In a moment of reckoning like 2020, our industry is being forced to redefine what success looks like. Arts and cultural organizations are being asked to examine their reason for being, and the part they really play in the lives of audiences, their community and the industry.

For arts marketers, our traditional objectives or KPIs have been tied to visitation or to ‘butts on seats’, and all of the related metrics such as frequency, recency and value. When our venues are shuttered this season and possibly next, what can we measure and what objectives can we set for ourselves with this data?

Digital Engagement
Most arts and cultural organizations have made the pivot to digital – and along the way have been becoming more diligent with data collection. So, there are metrics to report on such as virtual event ticket sales or donations, but also reach, engagement, consumption among existing audiences, and new to file customers. While you can use this information in isolation to measure the success of content over time, there are bigger picture questions that can be asked and answered with this data, such as:

What impact will these metrics have on your content strategy? And how is your marketing team delivering this information to your artistic and programming teams to effectively impact these decisions?
What does your audience for digital look like, and what do you want it to look like? And how will this influence the way you promote your digital content and spend your limited budgets?
What is the journey you will take your new to file digital audiences on in the future? Will they become a segment to consider in your future programming and marketing strategy, and how will you measure their relationship with the organization over time?

Survey Data
Many companies are already participating in group audience research studies and their own studies throughout this time. As my colleague Tom has already written, there is an opportunity to collect and use this information to segment your audience based on their self-identified ‘readiness to return’.

This data can be used to inform strategy, including the membership and package offers you are making to various segments of your audience based on the information they’ve shared with you, but also allow you to set some new KPIs based on the actions you want each segment to take. These actions may not include physical attendance but things like increased donations, digital participation, or future retention (for example, allowing them to renew into seasons beyond the next season now).

Brand and Organizational Impact
Often arts and cultural marketers feel caught up in the marketing of event after event, or exhibition after exhibition. This is a unique time to be looking at brand messaging, and a moment to really speak to the core of who the organization is. How often do we – as arts marketers – get to run brand-only campaigns? This is a time to experiment with digital content and messaging (paid and organic) to figure out what about your organization resonates with your audiences, and use this data to inform future brand marketing.

Beyond this, what are the KPIs that the leadership at your organization want to set around your company’s impact on Individual relationships, impact on the community it serves, and impact within the wider industry? Again, we’ve never had the time to consider this type of measurement, so this could be an opportune moment to find a pro bono research partner who wants to help you figure out ways to measure these factors.

At the heart of all of this is asking ourselves as arts marketers what success looks like now, and what will it look like in the future. We can’t measure retention and churn as we’ve traditionally done, so what will be the new metrics that matter and how will we report on these over time?

As a starting point for this type of thinking, we’d be recommending:

Identifying new to file customers for digital programming, and setting objectives for their relationship with the company in future seasons, either for continued digital programming or in-person programming.
Segmenting your existing audience based on their self- identified readiness to return and tailoring your communications and marketing plans accordingly. And making sure you continue to treat them as a loyal audience member up until the point at which they are ready to return.
Undertaking research around brand affinity with existing and potential audiences and setting some benchmarks to measure your organization’s brand impact and perceptions as you start to reopen and beyond.

The fatigue is real among everyone who is still working in our industry, so I hesitate to give you something else to tackle at this time. But, I hazard a guess, that the companies that come out of this somewhat intact will have grappled with the questions around their own reason for being, and brought their audiences, artists, and communities along with them.

Rani Haywood is a Senior Consultant at Tom O’Connor Consulting Group. TOCG is a New York City-based arts consultancy offering strategy, assessment, executive search, and leadership coaching services to organizations across the US—all with a focus on audiences and revenue outcomes. For over fifteen years Rani has held senior marketing roles at an array of performing arts and cultural organizations in Australia and the United States, including at The Metropolitan Opera, Roundabout Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company.