2003, where he managed fundraising, government affairs and membership departments, in addition to directing the organization's communications outreach.

At work, I am preparing a couple of sessions on viral marketing and the use of new technologies. As part of this process, I started a discussion with my colleagues at Americans for the Arts about the pros and cons of using blogs, based upon an entry in Andrew Taylor's The Artful Manager blog about how blogs are now being used as PR tools. I am lucky to have as colleagues at Americans for the Arts some of the nation's foremost experts on arts marketing, including Gary Steuer (V.P. Arts & Business Council ), Will Maitland Weiss (Executive Director of the Arts & Business Council of New York ), Julie Peeler (Vice President of Arts & Business Programs) and Suzanne Ruley (Coordinator of the National Arts Marketing Project ). I threw a couple of questions out to this group concerning blogging and started a great conversation. I wanted to share with you an e-mail that I got from Gary Steuer yesterday. Gary not only provides some great insights on blogging, but gives a very ...

Book: Arts Marketing Insights: The Dynamics of Building and Retaining Performing Arts Audiences by Joanne Scheff Bernstein. In this book, the author sets out to describe the shifts in audience behaviors over the past decade, and how it affects the marketing strategies employed by arts marketing professionals. The author does a good job of describing the shifts which have occurred in audience behavior throughout the past decade, but if you are looking for the same level of insight and brilliance which she has demonstrated in earlier works (mostly her collaborative work with Philip Kotler), you will be disappointed. This book gives you the basics—understanding your customer, the use of marketing research, and yes, even the beloved four P’s: product, price, place and promotion. Bernstein even outlines some of the most feared problems in the industry such as declining subscription rates and the aging of our audiences, and suggests using the same techniques which marketers have used over t...

After a couple month study of e-communications at Americans for the Arts, I compiled some recommendations that I thought I would share with you: To Improve Deliverability 1. Eliminate Hard Bouncing E-Mail Addresses from your e-mail list. Once two e-mail campaigns have been sent to an e-mail address and have hard bounced, they should be flag as no longer active. 2. Be Careful When Writing Subject Lines. When writing a subject line, it is important to be proactive and stimulating with content, but be careful with your wording because it might trigger a spam filter on the receiver’s end. Subject lines with all CAPS, strange spacing, unusual symbols and the over use of common spam words such as FREE!, can cause a campaign to be caught in a spam filter. Check to see if your e-mail marketing provider has a spam content checker. In addition, you should set up a AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail test account and send each campaign to the account before sending to see if the message is blocked. To Improv...