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Ticketing and Giving Trends Are Positives for Performing Arts

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Heading into 2020, AccuList’s performing arts marketing clients can take advantage of positive trends in both fundraising and ticketing sales according to recent studies.

Performing Arts Giving Holds Steady 

While the Giving USA 2019 report released in June showed declines for many charitable giving sectors from 2016 to 2018, arts fundraising stood out by remaining relatively flat. Adjusted for inflation, giving to arts, culture, and humanities increased 11.1% between 2016 and 2017, declined 2.1% between 2017 and 2018 (though a 0.3% increase in current dollars) and ended up with a cumulative increase of 8.7% between 2016 and 2018, thanks to 2017 donations that reached the highest inflation-adjusted amount for the sector on record. Underneath the numbers are three important lessons for our performing arts clients, as fundraising counsel Alexander Haas points out in a recent post. First, a focus on high net-worth individuals via upper-level membership programs, project-related major gifts, and targeted marketing campaigns is likely to pay off, as proven by 2018’s 2.6% increase in gifts of $1,000 or more, and the fact that, of the 90% of high-net worth households giving, a quarter focused on arts donations. Second, targeted campaigns and quality donor lists are essential as fewer individuals give and a greater percentage of philanthropic revenue comes through larger gifts. Finally, online giving can be a boon to performing arts; for example, the Blackbaud Institute’s 2018 Charitable Giving Report showed that online gifts represented 9.5% of overall giving to arts organizations in 2018, and the 5.8% growth in online giving to the arts outpaced other nonprofit sectors by four times. Making online giving a convenient option for donors and members is one way to offset the decline in smaller gifts.

Marketing Innovations Help Ticketing Upward Trend

An October Reportlinker market research report forecasts a 5% compound annual growth in ticket sales from sporting events, movies, concerts, and performing arts events in the 2020-2024 period. While sporting events and concerts popularity is a key driver of growth, the research also credits a number of innovative marketing strategies for pushing ticket revenue, such as flash sales, early-bird offers, access codes, public discounts and adoption of mobile applications to make tickets more readily available to consumers. The integration of analytics with online ticket platforms–to automate services, to enhance more efficient back-end operations, and to better track and monitor consumer preferences–is also seen by researchers as a positive for ticket sales growth. Meanwhile, the secondary ticket market, especially in sports, is projected to have an even higher 9% compound annual growth rate in the same period despite a rise in fraudulent activities and artist opposition. A positive on this front is the adoption of blockchain to keep track of buyers and sellers in the secondary ticket market, helping to prevent fraud by scalpers, bots and touts.

For more detail on performing arts giving trends see the Alexander Haas post.

 

E-mail, Social Lead Nonprofit Event Marketing

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AccuList’s direct marketing services support both event marketers and nonprofit marketers, and, of course, there’s an overlap since many nonprofits use events for fundraising. So we try to keep up with what works in not-for-profit show business, and a recent survey of 500 nonprofits by Eventbrite, a leading event management and ticketing services provider, offers some interesting benchmarks.

No One-Size-Fits-All for Nonprofit Events

The “2019 Eventbrite Pulse Report” found that since nonprofits have multiple purposes, they host multiple event formats besides those geared exclusively to fundraising; in fact, just 32% reported hosting galas and fundraisers aimed at tapping donors. Instead, events for cause, community and educational promotion were cited by 78%, networking events by 37%, training and workshops by 33%, food and drink events by 31%, and arts and entertainment events at the tail end with 22%. Of course, revenue production was still seen as a key to success regardless of event goal.

Ticket Sales Swing Between Big and Bust

And when it comes to event revenue, ticket sales, sponsorships and grants/donations were the top sources reported. However, while ticket sales were seen as a key revenue driver by most (75%), the portion of revenue delivered by ticketing varied widely—from 80%-100% of event revenue for just 15% to less than 20% of revenue for a larger quarter of those surveyed. This underscores the need for both diverse revenue sources and more effective marketing to deliver attendance.

E-mail and Social Media Lead Marketing Efforts

Nonprofit event organizers told Eventbrite that their most effective marketing tactics were e-mail (34%); word-of-mouth and referrals (24%); and social media marketing (22%). In the social media arena, nonprofits relied most on organic posts (23%), paid Facebook ads, and video (9%). Among the tactics deemed less effective in the survey were third-party listings, search engine optimization (SEO), and display ads.

Audience Building Is a Top 2019 Challenge

The perennial “insufficient budget” was seen as a 2019 issue by 45% of nonprofit event planners and securing sponsorships as a problem by 46%, but the top 2019 challenge, cited by 73%, was reaching new attendees. And that is the kind of targeted marketing issue that AccuList can help address! For more benchmark data, see the post on the Eventbrite report.

Performing Arts Boosted by Social Video Ticketing Partnerships

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AccuList USA’s performing arts marketing clients have more tools this year for reaching ticket buyers, fans and supporters via partnerships that link online ticketing and social media videos.

Using Social Video Pages to Sell Tickets

The latest entry in the competitive social media ticketing race is Google-owned YouTube, which has partnered with Ticketmaster to show viewers upcoming U.S. tour dates and nearby concert listings on artists’ YouTube videos and then allow viewers to jump directly to Ticketmaster to purchase tickets. YouTube is actually a latecomer to the social media ticketing world. Ticketmaster started promoting ticket sales on Spotify and Facebook in 2016. YouTube’s end-of-2017 move is one reaction to Spotify’s growth in the streaming market with integrated data and artist information. For Ticketmaster, its global roster of concerts and lock on the concert-ticket industry can only be enhanced by access to YouTube’s 1.5 billion user base, driving more fans to pay Ticketmaster prices and service charges. But competitive social video ticketing is a win for performing arts promotion, too.

Why It’s Good News for Performing Arts

YouTube is leveraging one of its strengths with the ticketing partnership; music videos account for 30% of all time spent on YouTube and represent 94% of the 250 most-viewed videos on the platform, per the Video Advertising Bureau. And that means performing arts promotions can look forward to generating additional ticket sales from the platform’s added feature. The YouTube ticketing feature also addresses a running feud between YouTube and the recording industry. Some record labels have argued that YouTube hasn’t paid enough in fees for music videos hosted on its platform, but now ticket sales will provide another revenue stream for labels to monetize and boost royalties. This kind of partnership may even help cut down on the sales drain from pirating since the increased ability to monetize videos via ticket sales is likely to push performing arts promotion to drive as much traffic as possible to official videos and to be more proactive in flagging unofficial channels. (See the story in Direct Marketing News.)