Spektrix Presents
Email Benchmarks and Best Practices
Email strategies to deepen relationships with your audience.
Transcription
Welcome, and thank you very much for joining us for the „Email Benchmarks and Best Practices“ webinar. We’re going to be drawing on some of the data in the recent email benchmarks report that was produced by Spektrix in partnership with Capacity. I’ll start off just with some very quick housekeeping. We are recording the session today and we’ll share that recording along with other resources mentioned in the next few days. And the webinar will last for around an hour. We’ll have time for questions at the end. And live captioning is available. If you need it, you can turn that off and on just using the CC button at the bottom of your screen. We are delighted to be working with Capacity again for today’s webinar in which we’ll focus on best practices, sector successes, and practical ideas to help you grow your email performance fast. We’re going to touch on some of the data that has informed this guidance, but if you would like to dig into that in more detail, then make sure you download the full report. We’ll be sharing the link to that as we go. So first, let’s introduce our speakers. My name’s Bryony Bell. My pronouns are she/her, and I’m Head of Content and Campaigns at Spektrix. I’m joining you from Manchester in England. My colleague Frank is Account Executive and Digital Communications Specialist at Spektrix, and he’s based in New New York. And we’re especially pleased to welcome Alison Goldberg, who’s Director of Email Consulting at Capacity. So let’s take a quick look at what we’ll cover today. First of all, I will share what we learned about great audience journeys. So why connected audience, connected email marketing tools and CRM data form the basis for successful personalization, measurement and improvement. I’ll then hand over to Frank. He’ll share some of the key email benchmarks and best practices that are driving high-performing organization success, after which Allison will share some of the tools and advice that Capacity have developed to drive email engagement. At the end, there’ll be time for a short Q&A. And of course we’ll share our contact details. So if you’d like to have a more in-depth conversation, you can follow up with us afterwards. If you have questions for us at any point during the session, there is a Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, just pop your questions into there. Ideally adding your name and organization so we can follow up with you individually if we don’t get to all of the questions in the room whilst we’re here, but let’s start by asking us why we are focusing us on email at all. How relevant is email in the era when there are so many communication channels open to us? Around 800 organizations were using Spektrix in 2025, and between them they sent well over 1 billion emails, all promoting arts culture and in-person experiences. And that huge number ties into global cross-industry trends tracked by Dotdigital in their own email benchmarks report. For those who don’t know, Dotdigital is one of the leading digital marketing platforms working with industries ranging from retail to healthcare and to charitable work. It’s also the email and digital ads platform that connects with Spektrix, which means every organization we serve gets access to both Spektrix and Dotdigital as part of the same package. Their report tells us that globally 24% more emails are being sent than ever before and that 92% of consumers say that email is their preferred marketing channel, but we can’t maintain that kind of positive sentiment just by sending out the same emails to 1,000s of subscribers. What was once a batch and blast channel is now the most direct, tailored, and genuine connection that marketers have to their audiences, but to have that kind of impact relies on a close connection between your database and your email platform, enabling deep real-time segmentation and personalization that goes far beyond greeting lines. With that in mind, today, we’re going to focus on creating emails that stand out in a crowded inbox, which means you’re going to hear about subject lines, personalization, and sender name as well as content creation that really drives conversions. We’ll also think about designing emails as part of a lasting relationship rather than as isolated touchpoints. And that means working across teams to develop a collaborative audience development strategy and then designing the emails that will help deliver it, whether they’re promoting your next event or exhibition, whether you’re seeking donations for your capital campaign or you’re upselling food and drink packages. And that connected strategy will help you define what it means to deliver the right message to the right audience member at the right time, which is the key to truly effective and meaningful personalization across your communications campaigns. Let’s take a look at what some of those campaigns might look like. True personalization presents audiences with content that responds to their interests, reflects their behaviors, and offers them relevant, persuasive next steps in their journey. That might mean a campaign to re-engage lapsed bookers, offering a small discount on tickets or on drinks. It might look like a campaign to first-time audience members to prompt them to come back for a second visit. Or it might look like a campaign to regular attendees, telling them just how much they could save if they were to become members. We sometimes talk about this as taking the right step as a team. That means ensuring that every single email you send is strategic, you know