The Yard

The Client

The Yard presents a summer festival of dance on its campus on Martha’s Vineyard. Throughout the year, The Yard offers arts residences, community programs, and, more recently, a winter season of performances. As the company moved toward more year-round programming, it sought to develop a more nuanced customer engagement strategy to more effectively message to its varied audiences that engage with The Yard in different ways.

The Need

With support from the Barr Foundation, we were engaged to undertake an assessment of all marketing and patron engagement systems and practices for The Yard, with the ultimate goal of developing a comprehensive patron engagement plan that would foster loyalty and enhance earned and contributed revenue. Specifically, we were tasked with developing a year-round model of audience engagement that helped The Yard to maintain connections with key audience segments regardless of physical location and time of year.

The Process

The consulting team:

• took a comprehensive look at The Yard’s marketing and development strategies, practices, data infrastructure, and offerings

• conducted a series of individual meetings and a staff working session to identify issues, needs, and opportunities

• with the help of a trusted data analyst colleague, conducted a thorough analysis to better understand audience behavior, set new goals, and bust a few myths

The Results

Our team delivered an actionable Patron Engagement Strategy to The Yard team, which included:

• identification of key audience segments based on our data analysis

• recommended messaging across the year and throughout the patron lifecycle

• best practices for integrating engagement, sales, and fundraising appeals

Despite the disruption of the pandemic in 2020, The Yard team is now at work instituting the proper systems and practices to make this possible.

Explore the Tom O’Connor Consulting Group website to learn more about Our Services, Our Team, and Our Clients.