How I built a virtual concert experience and a new marketing approach to raise $1.86M for the Santa Barbara Symphony
November 4, 2021
by Edward Kado
The Summary of what we accomplished
Kathryn R Martin (renowned Arts Organization Interim CEO) was hired by the Board of Directors at The Santa Barbara Symphony to take over during the height of the pandemic on May 1 2020. Facing a massive shortfall with the cancelled 2019/2020 season, Kathryn knew she had to act quickly. With only 4 months to prepare for a possible 2020/2021 season, Kathryn knew she needed someone who could address their technology woes, create and implement a new marketing approach, and build a virtual concert experience for their patrons all within a matter of weeks.
Kathryn brought me in as a technology and marketing consultant. I immediately built a new website, a custom ticketing and donation system, and virtual concert experience for the Santa Barbara Symphony, and solved their technology challenges.
Our efforts resulted in a 2020/2021 season that was so successful, the Symphony actually exceeded its pre-pandemic funding goals for the 2020 fiscal year.
The Team that was involved
CEO of The Santa Barbara Symphony
Technology and Marketing Consultant
Links
The Santa Barbara Symphony (https://thesymphony.org)
Interim President & CEO (Now President & CEO) – Kathryn R Martin (https://kathrynrmartin.com)
Marketing, Web, and Technology Consultant – (https://edwardkado.com)
The Situation Kathryn was handed
Kathryn R Martin was hired by the Board of Directors at The Santa Barbara Symphony on May 1 2020 during the onslaught of the COVID-19 lockdown. Suffice to say, Kathryn walked into an arts organization in crisis. To start, Kathryn and her team faced not only a catastrophic financial shortfall with the already cancelled 2019/2020 season but with a potentially cancelled 2020/2021 season as well. It was a time to move aggressively.
The problem was that all the marketing software and technology the Symphony utilized was actually hindering their ability to pivot during a critical time. The website was ancient, out-of-date, and impossible to work with. The email marketing platform was barbaric. The ticketing and donation system made donors and patrons so frustrated they would just give up. The legacy email server kept going down and the Symphony’s PCs were not only sluggish but had the unsupported Windows 7 installed. The list just went on and on.
With the 2020/2021 season only 4 months away, Kathryn knew she had literally weeks to get things turned around. She needed someone who could not only address their technology struggles but also design and implement a new marketing approach for the Symphony.
She approached me and this case study is an in-depth look at what the Symphony faced and what I built to address each of these challenges.
The Technology Obstacles
Crippling Website
Because the website was so ancient and built using an archaic CMS (ExpressionEngine), the staff couldn’t even add content or edit pages. This prevented the staff from being able to use the site as a marketing hub and tool during a critical time.
In order to make any edits or additions, big or small, the SBS had to outsource them to an agency which meant even just minor updates became expensive. Because of this, only critical updates were made and thus the website did nothing to showcase everything happening at the Symphony. The website wasn’t generating revenue, nor was it a communications tool during the pandemic.
The website was so old and outdated that some people wondered if we were even still in business.
Modern, Beautiful Website that the entire staff can edit
Terrible Ticketing/Donation Experience (TNEW6, the patron-facing web interface of Tessitura)
Patrons were so frustrated by the donation and ticketing experience online, so much so that they would just call the staff to make donations and purchase tickets.
It got so bad that even Kathryn (the CEO) had to field calls. It not only was a terrible experience for the patrons and likely caused the Symphony to lose a significant amount of donations. It was just a poor use of the staff’s time and energy.
Crippling Email Marketing Software
WordFly, the email marketing software used by the SBS when I entered the picture offered a terrible experience. It was originally chosen because it had a native integration with the Symphony’s CRM Tessitura. But that was the only positive characteristic I could find.
To begin, emails created with WordFly were just plain unattractive. Targeting specific members of our audience using segmentation was not a simple affair. You had to write code just to create a button or change the color of a button. It was unbelievable!
WordFly doesn’t even offer a newsletter subscription form that we could embed on our website. The Symphony had to send you to a separate WordFly-hosted webpage for visitors to subscribe. Because there was no newsletter subscription form nor any good reason to join, no one was joining the email newsletter list unless they purchased a ticket first and they were added to the list.
Aging PC Fleet
The Symphony’s PCs were from 2011 and 2012. They were sluggish and were all running Windows 7 which is now completely unsupported by Microsoft. You couldn’t even install Google Chrome on them. Their sluggish performance and the compatibility issues were just making getting things done more difficult than they needed to be.
Failing Email Server
The Symphony’s email was hosted on an obsolete Hosted Exchange email server. Not only was the web interface quite basic in functionality but the server would repeatedly go down for a day or two randomly. It brought the Symphony’s operation to its knees during a critical time.