why you’re sending it, what success looks like, and how you’re planning to measure it. Every email should be timely, reaching the right people at the right moment. And by that I mean the right time of day or week, but more importantly, the right moment in their customer journey with your organization. Each email should be efficient, using tools like automation and personalization to send individualized campaigns while saving time for your team. And perhaps most importantly, they should be personal, which means relevant, targeted, and persuasive. And let’s dig into that one a little bit more deeply to see what we mean by personal. It starts with simple steps like greeting someone with their first name. That’s important. It takes just a moment or two to up, but it can build real trust and engagement. Alison’s going to show us some powerful quick wins for greeting, subject lines, and sender names later on in today’s presentation, but today, personalization can also mean so much more. With a really connected solution, you can set up real-time synchronization between your database and your email server, and this means customers receive communications as soon as they take an action. Donors receive same-day thank yous. Late bookers don’t miss out on pre-event information. Just as importantly, it means customers don’t receive communications that they shouldn’t. You can be confident that members who’ve converted at full price won’t receive an annoying follow-up discount offer just one day later. Dynamic customer lists make even more possible. When your segments update automatically based on real-time behaviors, you can constantly monitor for frequent attenders or high spenders with propensity to give or to spend more. New members or subscribers can access benefits like priority booking or ticket reductions as soon as they join your program. And you can start building reliable email automations, knowing that they’ll reach your audience at the right moment with no ongoing effort from your team. Cross-channel communications mean that email doesn’t stand on its own. The marketers in the room will already know that it often takes many reminders before a customer actually converts. By enrolling the same customers in campaigns which combine email, postal mailings, and digital ads, you’ll quickly learn what resonates with each segment and crucially, your dynamic lists and real-time synchronization, meaning you’ll unenroll in the moment they purchase, and that will save you vital budget on postal mailings and on advertising. All of this should be underpinned by comprehensive reporting, which ensures you can instantly see the return on investment for every campaign and for every segment, helping you to understand not only engagement metrics, but also the behaviors and conversions that each campaign inspires. And that information is vital to help you focus your efforts where it really makes a difference. When all of these things connect together, segments update dynamically as behavior changes, automations respond to today’s activity rather than to yesterday’s data, and campaign performance feeds directly back into the customer record to enrich future interactions. That kind of connected impact should translate in the shorter term into higher ticket sales, higher value transactions, and increased donations. And in the longer term, it should result in stronger audience engagement, higher overall revenue, and improved return on investment for every campaign, which means the real benchmark for success is understanding email performance as part of a complete patron journey, but today, we’re going to step way back from that. We’re going to focus on the even shorter term and on the metrics that come before conversions. Open rates, click rates, and other engagement metrics might not show you the final impact of your campaigns, but they do act as critical real-time indicators to flag the moments where customer’s attention is captured or where it’s lost. They help you to understand when customers open your emails but fail to click through or when customers reach your website but choose not to buy. By knowing the answers to questions like these, you can use your time and resources smartly to drive real impact. With that in mind, I’m going to hand over to Frank, who will look at our email benchmarks. After the session, take time to compare those metrics to your own organizations to understand how your campaigns measure up and track them internally to understand what’s working and where you should focus your next improvement efforts. And as we go, don’t forget to keep popping your questions in the chats along with your name and organization so that we can come back to those at the end. Wow, right. Thank you, Bryony. Hello, everyone. As mentioned at the top of the call, my name is Frank Tessier. I’m an Account Executive and Digital Communications Specialist here on the Spektrix Team, and I use he/him pronouns. I have two slides here on the metrics that we compared throughout the report and where the global average sits for each metric. I will take a second here to define these so we’re all on the same page. Open rate, as I’m sure many of you are familiar with, shows the proportion of recipients who have opened an email. It does not differentiate between people who glance and delete versus those who read it in full detail. Unique click rate tells us the percentage of individual recipients who clicked at least one link in an email. It counts only that first click for each individual. So someone who clicks multiple times is counted as one. And click to open rate tells us the proportion of people who opened an email and then went to click