Ticket to unforgettable experiences

Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) delivers memorable live performances featuring artists and entertainers from every corner of the globe. Every year, the centre welcomes more than 1.5 million visitors to its four theatre venues and range of outdoor event spaces for a broad programme of classical music, jazz, ballet, drama theatre, opera, musical theatre, festivals and more. The popularity of many performances at the centre means people often sign up to wait lists for the opportunity to buy pre-sale tickets months in advance.

QPAC delivers over 1,300 performances a year—all with varying show lengths and venue sizes, often with pre-sale periods and staged seat releases. To drive ticket sales without saturating audiences with communications, the marketing function needs to run campaigns that are timely, co-ordinated, highly secure and personalised.

With such a dynamic programme of events, QPAC is committed to keeping patrons informed on what’s coming next in an easily accessible manner. The move toward more personalised marketing included QPAC’s adoption of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for customer relationship management.

With a single source of truth for patron data, QPAC was ready to implement a marketing automation solution with true multichannel capabilities. QPAC started the journey with Adobe Campaign, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, which replaced multiple marketing tools. Adobe Campaign was delivered using Managed Services to automate customer marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Integration for centralised customer data

Adobe Customer Solutions, Adobe’s service and support organisation, worked directly with Microsoft partner Empired to design and document the data structures for the integration. Digital Learning Services, part of Adobe Customer Solutions, delivered the training to marketing and development teams at QPAC.

“It was critical that our solutions provider support us from design and implementation to training and monitoring ongoing success,” says Kim Harper, Digital Marketing Manager at QPAC. “Adobe Customer Solutions was committed to understanding our challenges and established a clear roll-out process to help ensure deployment in 10 weeks.”

The integration of Adobe Campaign with Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables QPAC to target audiences more effectively using a combination of demographics, personal preferences, membership history, purchase history, subscriptions and tracking data from the organisation’s previous email tool.

With all QPAC customer data in a highly secure location, QPAC’s digital marketing team can see how patrons engage with its content. This helps them to understand the types of events patrons want to see, how likely they are to purchase a ticket for a particular performance and which types of events have the most cross-over appeal.

QPAC can also attribute ticket sales to email pushes and use look-alike modelling to expand its reach. Additionally, Adobe Campaign enables QPAC’s marketing team to build customised programs themselves, with less help from developers.

“Adobe Campaign provided opportunities for QPAC’s digital marketing team to be more personalised in its approach across multiple channels at one time and reach broader audiences,” says Harper.

Replacing tools with real solutions

“QPAC needed a simple way to manage campaigns across email, display, social and mobile,” says Harper. “Adobe Campaign enables the creation of more sophisticated customer journeys, improving audience segmentation and pushing campaigns out across multiple channels—all without the need for a developer.”

For QPAC, email is one of the primary drivers for website traffic and ticket sales and therefore constitutes a large proportion of the organisation’s marketing efforts. QPAC runs a range of complex campaigns across pre-sale, on-sale and re-marketing phases. Depending on the QPAC venue and number of performances, each event requires a different approach, which can include dozens of emails going out to anywhere between 20,000 and 100,000 patrons.

Future requirements were also an important consideration as QPAC grows to be one of the busiest and largest performing arts centres in Australia. In 2018, the Queensland Government announced a new 1,500 seat theatre to be built at QPAC to meet existing audience and sector demand and support continued growth of performing arts in Queensland.

To keep audiences engaged, QPAC uses Adobe Campaign to send out a “What’s On” newsletter every two weeks, giving subscribers a digest of upcoming performances. Automated communications include show information and reminders for ticket holders, membership renewals, donation receipts and thank you emails. QPAC also utilises SMS for high priority service information and plans to engage and excite ticket buyers through this highly personal channel ahead of their attendance at a chosen performance or event.

Relevant communications through automated campaigns are an important part of the patron experience at QPAC. Automated programs designed with Adobe Campaign assist in delivering tailored communications that manage patron expectations before a performance, keep them informed and elevate their overall experience, complementing the live performance they attend.

QPAC sent 24 million targeted emails within the first 18 months of implementing Adobe Campaign. During that time, active subscribers—those clicking and engaging with content—increased from 43% to 51% of all email subscribers. QPAC had higher email open and click-through rates and saw a decrease in unsubscribes as a result of more targeted campaigns.

Audience segmentation capabilities are particularly useful for social media campaigns, optimising list builds to improve targeting. For example, targeting people who are likely to buy a ticket and excluding those who have already purchased makes it possible to manage such campaigns efficiently.

Adobe Campaign also optimises social media campaigns every day rather than requiring the weekly download of batches of data and uploading of new lists. “At QPAC, it’s important to ensure patrons receive information that might interest them through various channels, without feeling overwhelmed,” says Harper.

Protecting subscriber data

QPAC is committed to protecting customer privacy and understands and appreciates that the privacy, confidentiality and security of any information provided is important to visitors and patrons. Adobe Campaign and Microsoft Dynamics 365 deliver a solution for multichannel targeting and personalised communications while protecting patron and subscriber data.

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