When it comes to education-based group sales (middle/high schools), our business practice places primary importance on our relationships with teachers, and secondarily the schools. We are not looking to change that, but wanted to get folks thoughts on the following:In v10, Jane Smith, teacher at Chicago High School, has a constituent type of "Contact" (I/O). While her Contact account does have an association to Chicago High School's Organization account, we book her student group of 20 in Jane's account. Because in 2 years, when she leaves Chicago High School and moves to Evanston High School, we will update her address, expire her association with Chicago High School and enter a new association with Evanston High school. We'll still see that she has a long history of bringing student groups—no matter the school at which she's teaching.In v11, things will function the same way, and those associations to the schools will become affiliations, and Jane Smith's account will become an Individual to the school's Organization. And we'll still sell to Jane's account.Now, what about a teacher who is not only affiliated with a school, but with a household as well?In v11, Mary Brown, another teacher at Chicago High School, now has an individual account for herself, and is affiliated to the organization account of Chicago High School. But, she's also affiliated as an Adult Member of the Mary and Patrick Brown Household. The subscription and single ticket history for Mary and Patrick Brown lives on their household account (and our business practices moving into v11 is to continue to sell to the household, not Mary or Patrick's individual records).However, when Mary calls our education department to book a student group from Chicago High School, should we book that under:a) Her Individual Mary Brown account (that's affiliated to both the Brown Household and Chicago High School accounts). This allows us to show the "link" between only Mary Brown (not her AND her husband) and Chicago High School. -OR-b) Her Mary and Patrick Brown Household account. In this scenario, we're able to see all of her activity in one place, as patron and school field trip organizer.Opinions are split on our end, and would love to hear about others' experiences.Many thanks...julie stanton | senior marketing managerchicago shakespeare theater on navy pier312.595.5634 | jstanton@chicagoshakes.com
The idea of how to organize orders came up quite a bit in education sessions at this past conference. I would ask a couple of questions to begin.
1. Do other departments use this same protocol? For example, do corporate sponsor tickets go under an individual at that company or do they go under the company; do group sales tickets that would be sold to a boy scout troop go under a parents name or under the troop as a group contact.
2. How important is it that there is a similar protocol across the organization?
For the Cincinnati Symphony, we are trying to create as much consistency as possible. (note: As I ramble on below, when I refer to "school" you could substitute "group" or "corporation" in its place. When I use "teacher" you can substitute corporate contact or "group sale contact")
Knowing that v.11 was coming, we began our planning and selling for this season with the understanding that orders would stay with the school to which a teacher belongs. That teacher does have an individual account and is affiliated with both a household and to the school as a teacher in many cases. We have decided that we want to be able to see a ticket history by school rather than by teacher. This lets us report, especially to donors, the depth of our involvement in particular, schools, districts, and communities.
In order to track a teacher's purchasing history (say for marketing purposes), we utilize the special request feature in orders where you can enter that teacher's ID in the "for" field. This lets us keep track not only of that teacher's ticket buying, but also which teacher's within a school are buying. This comes in handy when we have multiple orders from a school but from different teachers.
From what I heard at conference, this is how many organizations handle these situations. It also removes the issue of trying to figure out where orders go when an individual is affiliated with multiple other accounts. Using special request fields does create the need to tweak how some reports are run since you are looking for different information than would typically be seen in an order but we have found that this is not insurmountable. For example, when we send confirmation letters, I don't simply want to send to the school, but to the teacher who ordered the ticket at that school so I need to run reports that look at the accounts listed in the special request field within an order and pull that information as opposed to the information on the order itself.
This is a complex issue that I am sure others have opinions on. I would also be happy to discuss this more. In addition, if I had to guess, this topic will again be a robust one at conference.
alex mendelsohn
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Manager of Community Learning
513.744.3347
amendelsohn@cincinnatisymphony.org
Hi everyone –
We, too, continue to wrestle with this. Like Alex, we have decided to continue selling tickets to the school and special-requesting to the teacher (for us, from a business perspective, the money’s coming from the school so that’s where the order lives). We have not yet gone down the path of combining teachers’ personal and work constituent records (e.g. if Mary Smith is both a subscriber and a school group buyer, she has two different records) – but I’d like to start moving down that road soon.
Take a look at this presentation from TLCC 2012: http://www.tessituranetwork.com/tlcc/2012/Presentations/07-A_Education_and_v11.pptx. In particular, slides 27-35 are of note to this topic, including some pretty nifty custom screens courtesy of Melbourne Theatre Company.
Hope this helps!
-p.
Patrick SchleyAcademy Services Manager
FIRST STAGE
Transforming Lives Through Theater
325 West Walnut Street | Milwaukee, WI 53212(414) 267-2970 direct | (414) 267-2976 fax
Thanks Patrick! I was looking for those slides and couldn't quite pin them down yesterday. I'm glad you found them for all of us.
These are great scenarios – I would leave the education group ticket history in Mary’s individual account since the tickets have nothing to do with her husband, and you’ll definitely want to reflect that.
We’re putting ticket order history on the household as well once we move to V11, but in cases where we know the husband is just a donor & does not attend with his wife, we make sure the tickets are only in the wife’s account.
I think this would also work on a marketing standpoint as well, and translates the relationship with the organization in the cleanest possible way.
Sera Parker Database Assistant DIRECT 650 463 7173 sparker@theatreworks.org
BOX OFFICE 650 463 1960 theatreworks.org
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From: Tessitura Education Forum [mailto:forums-education@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Julie StantonSent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 2:33 PMTo: Sarah ParkerSubject: [Tessitura Education Forum] v11—Selling to Teachers who are also members of Households
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