a link. If you’re gonna look at one metric, make it this one. It tells you how compelling your email content and calls to action are. Unsubscribes, again, probably familiar with, are the people who clicked the link to indicate they no longer want to receive any emails from you. If you offer multiple contact preferences, this does not include people who have opted out of just one type of communication. Soft bounces show the proportion of emails that haven’t been delivered because of a temporary issue, like a full mailbox or message size restrictions. Most mailing servers will keep trying to send to addresses that have soft bounced. And hard bounces show the proportion of emails that haven’t been delivered because of a more permanent issue, like the address no longer exists or they’ve blocked your communication. Continuing to include hard bounce emails can negatively affect your sender reputation. Across the board, we see a significant jump in these key metrics for organizations that are performing in the top 10%. And here we are focusing on our favorite metric, the click to open rate, where we see the average almost triple from 4 to 13%. And the change is particularly noticeable in the US where the most successful organizations achieve a click to open rate that is five times higher than the overall average. So what is driving this great increase? We’re gonna take a quick look at Arizona Theater Company and their email strategy as a high-performing organization. ATC produces performances in two cities that are more than 100 miles apart. And with this, they need to be able to efficiently deliver relevant messaging to the audiences in those two separate cities while building stronger long-term audience relationships. This means getting away from one-size-fits-all messaging. And to do this, ATC segments their patrons based on city, purchase history, subscriber status, email engagement. This ensures that their audience members receive content that both reflects where they are based and their relationship with the organization. And their marketing strategy is rooted in clean, connected data in their Spektrix CRM and the ease at which it can drive email and digital communication through Dotdigital. With these tools, they utilize dynamic content to deliver one email with varying content depending on the recipient. They also use automated drip campaigns called programs that deliver timely communication based on actions that their patrons have or have not taken. Throughout the program, they’re able to track where a patron exits for clear insights on what touchpoints saw results, which helps shape future program decisions. They also update subject lines, call-to-action copy, call-to-action buttons, along with the main copy in the email throughout the different variations of the automation. ATC used these tools with their Black Friday promotion last year and saw a lot more than increased opens and clicks. They raised nearly $70,000, which was five times higher than the year before when they weren’t using these tools. They also take advantage of using their Spektrix data to find new customers who resemble their high-value patrons by utilizing lookalike capabilities in Meta. Once their source audience is in Meta, to create their lookalike audience, they can target them accordingly. Nicholas Kuhn, Arizona Theater Company’s marketing manager, summed it up best with his quote. „The more specific our audience is and the more specific the language to that audience is, the better receive the message is. We see higher open rates, highest click rates, everything.“ Let’s take another look at an organization utilizing similar tools and strategies around their membership communications. This is Sheffield Theaters, and Sheffield Theaters are made up of four venues across three different buildings. Sheffield is utilizing program automations as well, but here we’re gonna focus on their tailored communication using dynamic content. We can see in the top that they have segmented their database on membership status, venue preference, and others that we can’t see. And within their emails, they prioritize their show announcements based on the preference of the patron. So the most relevant information is at the top of the email for each recipient. They also tailor copy for current members versus lapsed members, potential members, and so on. We can see here that communication to members is more tailored to taking advantage of their benefits, while other versions are more visual and tailored to peaking interest with an exclamation of benefits if they were to join. So what other opportunities do you have after you’ve automated some emails or tailoring your message? When we look at when to send our communications, we wanna focus on the right time for the user, not as soon as we can get it off of our to-do list. We see the highest results on Mondays and Wednesdays, but we also see there is not a significant drop off on the other days of the week, including the weekend where there is particular opportunity. Engagement is still high on the weekends, but the number of emails sent are low. So you have an opportunity to try scheduling your next email for a Sunday afternoon where recipients have more leisure time and are more focused on their social plans. If you haven’t already done so, we encourage you to look at your own reports on engagement by day of the week. And if you are a current Spektrix user, you can utilize send time optimization, which further tailors the time of day at which a patron receives an email based on their very own habits. Each year, Dotdigital releases its own email benchmark report for all the industry it serves. That link