No Modern Collaboration Software
Because the Symphony wasn’t using a cloud-based collaborative tool like Google Workspace and along with it Google Docs, they had to email versions of the same document to each other. It made working together on the same document more difficult than it should have been considering it was 2020.
The Marketing Obstacles
How to offer our patrons a virtual concert experience during the pandemic
When Kathryn came aboard in May 2020, the 2019/2020 season had already been cancelled. A massive budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year loomed but Kathryn had hope for the 2020/2021 season if she could find some way to deliver the upcoming season virtually.
She wanted to find some way to press on with the upcoming season but do it safely to protect the health of our staff and musicians. The kicker is we had 4 months to deliver with the first concert scheduled for August.
How to convert our website visitors into email subscribers
When Kathryn asked me to build a proposal for the Symphony, I noticed that there was no offer whatsoever for someone to join the Symphony email newsletter. Not only was there no embedded subscribe form on the site, there was no value offered in exchange for joining the newsletter list.
If you visit any successful eCommerce store, they will offer you a discount in exchange for joining their email list. They do this because they know that by capturing the visitor’s email, it drastically improves their chances at convincing that person to buy. We needed some way to offer value but also not cheapen the brand by offering coupon codes.
How to build a website that converts website visitors into ticket holders
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How to create a website that converts website visitors into financial supporters
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The Technology Solutions I built
Now have a beautiful website that showcases everything we’re doing as an organization
Staff can make significant changes to the website on their own. This enables us to keep moving forward quickly as a small organization.
Looks terrific on mobile (~45% of website traffic)
Saving a LOT of $$$ since they aren’t paying an agency for every little tweak/edit
Having Edward on retainer means we have predictable pricing
Empowering Marketing Email Provider (Mailchimp)
Marketing staff can now easily build beautiful emails themselves rather than asking Edward to hand code everything.
Edward works with our development person to create tags and segments so we can send cohorts of our email list more personalized emails.
Edward built a 7-email/7-day welcome email sequence with Nir Kabaretti sharing 7 Stories
Edward wrote the code to create a TNEW7 theme that matches our new branding
With us returning to in-person concerts in 2021/22 season. We needed to upgrade to TNEW7. Edward wrote all the necessary code to create a “theme” for our new TNEW7 ticketing/donation. Our ticketing/donation system now is completely “on-brand” with the new website.
Edward migrated us from aging Microsoft Hosted Exchange Environment to Google Workspace
Edward not only migrated all of our email accounts and emails over to Google Workspace. He also migrated 600GB of data from our shared drives to Google Drive.
Edward even set up an automation where documents scanned at our office printer can be directly uploaded to Google Drive.
The team can now work collaboratively on a single document using Google Docs instead of sending versions of a Word Doc back and forth via email.
Team now enjoys having instant messaging via Google Chat.
Because everything is backed up on Google’s Cloud, we don’t have to worry about backing up the local files on our individual PCs.
Edward manages all of our email/collaboration infrastructure and software licensing (Google Workspace and Microsoft Office)
Edward managed the entire non-profit application process and we now have free email through Google Workspace’s Non-profit program AND now every single team member now has the latest Office suite through Microsoft’s Non-profit Office program. We get 10 Office licenses for free and only pay $3/mo/user for licenses beyond that.
Refreshed PC Fleet
While we hope to win a grant soon which would fund the purchase of new PCs. We needed to upgrade our PCs NOW since we were no longer using a remote desktop environment.
Edward drove to visit us on site and upgraded all of our PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10 AND installed new hardware (Memory/RAM and new SSD hard drives). This breathed a whole new life into our PCs so they are now absolutely usable for our staff.
Edward live streamed the 2020/21 season for us
While we hope to win a grant soon which would fund the purchase of new PCs. We needed to upgrade our PCs NOW since we were no longer using a remote desktop environment.
Edward drove to visit us on site and upgraded all of our PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10 AND installed new hardware (Memory/RAM and new SSD hard drives). This breathed a whole new life into our PCs so they are now absolutely usable for our staff.
The Marketing Solutions I built
A full virtual concert experience including ticketing and donation payment system
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An exciting reason for people to subscribe to our email newsletter
Edward found that we had no compelling reason for someone to join our newsletter. Edward suggested we build a compelling offer such as sending 7 emails over 7 days with stories and behind-the-scenes info from our Maestro Nir Kabaretti.
Edward set up the signup form and the email sequence in Mailchimp.
A site that truly excites our patrons for our upcoming performances
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A site that demonstrates the Symphony's massive impact and reach and inspires its financial supporters to give big
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Edward created new brand guidelines (fonts and brand colors) for our new brand initiative
The old website and marketing materials used ugly sans serif fonts and only 2 colors. Edward expertly chose new fonts, and complimentary brand colors to the our core brand colors which made our website and marketing materials more dynamic and beautiful.