Hello all,
I'm preparing for a new webinar on effective source usage and could use your help. Anna and I already have a nice set of best practices that we think will help you get more from your sources, but we would also like to hear about some of your successes and failures. Maybe you're doing something great that we haven't thought of. Or maybe you have a problem we can find a solution for.
Please don't be shy. I know many of you feel like you don't have anything to say about sources other than that what you are doing isn't working. Well, let us know what isn't working. Where is the chain breaking down? Is the box office not using sources accurately? Are you unable to get the reporting data you need? Do you have too many sources? Do you not have enough? Are your appeals not breaking things out the way you would like to see them? What is the result you want to see?
When it comes to successes, small and simple are just as worthy as large and complex. Have you been able to get your box office to improve source usage accuracy a little? Have you seen some success for sources you create for offers on the web? Have you come up with an appeal structure that you like? If you are doing something that you like, don't think it is too simple or obvious to share. For this conversation nothing is too simple or too obvious.
Thanks in advance for joining the discussion! It will be a big help for our webinar and the community in general.
-Kevin
Lat year, right after we built our season I sat down and had a meeting with our Box Office Manager and Marketing Director because our source tracking and reporting was not what we wanted. We would have low success on a postcard source, yet when our postcard hits we see a huge spike in sales that day. So we sat down and discussed what some of the issues may be.
ISSUE 1: What the Box Office was seeing. Our naming convention for sources was the same as lists and extractions. Unfortunately that meant the box office was seeing 0809 Kite Runner Po... 0809 Kite Runner Ema, 0809 Kite Runner News, etc. And they couldn't figure out what the different sources were and were not marking them. So we proposed a separate naming convention for sources. We believed that when a patron was asked how they heard about the show, the first word they would say is probably the type of media it was so that is why we chose the media form as the first word in our naming convention. (NEWSPAPER Mercury News, POSTCARD Ain't Misbehavin', EMAIL Sonia Flew) It also allows them to sort by description and easily find what they are looking for. We have had great responses from the Box Office staff as to how much easier it is to find sourcs adn know what they are. (Our small success)
ISSUE 2: The number of sources the Box Office saw and were expected to use. We had an ENORMOUS amount of sources (For marketing there was 100 general outside sources that were expected to be used all the time, plus all the specific inside sources for each show) And so we talked about how to limit the number of sources. We discussed how the box office was possibley over-whelmed by the amount of sources they had to sort through. We came up with three solutions. One, we became diligent about using accurate START and END dates on each source. Two, we made sure that proper security was in place so Box Office was not seeing development source codes. Three, reduce the number sources. Was it really important to track all these things if they weren't being marked correctly? But our still really wants to track ALL the different types of newspapers in the area so that we knew exactly which local newspaper patrons saw us in. Unfortunately we could not cut down on sources and we are still sitting at 100 general outside sources. Although it was discussed that we would be back where we started, this only spawned the idea that we should also track whether patron heard about us in a newspaper AD or a newspaper ARTICLE so now we have 2 sources for each newspaper in our area (about 7 newspapers, 14 sources plus an additional catch-all newspaper as other and newspaper article other) and we are still experiencing the same problem as before that the sources are not being used accurately. (our failure)
I would love for you to share our success and to also talk about what is too many sources, how that effects your box office staff and their efficiency at tracking, and of course if any one else has had this challenge/struggle and how they over came it. Thanks!