from our report, that link, excuse me, that is linked in our report and contains useful suggestions of its own, but we’ve drawn some of the main statistics from it to see where our industry fits in. We learned that our open rates are low, even lower than retail, which is the worst global performance of any industry, but click rates are positive, sitting well above the all industry average. Food and drug retailers are especially low, while furniture resellers show better results. So with your team, have a thought exercise about why this might be. What emails do you open or ignore from retailers? What resonates with you? What makes you click a link or click an unsubscribe link? Meanwhile, we see the highest performer is government, and it’s likely that many of these communications contain essential information around taxation, legislation, and other government services. We want to make the most of our own high-engagement moments to communicate additional information and support, wider organizational goals without diluting the value of the essential information it contains. And for our sector, that most often means focusing on pre and post-event emails, which see the highest engagement across regions. Pre-event emails achieve a phenomenal 74% open rate, while the click to open rates are 15 and 20%. And if we focus in on that top 10%, results outperform even that of the successful government segment. Pre-event emails reach almost 90% open rate and the click to open rate increase from 39% to 45%. With the incredible engagement pre and post-event emails get, it’s important that we get them right and take advantage of the opportunity at hand. This can be more than just a know-before-you-go email about parking, door times, and logistics. A great example of this is Tyneside Cinema. They have four different cinema screens, and this could mean maintaining four different email templates with four different sends or sending one generic know-before-you-go email that lacks specific details so they don’t have to manage all the different variations. With their Spektrix Dotdigital setup, they’re able to maintain one template that dynamically updates. They can easily keep their branding consistent, but dynamically change information based on the customer booking all in the one template. So how else can we take advantage of these high engaged with emails? In this example, a patron attending a family event, who is also a education donor, receives a thank you for their support, while non-donors receive information about why a gift is impactful with a small ask. Same email, two different messages depending on both the event and the patron. And support your wider organizational goals. You can use this opportunity to upsell concessions, parking, merch, or other experiences that make their visit more convenient or special. Since this email is timely about an event that the patron is excited about, it makes sense to share this additional information with your ticket buyers. So what if you’re not in that top 10% yet? Where do you begin? Capital Theaters in Edinburgh, Scotland manage audience engagement for over 700 performances including drama, dance, musicals, family shows, live music, holiday events, everything basically. Using advanced automation and audience segmentation, as well as targeted digital advertising, they create personalized ongoing communication with their audience members. Katie Daniel and Allan Ramsay from their team offer advice to their peers just starting on the journey. And they repeated the return to the importance of testing, refining, and adjusting gradually. They also provided this quote about when they were first starting out and how they got started. And in Spektrix, this could mean making use of email automation program templates that come ready-made in your system, allowing you to focus on the design and the creative content while giving you the confidence that the logic of the automation is already tested and ready for use. Or register for an activation workshop where you’ll spend an hour working alongside other Spektrix users and a Spektrix expert who will help walk through the steps of email personalization, and by the end of the session, you’ll walk away with improved communication ready to go. You can also contact our support team. We are happy to help you analyze your own data, identify the right priorities, and then take action in your Spektrix system. If you’re using Spektrix, visit the online community, find out more. And if you’re not, ask your own provider how they can help you grow your engagement. In the meantime, Alison from Capacity is here to share her expertise. Hello, all right, thanks, Frank. My name is Alison Goldberg. I use she/her pronouns, and I’m the Director of Email Marketing at Capacity. Capacity works with over 200 arts and cultural organizations. So we see a lot of emails. In our time together today, I’ll be sharing detail, practical advice, and examples about deliverability, content, and segmentation. So to dig into what makes an email successful, we’re gonna start at the beginning, which is the inbox. The first thing that someone is probably going to read that will determine whether they open your email or not is, believe it or not, the sender name. We usually spend a lot of energy on subject lines, and we still should, but overall the most important element of an email that impacts a recipient’s choice of whether or not they should open it is the sender. Recipients typically check who an email is coming from before choosing to read the subject line or determining what’s inside the email itself. In addition to helping your email stand out and be opened, the sender name