Cary's Booth Ampitheatre takes advantage of Etix software to reach their audiences.
Cary’s Booth Amphitheatre in North Carolina, an SMG-managed venue, is all about getting the right message to the right customer at the right time through email and social.
Year-over-year wins for this Etix client? Cary’s Booth Amphitheatre has enjoyed a 291-percent increase in ticket revenue through email; 23-percent growth in email database, and 7-percent increase in open rates.
To do that, Etix designed a new, customized email template; included social media presence and exploited website traffic during presale periods to facilitate email list growth and achieve higher results with each send, and created a new system to effectively track results week over week.
It’s about getting “top of the fold” exposure for their website. Joe Kustelski, Etix CEO, explained that a venue’s ticketing company “should help make sure it comes to the top” when potential customers are surfing the internet. “Top of the fold,” usually referred to as SEO (search engine optimization), used to mean within the first three or four result listings, up there with the paid entries on Google search. Today, it means on the first screen for mobile. “You can pay or you can work with the system to get above the fold,” Kustelski said, noting Etix-owned Rockhouse Partners are very adept at working the system.
“That’s our biggest opportunity to make Koka Booth look like a rockstar,” Kustelski said, referring to the venue by its formal Koka Booth Amphitheatre moniker. “That means their website, email marketing, and social media are all great, everything is mobile optimized, and we give Becky Colwell the measurements she needs to make decisions about her business to build the relationship with their fans. That becomes an annuity.”
Etix facilitates a weekly call with Colwell. “She tells us what’s important and we help her tell a story that is important. We built her database five times from what it was before and we helped her segment that database,” Kustelski said.
Colwell is pleased it is “easy” to work with Etix software. “We can set up events quickly and make any changes ourselves versus having to wait on others to edit things for us. The team is readily available to help with questions and are on hand at major events to troubleshoot any issues,” she said.
She added that Etix's marketing efforts with their team at Rockhouse have helped grow the shed’s email database, Facebook likes and Twitter followers by 10 percent just during the amphitheater's 2014 summer event season.
Among the new features Colwell singled out: Enhancements to the Order Details pages and report pages, which made event analysis cleaner and more efficient.
“For 2015, the amphitheatre will be celebrating its 15th season and we are looking forward to utilizing the new Etix Loyalty Rewards program for our patrons,” she added.