FULL HOUSES: Turning Data into Audiences

Audience Development may yet, not be, a “non-job”?

13 January, 2012 at 10:54 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment

A colleague, Jerry Yoshitomi of MeaningMatters, put me on to this article. I find this quite exciting for the future of Audience Development and the development of meaningful consumer models – Voter data crucial to Romney’s victory

No, I am not going to bore you with a regurgitation of the seemingly endless US election process

I am, however going to wax lyrical about the use of data to segment prospects and inform relationship marketing.

“A central factor in Mitt Romney’s impressive win in New Hampshire was a sophisticated and relentless voter contact program that locked in supporters early and turned them out to the polls.“

Romney’s team “mined reams of consumer information — from the number of purchases voters made at Williams-Sonoma to their range of financial investments — to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters.“

They used data to prioritise prospects and then implemented an ongoing structured program of communication developed a loyal core.

“Romney operatives expanded a list of 5,000 solid supporters in New Hampshire from his 2008 campaign to more than 25,000 whom they believed they could rely … while also turning out with friends, relatives and colleagues.“

Just imagine if we had audiences on which we could rely and they turned out with friends, relatives and colleagues. Although I am not sure that we would aspire to this approach in the arts?

“In the end, the Romney team credited its successes to persistence — finding those undecided voters leaning their way and just inundating them,” said Romney’s New Hampshire director, Jason McBride.

Let’s hope that the arts can learn from this constituent development and use similar data mining tools for substantive audience development. Maybe we can then put to bed the accusations of nay-sayers like the recalcitrant Eric Pickles who variously called audience development an “non-job” or a “pointless post”.

Entry filed under: Arts Marketing, audience development, Case Studies, CRM, Data Mining, Loyalty, Segmentation. Tags: Arts Marketing, audience development, case study, CRM, Loyalty.