Marketing 201

In my last blog on marketing (Marketing 101), I talked about direct marketing and how it can be a great tool to promote your show.  In this blog, we’ll take it a step further and talk about the cost and practicality of actually doing it.

First of all I’d like to link you to another blog written by one of my favorite Broadway producers (Ken Davenport).  In this particular post he talks about proofing a direct mail advertisement.

Godspell Blog

Direct mail is very effective.  Broadway producers wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t.  Now let's examine the costs and see how we can apply it to an off-off Broadway production.  A first class stamp is 44c.  A nice colorful direct mail postcard is going to cost between 50c to a dollar.  Let’s be liberal, and say the postcard will cost us 56c giving us a grand total of $1 per mailing.  Now let’s say we send this mailing out to 500,000 people who are active ticket buyers.   Think about the costs associated with that.  At minimum, we’re spending half a million dollars on supplies, and that doesn’t even cover the labor involved in executing such a feat (you can’t just walk into the post office and drop half a million brochures into a mail slot) or the costs of obtaining such a list in the first place.

A mailing like this, if put together properly, can give you a return of around 3%-4% (meaning 3% of the people you contact will actually buy a ticket).  If you do the math 3% is 15,000 tickets sold.  Now, if you’re producing on Broadway and you’re selling tickets for $100 a pop, that’s a potential $1.5 million return.  And if the show has a good word of mouth, the return will be even greater, making direct mail totally worth it.  But if you’re producing a limited run off-Broadway (and selling tickets for $25…) you’re going to lose a lot of money.  And most likely you won’t have the $500,000 initial capital in the first place.

What if I told you that you could send something out that was much more detailed and extensive than a postcard, and that you could send it out to 500,000 people at a fraction of the cost?  And by fraction I mean sub $5,000 range.  I imagine you’d sit up and listen!

First of all, use a website instead of a postcard.  A website will cost you $10 a month to maintain, and it can have as many pictures, videos, biographies, etc as you want.  Loads more information at a fraction of the cost.

Second of all, use email instead of direct mail.  Direct mail costs $1 per mailing.  Email costs $0 per mailing.  The only cost associated with email is buying the list.  Critics may argue:  marketing via email is bad because no one likes spam.  I disagree.  Email "spam" is no less intrusive than a hardcopy of "junk" mail.  And second of all, the companies that rent these lists only send emails to people who want to hear about new shows and events.  This means that someone had to subscribe to the list meaning it's not unsolicited.  So what you're sending is not really spam.

A $500,000 marketing expense down to $5,000.  Nice.  This is what off-off Broadway producing is all about folks.  Finding a way to get it done at a fraction of the cost.