Bringing People Together with Event Marketing

A self-described arty, nonprofit dotcom, Artsopolis began life simply as an online calendar for artistic events in and around the Silicon Valley area. Today, the group has a greatly expanded mission to provide exposure to the arts both big and small by empowering groups that have limited staffs and budgets.

Artsopolis, a program of Arts Council Silicon Valley, receives 30% of its funding from various foundations and corporate support, 25% through newsletter advertising and ticket sales, and the remaining 45% from sales of its calendar software platform, which is currently licensed by 20 other cities around the country.

Challenge: Spreading the word about events

Susannah Greenwood started at the group as a data entry clerk before moving up the ladder to her current position of director of local marketing. "I know there's a lot that goes on in our area, and I'm amazed at how many people don't know what is happening with the arts," Susannah says.

Artsopolis is currently in the middle of an intense push to provide more strategic partnering with arts groups, rather than doing a lot of "hand holding," Susannah says. One such partnership came together quickly with CreaTV, a new cable channel in San Jose. The station was planning a mixer to show off its studio space and the services it offers to local arts groups. "They had a list of 20 arts groups to invite and we have 600 in our database, so we hooked them up," Susannah explains.

Before Artsopolis got involved, all CreaTV had was an RSVP hotline, which Susannah sees as a deterrent to getting people to register for an event. "They didn't even have an email address for responses, and I didn't want to be the middleman," she says.

Solution: Setting up a professional registration system

To help build attendance for the CreaTV event, Susannah leveraged her Constant Contact mailing list and the Event Marketing platform to quickly create a registration form and send out an invitation by email. "It was so easy to use that I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. It all just worked," Susannah says.

Without a tool like this, we would be pretty worthless in trying to disseminate information to the right people. Though Susannah has a lot of experience with promoting events through Artsopolis' various email newsletters, she says she loves the event invitation feature for its call to action functionality. Giving invitees something to act on gets them more engaged in the event from the very first time they hear about it.

She adds that while some events that are targeting a wider audience are okay to publish on a public-facing website, it's more sophisticated to send customers and clients a personalized email invitation.

Results: Increased event participation

For the CreaTV mixer, Artsopolis only had a couple days to promote the event to its customer base. The email invitation drove in a handful of new online registrations, and 20 additional people called in to say they were coming. All told, more than 60 people showed up, making the night a success, Susannah reports.

The CreaTV experience is just the tip of the iceberg for Artsopolis and its use of Event Marketing. As a group that relies on foundations for donations and support, the reporting metrics output by Constant Contact will be key for showing the group's growth and impact. "Foundations eat stats up, so the reporting is huge," Susannah says. "Foundations are our lifeblood."

Not only does Constant Contact help with proving Artsopolis' chops, it also helps save time and money, while at the same time helping with efficiency. "It easily cuts down on staffing by half," Susannah says. "Without a tool like this, we would be pretty worthless in trying to disseminate information to the right people."