also has an impact on deliverability. There are a couple of good examples and bad examples right from my own inbox. The top email here is from the ACLU and used the name of someone I don’t recognize as the sender name. However it still says ACLU next to it. So it’s clear to me who that email is coming from. Same from the email from OneTable that is a little below it. There’s an email from Michael Sapienza, which is from a cancer fundraising organization, which it does have in the sender name, but it gets cut off in the inbox. So it’s a bit of mystery to me who it’s from, just from the inbox. Similarly, the Angela Ferrell-Zaba example at the bottom is from an organization called Everytown, and she is the Executive Director, but I as sort of, you know, a more casual donor don’t know that. So it would’ve made more sense to send it from Everytown, an organization I recognize, and still make the letter inside from her. The goal is to use consistent and clear sender names to build trustworthiness, grow brand recognition, and create consistency for your users. So when we receive an email, from the user perspective, we are thinking, is this an email from someone I trust? Is it a brand I recognize? Does it align with what I signed up for? And am I expecting this email? If you send a regular email, your readers will recognize the consistency and they’ll anticipate your emails, which is what we want. Consider who the should be for your segmented emails. Generally I recommend refraining from using a person’s name. Your most loyal audiences will likely respond well to, say, a fundraising email that is from an organizational leader, but newer and less engaged audiences might not recognize the name of a leader of your organization, but they will recognize your organization’s name. Let’s move on to subject lines. They are still important. All right, so you wanna keep your subject lines concise. You can see here in this mobile screenshot, we have three of these subject lines fit perfectly in the mobile inbox. So September is over at the top, LACMA, monthly update, October, 2025, and Dansk’s best-selling butter warmer is back, from Food52, but more often than not in our mobile inboxes, we see subject lines get cut off. So think about how your subject line and your preview text work together. They should compliment each other. The subject line serves to grab the reader’s attention and the preview text ads context. So like the email here from my inbox from Rifle Paper Company, which is one of my favorite stationary companies, has the subject line „So Much New in Spring Patterns“ with a bunch of flower emojis. So really eye catching, with the preview text, „New Hats, bags, and desk accessories all inside.“ How emails look in the inbox is really important. So with so many lines and so much text, it’s really easy for people’s eyes to get overwhelmed and to just click away from their inbox. So we can see some of the emails here, taking great advantage of, is using white space after their preview text to allow more room for your eyes to rest and to focus. And we’ll share in the follow-up email, a little hack to help create that white space after your preview text. Consider personalization. As Bryony mentioned, personalization can be huge for engagement. It’s a big way to make an email all about the user. And putting a user’s name in the subject line can even lift open rates. So here’s a great example of personalization from the Sydney Opera House when my colleague signed up for their emails with personalization in both the subject line and the headline of the email. Personalization should really read naturally as both of these do. Emma, you joined at an exciting time. And Welcome to the House, Emma. I’ve gotten some emails that include my full name, which really does not read naturally. And I like that these are not „Dear Emma,“ which reads more like a letter rather than an email. We hear a lot of concerns about data cleanliness and not having full names for all of those on your email list, and that’s perfectly all right. Wanna think about what you can say that is specific enough to your audience without being a first name. This is a great example from Jazz at Lincoln Center, creating some personalization with „Hey jazz lover.“ So even without having a first name, you’ll still see some of those lifts in engagement from personalization. One final thing about subject lines is there is absolutely no formula for each and every subject line, but I found this sort of secret sauce idea, is a great way to really get the gears turning when you’re stuck in a rut when thinking about your subject lines. What I particularly like about this format is that it keeps the user and the benefits to the user front and center, which is what we want. So you want every subject line to, you wanna think about containing an active verb, some personalization, the key word, and the benefit. So some subject lines I came up with using the structure are explore classical concerts first, Alison see performances and save and create your season and skip the line. So keeping the user in mind and the benefits to them in mind help keeps our emails more personal, anticipated, and relevant. Next we’ll talk about writing copy and designing emails with intention. So in designing our emails, we wanna think of a funnel where the visuals are driving the eye down towards a single call-to-action, or CTA. So try to keep the most important message in the top 300 pixels. And the headline/text size should correspond to the importance throughout your message. While we’re here, I wanna mention mobile-friendly email designs. Nowadays most ESPs offer mobile-responsive designs, but