Outside Source - how many is too many

Hi Amanda,

 

I’m giving a webinar next week, Making Sources Work for You, and this is one of the topics that will be discussed.   You definitely can have too many outside sources.  Outside sources work best if they are general.  The trick is finding the sweet spot between too general and not general enough.  It’s all about being realistic about the results you can expect and balancing specificity vs. accuracy.  I think your examples are on the right track but could safely get a little more specific (such as breaking out the different newspapers and stations).  Emails should be in-house sources, which can be very specific and numerous, but that is another topic (that we’ll also cover at the webinar).  You should join us for the webinar, or check out the recording later if you can’t make it live.

 

Kevin Sheehan

Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist

Tessitura Network

1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office

ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com

 

Amanda,

 

We struggled with the very same thing – and finding the balance that Kevin speaks of is hard.  We ended up with about 24 “generic” sources that we use.

 

We have Word of Mouth and Brochure but we found breaking out radio, newspaper and tv into more specific sources works better for us and marketing so I have codes that look like this

 

Newspaper: SB News-Press

Newspaper: SB Independent

Newspaper: Ventura County Star

Radio: KLITE 101.7 FM

Radio: KRUZ 97.5 FM

Radio: KTYD 99.9 FM

TV: KEYT

TV: Cox Cable

 

I worked with our Marketing Director to find out what media outlets he was using for advertising and then created enough to cover those outlets.  By starting each source with the type of media, our staff can sort their sources and then pick the correct radio station from a short list of all radio stations.

 

We left the following sources very generic since we are also ticketing for 7 different organizations and it is hard to tell who is sending what so we also have:

 

Email

Word of Mouth

Brochure/Mailer

Website

Axxess Card (a local discount card program)

 

This mix of generic and slightly specific seems to be working well for us for those times when the patron is not responding to a specific offer or discount but rather just buying tickets.

 

Let me know if you have any other questions,

 

Elizabeth Carlock

Director, Ticketing Services

The Granada – Santa Barbara Center for Performing Arts

 

 

 

hi,

we are looking at revamping our outside source codes that we use for "how did you hear about this event".

Just wondering if people can advise the following:

how many do you have?

how specific are your sources i.e newspaper or newspaper a, newspaper b etc

Do you split your website v other websites, your emails v other email publciations?

We have about 10 outside sources that are pretty general that we use.

Word of mouth

Newspaper/magazine

Brochure/flyer

TV

Poster

radio

Cinema

Online/email (we are looking at spliting this, to website and emails

Thanks Amanda

 

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Marketing Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Marketing forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!