Jill Robinson

I want to point your attention to the most important patrons in your audience. They’re not necessarily the ones who have given or attended the most over their lifetime. They’re your “right now” patrons—the audiences that are participating and engaging with you for your most current event and could do any number of things in the future.

These currently active patrons allow your organization to operate right now. They’re the ones that your mission serves today.

But don’t assume that they’ll be there tomorrow. Research indicates that first-time attendees—a large portion of many organizations’ patrons—tend to come once and then never return.

That’s why measuring your active patrons matters so much. An “active” patron has a little more longevity than a “right now” patron; they’ve had some transaction in the last two seasons or years. When cultivating a loyal audience, recency rules. The patrons who have attended in the last two years are much more likely to continue attending—if you cultivate them right.

How many of my patrons are active?

To calculate how many active patrons you have, pull a list of the patron households who have had any interaction in the last two seasons or years. You’ll then want to look at the following metrics:

% of active patrons:

Divide the number of active patrons by how many total households you have in your database.

This number is a big-picture indicator of how well you’ve been able to hold on to patrons over the years.

By category:

Then, look at the numbers of active patrons for the last two seasons or years in each of the following categories:

• Single ticket buyers or admissions
• Subscribers or members
• Donors
• Other patron categories in your organization, such as class attendees

This will provide an initial idea of how many patrons today are your best and most realistic prospects for revenue tomorrow. You can also compare the category numbers from this year to those from the last three years. This will illuminate the categories where you’re losing or gaining patrons.

Plan the next step

A currently active patron is much more likely to continue supporting you than a long-lapsed patron or someone who’s never come before. Many of them are ready to increase their commitment—but it’s up to you to ask them.

The first step? Make an upgrade plan. An upgrade is the next logical step a patron can take to continue and deepen their relationship with your organization. Find below a basic example of an upgrade plan.

Make a list of the types of patrons that are active with your organization, then plot out the next step they might take with your organization. Don’t forget to take the patron’s history into account when you’re listing your patron types. For example, a brand new single ticket buyer has a different right next step than a single ticket buyer who subscribed last year. Some organizations turn this simple table above into a huge, detailed spreadsheet. Make a comprehensive list like that and you will have an upgrade plan for every single patron in your audience.

The Art of the Upgrade

Now, think of all the ways patrons receive personalized or targeted communications from your organization. They might interact with the box office or house staff, receive direct mail or email, or see a re-targeted online ad. How and where might you fine-tune your messaging to thank them for previous transactions? How might you align those avenues of outreach to ask not for every next step, but only for the right one?

Upgrading is an art. And, as those of us who create art as well as market it know, art takes training, focus, and practice. Here’s what it looks like:

Training: Train everyone who interacts with patrons through any method or media on your upgrade strategy. First train them to listen, especially if they have direct patron contact. Then, train them to know when to make a sale or upgrade offer and when to just thank patrons for coming or subscribing.

Focus: Don’t ask patrons to do everything. There’s a simple reason first time ticket buyers don’t respond to subscription or donation requests: they are not ready. They respond best to offers to buy another ticket. Focus on building the relationship, rather than asking absolutely everyone who “might say yes” to do everything.

Practice: Keep going. Test your technique until it’s perfected. Making patrons loyal is such a high-ROI endeavor that you’ll want to make sure your asks are optimized.

When organizations begin to understand patron behavior and how that translates to loyalty, they will begin to be able to use that data to compel change. And then, to paraphrase the NAMP conference theme for 2014, “Oh, the places we’ll go!”

Go in-depth on upgrade plans in my session “No Size Fits All: Measuring Success in New Ways” with Zannie Voss of Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research and Arin Sullivan of the Cultural Data Project. And don’t miss the pre-conference on loyalty.

The Arts Marketing Blog Salon is generously sponsored by Patron Technology.