there’s still some important guidelines to keep in mind, like considering single-column layouts. Like, this example is size body text to at least 14 size font to ensure it’s readable across devices. And adding alt-text to images, which we’ll talk more about in a bit. This is an example from the Omaha Performing Arts. It’s user focused, it is segmented, it is a genre-specific subscription message sent to those who are interested in dance with a clear call to action to subscribe. This email says to the audience, we’ve listened to you, we know you love dance and we respect your time. So last year, the New York Times gave us a gift in the form of an oops email. Sure we’ve all sent those ourselves. So the example on the left is the oops email which gave us a great glimpse at their template. It has important elements like a headline and a CTA, but then it says to write a short intro, but not to summarize fully. Employ the curiosity gap and not give too much away in the inbox. We want people to click through. And I think this is sometimes forgotten in our industry. We want people to click through and we should not give all the information away in the inbox. The email they later sent, which is what they meant to send, was about a list of 100 favorite restaurants in New York City. 22 new ones are added, so click through to see them. There’s the curiosity gap. So how can we employ the curiosity gap in our emails? We wanna think about what or the keyword, we wanna be clear and specific, what is our email about. Who is the audience? This is always you, but it can be explicitly you with personalization or more implicit. Say, if the email is about kids programming, then the implicit you is parents. And the promise or benefit. Wanna offer something worth their time, that piques their interest and that they cannot resist. So think about asking a curiosity-inducing question, something that might upend expectations. An example for one of our clients is, what makes cabaret at CareMore so special? Overall we wanna reduce friction. We wanna guide the user in a way that sounds on-brand and, most of all, makes it as easy as possible for them to accomplish the task at hand. So you wanna speak the user’s language, really avoid using internal language that new and sometimes even loyal patrons may not be familiar with. A lot of organizations have choose your own subscriptions, or CYO. We know what the acronym CYO stands for, but that doesn’t mean that audiences necessarily know. So it’s worth taking that step back and seeing what language you can make more accessible or add more context. You know we talk a lot about single tickets going on sale and we heard feedback that someone thought that meant only, you know, one ticket, one standalone tickets, they couldn’t buy a pair. So again, that is really comfortable, usual language for us internally, but really thinking about, you know, what is that accessible language to the user. I’m very sure you’re already employing a lot of these, but it’s really important to make sure that everyone can actually receive and read the emails that you’re working so hard at crafting. So as I mentioned earlier, alt-texts on images is really important. Arts emails often are very image heavy with show art, production photography, season graphics. So if the image carries meaningful information like a show title, a date, or a call to action that are not elsewhere in the email and there’s no alt-text, screen reader users and people with images getting blocked in their inbox are not gonna get any of that information. So do not hide information in images. Images can load slowly on mobile, not load in certain inboxes. And so adding alt-text will make that email readable even if the image doesn’t load. Consider color contrast, arts organizations love, like, moody design, but be aware of accessibility guidelines requiring 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text. And as I said earlier, think about readable font sizes. Say, really a 14 font size minimum for body copy so it’s legible across devices. Think about descriptive link text. You know, click here and learn more are meaningless to screen reader users who are navigating by just link text and not seeing the buttons, not seeing what you’re referring to. Something like buy tickets for Carmen is much more meaningful. We at Capacity have a CTA generator to sort of help get your wheels turning when it comes to strong CTA. So we will include a link to that in the follow up as well. And finally, plain-text versions. Many organizations do not maintain them or don’t double check them to make sure they’ve updated correctly. So they really do matter for both deliverability and accessibility. So I’d strongly recommend taking a look at those plain-text versions of your emails. Let’s look at a few examples of emails before my final section and get those questions in the chat, in the Q&A. This is an email from the Australian Museum, and we really love it. It’s short and sweet. The subject line says, „Emma, are you ready to be bitten by curiosity?“ With a bug emoji. And then the headline within the email is „Ready to be bitten by curiosity? Something thrilling is coming to the Australian Museum. We can’t say much yet, but it bites. Join the wait list to be among the first to secure tickets for this exhibition where fear becomes fascination. Manage your preferences and select upcoming exhibition to be first to know.“ And then the call-to-action button is „Get the first bite.