Dear Abby,
I’m writing on behalf of a very troubled relationship.
We’ve been together for years, and we both want the same thing: sold-out shows and happy attendees. But lately, it feels like we’re speaking two different languages.
I’m the Marketing Department. My love language is data. I want to know who’s buying, what they’re interested in and which campaigns are actually driving sales.
My partner, Ticketing, has a lot of those answers. The problem is getting them when I need them.
Marketing: “Can you tell me who bought tickets after that campaign?”
Ticketing: “Sure. I can pull a report.”
Marketing: “Great. Can I use that audience for my next campaign?”
Ticketing: “How do you feel about a spreadsheet?”
And there it is.
I spend hours working through lists, uploads and exports, trying to get the right message to the right people. Automation is supposed to save me time, but when audience data lives across different systems, even automated campaigns can depend on someone pulling the right list or updating the right file.
Then, when sales happen, I’m left trying to figure out which email, SMS or ad actually influenced the purchase.
Ticketing has frustrations of its own.
Ticketing: “You know that audience you emailed?”
Marketing: “Yes?”
Ticketing: “Half of them already bought tickets.”
Marketing: “…We should probably talk more.”
We both want to make smarter decisions. But when our data and tools aren’t connected, we end up working from different versions of the audience.
Is there any hope for us?
—Lost in Translation
Dear Lost,
There’s hope. And the problem might not be your relationship.
It might be the spreadsheets.
Marketing and Ticketing don’t need to become the same team. They need a better way to share what they know.
When ticketing and marketing data are disconnected, even simple questions can turn into manual exports and back-and-forth between teams. Who attended last season but hasn’t purchased this year? Which audience responded to a campaign? What should we send someone who just bought a ticket?
The answers may exist. The challenge is putting them to work.
Marketing, Meet Ticketing
This is where connected audience data changes the conversation.
When Marketing has access to ticketing and audience insights, teams can build more relevant segments based on actual patron behavior. Campaign performance can be connected more closely to ticket purchases. And instead of constantly moving lists between systems, teams can spend more time deciding what to do with the information.
Marketing: “Wait. I can use ticketing data to build my audience?”
Ticketing: “And we don’t need another spreadsheet?”
Marketing: “Maybe this relationship has a chance after all.”
With AudienceView and AV Digital Marketing, ticketing and marketing data can work together to help organizations build targeted audiences, automate campaigns and better understand how marketing contributes to ticket sales.
The goal isn’t simply more data. It’s making the audience data you already have more useful.
That could mean identifying previous attendees for a return campaign, creating segments around purchase behavior, personalizing communications based on audience interests or understanding which marketing efforts are contributing to revenue.
Marketing gets better audience intelligence. Ticketing gets fewer last-minute data requests. And your organization gets a more connected view of the patron journey.
Maybe Marketing and Ticketing weren’t incompatible after all.
They just needed to stop communicating through spreadsheets.
Ready to see what a more connected relationship between your ticketing and marketing data could look like? Sign up for a live demo of AudienceView and AV Digital Marketing.
—Abby (AudienceView)