Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

Tis the Season for... Arts Marketing Conferences

I'm finding that despite the interactivity of the Web and the ability for blogs to generate so called "online conversations," writing a blog is still a lot like being on the radio. You never really connect with your audience in a really engaged way. Since it is the season for arts conferences, I want to highlight three events that I'll be participating in in the next few weeks, and if you're able to attend any of these, please come up and say hello.

San Francisco:
ArtsReach National Arts Marketing Conference
Sponsorsed by ArtsReach Magazine

Eight Energizing, Easy, and Essential E-mail List Building Ideas
Monday, October 29th, 7:45am to 8:45am

More information:
http://www.artsreach.com/2007conference/2007conference-sessions.html

Miami:
National Arts Marketing Project Conference
Sponsored by Americans for the Arts

Arts E-mail Marketing: What Every NAMP Attendee Should Know
Sunday, November 4th, 3:00pm to 4:15pm

To register:
https://patronsecure.com/patrontech/events.cfm?event_id=79

New York:
Patron Technology's E-marketing E-mersion E-vent

Full-day e-marketing sessions start at 9:30. I'll be starting things off with a session called "The High Tech Crystal Ball."

More information:
http://www.patrontechnology.com/bdc/index.htm

How to Lose a Subscriber & a Donor in 10 seconds

Last night I went to theatre here in NYC. It’s a big-name non-profit theatre, but I’m not going to say the name since I’m more interested in making a point than bashing an organization. But bash I will.

I got there at 7:50 PM for an 8:00 curtain and headed to the men’s room. When I turned to the sink I saw an attendant with towels and soap, thrusting them at me. Knowing that if I took the towel, I would have to give a tip and knowing that I only had two $20 bills in my pocket, I decided “no attendant for me” and reached for the towel dispenser. But… it was empty. So I took the towel and since it was only minutes before curtain, grabbed all the change in my pocket that I had, and put it in the tip jar.

At this point, the attendant took the change out, and handed it back to me. He said “No, I don’t take this.” I asked, “Are you saying that you don’t want a tip, or that the tip isn’t enough? He said, “You can keep it.”

Several others witnessed this, and one other patron asked me as we left the bathroom whether what he had just witnessed was what he thought it was.

So, by now, I’m fuming. It's really unpleasant to be insulted. I’m now in a foul mood and I don’t enjoy the play at all. (It was a lousy production to start with and this made it worse.) I spent the whole first act resolving not to renew my subscription nor give an end-of –year donation, thinking about all the friends I was going to tell this story to, and drafting this post in my head.   

So, what’s the lesson here?  You can work like crazy as a marketer to build your brand, to win new subscribers and your organization can put on great shows.But all it takes is one little interaction like this to blow the whole thing.

How much time does your organization spend training each and every person that interacts with your patrons? 

Our First E-marketing Conference -- Early Notice

We're putting the finishing touches on our first full-day e-marketing conference here in New York to be held on November 8th. I hope you'll forgive the creative spelling we're taking with the title -- E-marketing E-mersion E-vent. (BTW, you can't use E-mersion in Scrabble.) We have not announced this to the public yet, and we will later this week, but I wanted you to be the first to hear about it.

The conference is going to focus on all aspects of e-marketing - from a US and international perspective. A lot will be on e-mail marketing, but we'll also cover all the new stuff - podcasting, MySpace and blogs, as well as more weighty topics like data mining.

I've invited some of the best people I know to participate, including David Snead from the NY Philharmonic, Christy Bolingbroke from the Mark Morris Dance Group who will report on their e-mail marketing work. Roger Tomlinson, from Cambridge, England who is one of the most astute observers of the ticketing and e-marketing scene, and author of FULL HOUSE: Turning Data into Audiences. He will tell us about what's going on overseas. Steven Roth and his partner Tim Baker (also from the UK) are experts in issues surrounding data mining and pricing, and they'll be on hand to offer up some amazing case histories.

We're going to have some one-on-one sessions, and I'll be hosting a "backstage at Patron Technology" session to talk about new projects and services we're working on. We'll end the day with a wine and cheese reception. The whole thing is being held at a fantastic venue -- the best kept secret in New York, the Baruch Performing Arts Center on Lexington and 24th.

We'll be sending out an e-mail (of course) to announce as soon as we get the final touches on the site.

Technology Nirvana

I've been in a bit of a blogging lull for the past week or so, as nothing has really inspired me. But this morning something happened which was a technologically seamless experience that lived up to the promise of the digital revolution.

I was on my way to an 8:00 AM meeting on Sixth Avenue in New York, and I didn't remember the address correctly. So, I decided to use the free, voice activated and completely automated phone directory service that Google offers (called Google 411). It recognized when I told it my city and state, and then correctly "heard" the name of the company I was visiting. Then after it repeated the phone number, the voice said something like, if you want detailed information sent to your cell phone say "text." In about 5 seconds I got a text message with the correct name and address of the company I was visiting. And I got to the meeting early.

A technological slam dunk. In a world in which my Microsoft Outlook crashes every day, I had a little early morning celebration of how great technology is when it works right.