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How The Greenwich Odeum Increased Donations and Enhanced Patron Engagement with AudienceView Professional

The Greenwich Odeum, a Rhode Island performing arts venue, switched to AudienceView Professional for its ticketing needs. This change allowed for easier event setup, improved fundraising, and enhanced reporting, benefiting both staff and patrons.

  • Greenwich Odeum faced issues with their old ticketing system, including event setup and limited promotional options.
  • Transitioning to AudienceView Professional improved event setup, fundraising, and reporting, streamlining their operations.
  • Greenwich Odeum aims to enhance its membership program using AudienceView Professional, including offering online booking for comp tickets to boost revenue and patron retention.

Originally built in 1926, The Greenwich Odeum was renovated and reopened in 1994. Since then, the 501(c)(3) non-profit, run by volunteers and a small staff, has built a strong, proud reputation among Rhode Island’s performing arts venues. Patrons love the intimate seating and excellent views from all locations in the venue as they enjoy a wide variety of entertainment including live music, films, private events and more.

 

Background

Before adopting AudienceView Professional, The Greenwich Odeum struggled with an unintuitive and user-unfriendly ticketing system, causing difficulties in event setup, even for in-person ticket sales. Their frustrations extended to limited options for promotional codes and discounts, along with challenging reporting processes. These challenges prompted their search for a more effective ticketing solution.

Implementation

The Greenwich Odeum had a variety of criteria for their new ticketing solution. They wanted to be able to easily build shows and sell tickets, both in-person and online. Fundraising, memberships, reporting and technical integration were all essential. Cost was an important consideration as well.

The team at The Greenwich Odeum also had very specific business goals to achieve when switching to a new ticketing solution, including:

  • Making things easier for themselves and their patrons
  • A cleaner, more modern and more reliable service that gave their team more control
  • Integrating fundraising and memberships with their box office system
  • Increasing donations and fundraising opportunities
  • Creating a better mobile experience for their patrons

After seeing a demo of AudienceView Professional, the team immediately felt there was a fit and that the solution was well-suited to the needs of their organization. They valued that fundraising and ticketing were integrated in one platform. The software’s dynamic reporting system was also exactly what they had been seeking.

Switching from their old ticketing system to AudienceView Professional was quick and easy. The team at The Greenwich Odeum worked with Customer Support to build their custom seating chart and migrate over their patron data.

The team at The Greenwich Odeum then built a couple of sample shows to ensure that their team was comfortable with the platform. Six weeks after signing their contract, The Greenwich Odeum launched their first ticketed event on AudienceView Professional.

It didn’t take long for The Greenwich Odeum team to begin using AudienceView Professional’s fundraising functionalities, tracking donations and recording historic gifts from their capital campaign to ensure donors received the proper acknowledgements and that these gifts were recorded in their donor database and CRM.

Using AudienceView Professional

The Greenwich Odeum is now able to do many things that it was unable to with their previous ticketing solution.

Their team has many new fundraising opportunities and tools. They can now track pledges, solicit donations during the online ticket purchase process, automate donation acknowledgement letters and track donations by campaign.

Reporting has also improved as staff can now easily customize and automate email reports. They can also schedule automated email reports to go to external stakeholders.

On the revenue side, The Greenwich Odeum can easily create discounts and promotional codes to reward loyal patrons or attract new audiences to the venue. Revenue from donation cross-sells has also made a significant impact to their bottom line.

Looking Ahead

The team at the Greenwich Odeum is looking to further utilize AudienceView Professional for its membership program.  Among the planned enhancements, they plan to give members the ability to book comp tickets online. This will help The Greenwich Odeum increase revenue and patron retention for years to come.

“AudienceView Professional has made it significantly easier to run our operation in terms of setting up events, conducting reporting and creating promotional codes. Additionally, the system has improved our ability to collect donations and engage with our patrons, helping us grow our business further.”

Amanda Ronchi
General Manager
The Greenwich Odeum