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GPAC - 1999 Subscription Campaign
 

  • Winner Victoria - 1999 Australian Marketing Institute Awards for Excellence.

  • Winner Bronze - 1999 Australian Direct Marketing Association Awards.

  • Finalist - 1999 Australian Marketing Institute National Awards for Excellence.

Dramatic Improvements and ARTS Australia conducted the Direct Marketing of the 1999 subscription Theatre Season subscription campaign for Geelong Performing Arts Centre (GPAC).

GPAC offers its customers flexible combinations (4, 6 and 10) of shows from national companies like the Sydney and Melbourne Theatre Companies. Because Subscriptions can comprise from four events up to ten, a single subscription purchase can involve a large number of tickets, particularly given that subscriptions are normally bought in pairs.

Subscriptions to the Theatre Season peaked in 1997 at nearly 800. The market for Subscriptions has since shown all the signs of maturing in an increasingly competitive market for the leisure dollar, from 1996 to 1998 subscriptions declined by over 20%.

The purchaser database contains some 45,000 adults, a good penetration over eight years of the population for performing arts consumption. In excess of 20,000 have not purchased any more tickets for over three years. Analysis found that 45% of these lapsed attendees were still resident in Geelong - but had ceased to attend any events at GPAC.

Of the 25,000 recent customers, about 1/5 of the customers are purchasing at least 2/3 of the tickets and buy four times more seats a year than individuals - a good approximation of Pareto's Law in action.

The customer records in the ticketing database were categorised with a variety of indices for the period 1996-1998 to elicit a better understanding of the recency, frequency, value and volume of purchase.

A file of 9,280 customer records was supplied to Pacific Micromarketing for geodemographic analysis using MOSAIC. This information was used to inform the targeting, positioning and offer for the subscription season direct marketing.
 
The direct marketing was then targeted to 4,500 prospects as follows:
  1. High Priority (1,300 targets)
    a. Single Subscription event purchasers (800)

    2. b. Attendees of non-professional events (500)

  2. Strong Attenders (3,200 targets)

Overall, 1999 recorded a 38% increase in subscribers, 818 for the Theatre Season and 162 for the add-on 'Made to Move' dance subscription.

The results for the High Priority group was 11% and the Strong Attender group 5.1%.

The attrition rate was arrested with 1/3 not renewing in 1999, down from around 50% previously with over 21% new subscribers.

In addition, population areas of great potential for the future attendance were identified for development activities.

The Geelong Performing Arts Centre 1999 Subscription Campaign was developed with Ticketing Transaction and Geodemographic Analysis developed as part of  the National Market Research And Development For The Regional Performing Arts Industry funded by the Audience Development Division of the Australia Council.