Up in the clouds

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre (RPOAT) is a London landmark. The 1,250-seat outdoor auditorium gives audiences the opportunity to experience live theatre in an amazing atmosphere. It’s also about remarkable storytelling as the theatre stages modern classics, musicals, Shakespeare, shows for younger audiences, as well as one-off music, comedy and film events. As a registered charity, RPOAT is entirely self-funded with ticket sales accounting for over 90% of its income. Over the past two years, cloud-based box office management technology has helped the theatre strengthen control over its own destiny. To bring the story to life we worked with Silver Sea Consulting to analyse RPOAT’s business and look at how specific tools helped it achieve its objectives.

In 2013 RPOAT approached us with two goals in mind. It wanted its website to deliver an optimal online ticketing experience and wanted to see audience and sales metrics for individual performances in real time, allowing it to take appropriate actions on price and inventory in response to demand signals. It had also implemented a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, which prompted a refresh of the theatre’s website. Our e-commerce purchase path would also be integrated into the new design.

Revenues have grown, costs have been minimised, box office staff have better access to customer information, and customers report increased satisfaction

Before moving to the cloud-based box office system, RPOAT’s proportion of online sales was growing very slowly year on year. As online is the most cost-effective sales channel that meant missed opportunities to save money, and missed opportunities to use online techniques for cross- and up-selling. Boosting secondary spend was an opportunity the theatre needed to capitalise on. With its unique location and setting, food and beverage sales should have been a prime area for growth, but the unpredictability of London weather makes for occasional down periods. Staff need to be able to see and act on upselling opportunities quickly in order to ensure a steady stream of incremental sales.

Accurately tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and measuring their impact would be another key component of the theatre’s move to the cloud. The RPOAT marketing team wanted to be able to increase the return on investment (ROI) of its email campaigns in particular. In the two years since moving to cloud-based ticketing, audience analytics and marketing, the theatre has seen a number of measureable benefits. The proportion of the value of sales made online has grown significantly – by 23% in 2015 compared to 2013. Secondary spend is also on the up. With the cross- and upselling tools built into the new system, RPOAT staff are on track to achieve their highest ever income from catering packages this year.

A simplified and customer-friendly booking path on the new website has improved the theatre’s online customer experience. This has had a positive effect on operational efficiency, as fewer staff are needed to manage bookings than would previously have been made by phone or in person. There have also been fewer calls from customers who have had issues completing a transaction on the web – a notable improvement from the previous website and CRM system.

In terms of marketing effectiveness, the marketing team has been able to segment customer data, with reporting from the combined Spektrix and Dotmailer systems enabling it to measure the impact of the segmentation scheme for the first time. I asked Rachel Daniel, Deputy Head of Visitor Services and Estates, for her thoughts on the new system’s effectiveness: “Using Spektrix’s reporting and segmentation tools, we have been able to track our email marketing in a way we were unable to before. We are now able to report on how our marketing is engaging our customers and can target future campaigns based on this data. This has already resulted in more customers engaging with our emails and going one step further and purchasing tickets.”

The move to cloud-based box office management has been a success for the theatre. Revenues have grown, costs have been minimised, box office staff have better access to customer information, and customers report increased satisfaction with a system that helps them obtain tickets and secondary purchases quickly and reliably.

The theatre’s marketing team plans another wave of segmented email activity to gain further ROI measurements and improve targeting. The insights gained will inform the theatre’s future direct marketing strategy.

Libby Penn is Managing Director of Spektrix.
www.spektrix.com

View an infographic showing the impact of Spektrix on RPOAT. For the full case study, including the approach to segmentation, read the longer version of this article on the Spektrix blog.

This article is part of a series, sponsored and contributed by Spektrix, aiming to provoke new thinking in how we use ticketing and CRM systems to maximise revenue and grow audiences.