“ Now it’s really illustrates that layout that we showed earlier with the headline, clear and short copy and a very clear call-to-action button. And this is a really fun and engaging email for an email that is essentially asking folks to update their preferences. So there’s always place to have fun and include some of these best practices. This email is from Hudson Valley Shakespeare for a show they did a few years ago called „Medea: Re-Versed.“ This was a new show so there was a lot of education and context building needed for the audience. So using quotes from reviews and audience members really added third-party validation, which is really impactful. And this email uses the icons and the color blocks to drive the reader down the page. So it’s really scannable for someone who is not reading every word but just sort of scanning through their inbox. Finally, one of our favorite topics, which is segmentation. Segment, as we talked about, is really crucial to delivering anticipated personal and relevant content to users. So here are some questions you wanna ask about your audiences to begin segmenting. How and when do your audiences prefer to be communicated to? Is there a specific vernacular or slang that might resonate with certain audiences more than others? For example, your regular attendees might know a monthly event you do by name but you may need to do more to educate more sporadic audiences about that event. And what types of actions distinguish your audience members from one another? Some ideas for segmentation include, but are certainly not limited to, using past purchase behavior to inform current segmentation, donation appeals should be sent to current donors, lapsed donors and recent attendees, but not your entire list. I say that as someone who used to work in development. Widely recognizable performances and free programming should be liner content for new signups and users who are less active. And consider resending important emails with a new subject line to make sure that information is received. Question we get a lot is, how many segments should I have? And the real answer is, it depends, but segments really only help when each one is large enough to tell you something useful. So start with one or two meaningful segments, like past attendees versus new subscribers or single-ticket buyers versus multi-ticket buyers, and then build from there. Another question we get is, how often should I email my different segments? And again, it depends. The right send frequency is the one your audience responds to. Email fatigue is totally a real thing. So watch those unsubscribe and those click rates to see how your audience is feeling. Being able to benchmark against industry at large and your own benchmarks is really helpful in watching as those rates change. And consider even asking your audience how often they want to hear from you. Finally, list health and list quality matters. So set a re-engagement threshold. If someone hasn’t opened or clicked an email in 12 to 18 months and either win them back with a dedicated re-engagement email or remove them from getting your regular emails. Engaged subscribers always outperform unengaged ones regardless of your list size. I’ll hand it back to you, Bryony. Thank you so much, Alison. I will just take over the screen for one second. So just gonna wrap up with some takeaways. We are gonna move onto your questions in a moment. So if there’s anything that you are still wondering about from what you’ve just heard, please add it to the Q&A now. Really appreciate everything that Frank and Alison have shared. We’ll certainly be thinking about some of those things in the Spektrix marketing team. Let’s wrap up with our top takeaways from today. So first of all, make sure that you set your own benchmarks. Download the email benchmarks report which will help you to see how you measure up against similar organizations, but the most important thing that you can track against is your own performance. So make sure you were looking at how you’re performing today. Look back to previous years if you can and then track your progress from there, because we know that every organization in the room is gonna have slightly different audiences and priorities, and it’s only really against your own work that you can track effectively. Be ambitious, not just average. If you are already exceeding the average benchmarks that we’ve published in the report, take a look at how the top 10% of organizations are performing and think about how you could match that. If you’re already in that group, tell us what’s working for you and we can share your story with others. Zoom out, take a moment to step back from your campaigns and really think about them from a reader’s perspective. Ask yourself what works, what doesn’t work. Could they be even more effective? If you’ve got new team members or people who aren’t close to email, they can be really helpful in looking at your emails ‚cause it’s very hard to look at an email that you’ve written and really think about it from that perspective. Make sure you use personalization with clear purpose. So understand who you’re speaking to with each email, understand what they’re doing already and make sure you really understand why the thing you are offering to them is the right next step for them. And finally, take time to connect, learn, and share. You are all in the room today, which is a great first step, but use experts at organizations like Capacity and Spektrix. Use networks like the Spektrix community and really be proactive in asking questions, sneaking suggestions, and sharing your successes so that we can all learn from one another. We’re gonna start that last process by answering your questions today. So I’m gonna stop screen sharing and that means you can see all three presenters. And we’ll have a look at what the first question is. