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Turning Customers into Brand Ambassadors with XMPie | A customer story – Opera de Montreal
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EDT
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Opéra De Montréal hits a high note with personalized customer communications
Opéra De Montréal used to rely on a steady audience of annual ticket-holders. Yet times are changing and the business faces a critical need to promote and nurture single-ticket buyers.
“Consumption habits in arts and culture have changed – buying tickets to a performance now tends to be a last-minute decision,” Says Guillaume Thérien, Director of Sales and Marketing.
Opéra De Montréal decided to use XMPie software, which allows marketers to leverage customer data to create relevant, personalized one-to-one marketing campaigns, with variable text, styles and images across print, web, email and mobile platforms.
Their new goal was to transform all single-ticket buyers into ‘Brand Ambassadors’: “Using XMPie, we are able to capitalize on the emotions that customers experience immediately after a show as a way to solicit a repeat experience.” Said Thérien.
Working with CGI, a Xerox partner, a new marketing strategy was developed to engage single-ticket holders just five minutes after the end of a performance. A mobile-compatible email is sent, thanking them and asking for show feedback and their intent to return. Based on their responses they also receive a personalized email offer, such as a discount to a future show. Through the campaign’s customer data collection, Opéra De Montréal not only knows each performance’s satisfaction rate, they also know who opened the email and who responded to the survey. Those who didn’t respond are sent a reminder postcard at their home with the same message and visuals.
A key campaign goal is to turn customers into Brand Ambassadors and encourage them to share offers over social media. Using XMPie analytics, Opéra De Montréal can continually track who has shared or redeemed offers, and reward them with future offers. Although still in its initial stages, the opera house has already seen several such brand ambassadors who have helped increase attendance.
Since the survey also provides an opportunity for customers to make comments, the opera house is able to immediately address any issues of concerns, helping to improve post-event customer service. “It allows us to be very high touch,” said Thérien. “Our customers are surprised how quickly we get back to them and that we’re listening to what they have to say. In almost all cases, this results in a repeat experience.”
Between 3,500 to 7,000 emails are sent per show, as well as an additional 400-700 postcards. In an initial test run, the new campaign improved post-show revenue by 450 percent – or $9,000 – within a 72-hour time period using XMPie. The opera house has not only grown its audience, but it’s also seeing growth in new clients.
“Up to 30 percent of our audience is under 30 years old,” said Thérien. “We’ve created a buzz about opera and we make risky choices with our artistic programming, which helps us to recruit new people, and XMPie helped us to communicate with them using the tools that they prefer – mobile and the web.”
