Initially, The Houston Grand Opera’s e-mail program consisted of text-only messages reminding season ticket holders to renew season tickets.
But the 50 year-old Opera has changed with the times. It now sends e-mail newsletters to promote shows, renew subscriptions and link fans to the Web site for visual and audio clips.
“Ultimately the goal of our e-newsletters is to get people to our Web site,” says Rodi Franco, marketing and operations director. “We have two goals: One is to educate you about what we’re doing and the second is to persuade you that you’re going to be interested in seeing what we have to offer.”
Franco makes use of several types of e-newsletters to communicate with her ticket holders and those who request information from the Web site. “E-mails are a conduit for us to reach out and touch,” she says. “Everyone with a season ticket has given us permission to contact them via e-mail.”
But those ticket holders are hardly the only subscribers. “We collect names on our Web page, and ExactTarget helps us send informational newsletters to the opt-ins,” Franco adds. “We don’t know who they are and I haven’t imported them into my main database.”
The Newsletters
Prior to each opening, the Opera sends a dress rehearsal e-letter promoting the show and linking to the Web site for real player streaming video clips. It goes to a general list of 1,300 subscribers who signed up on the home page. For the recent Il Trovatore e-newsletter, there was a 42% open rate and an 11% clickthrough to the video.
In addition, e-notes are sent to upwards of 3,000 season ticket holders to remind them that they will be seeing a show at the Opera House that week and include links to information on the cast and recent reviews of the show in addition to possible traffic snarls in the area.
That’s not all. E-newsletters are also sent prior to performances to ticket holders and subscribers likely to purchase tickets. These link to video clips of the show taken on opening night. Individuals can also read reviews, learn about the Opera and its performers and renew subscriptions. “That’s been wonderful for us,” says Franco. In fact the whole e-newsletter program has been so successful for The Houston Grand Opera that recently, season ticket holders were contacted and offered the opportunity to meet Lysistrata’s composer, Mark Adamo. The e-newsletter had an open rate of 50% and a 7% clickthrough. Response exceeded capacity within a day.
Opera subscriptions are also handled via e-mail. Renewal e-mails are sent to 1800 ticket buyers three times with subsequent mailings declining in number due to those who have renewed. The recent open rate was approximately 55% with a 15% click through which yielded the Opera House over $150,000 in renewals and almost $20,000 in donations.
Lessons Learned
Franco has learned several things. An e-newsletter sent to 8,076 single ticket prospects had an open rate of 31% and clickthroughs of 6%. This demonstrated that the older the lead, the lower the open rate. It also showed that clickthroughs drop and that recipients are more likely to consider the e-mail spam. “We may mail old addresses once, see what happens and then stop. We don’t really have a relationship with them if they’re not recent enough customers.”
Industry Challenge
Franco cites spam filters as a great concern, for which she admittedly doesn’t have a great solution. “We send newsletters to people who say they never received them and we know it’s being spam filtered,” she adds. “This is an industry-wide problem.” Until another solution is found, Franco is meeting this challenge by asking newsletter recipients who have this difficulty to whitelist the Opera’s address. Her second request for them is an alternative e-mail address.
Franco loves the depth that e-newsletters have added to her communications but she’s careful not to overdo it. “We’ll keep doing this because we see that it is successful,” she says, “The Opera is like all non-profits: We communicate in many ways but our primary is direct mail. We know that telemarketing works and we found out that e-mail works. We are a direct marketing company, so there’s no way for us not to become expert in e-mail marketing to consumers. They like it, they want it.”
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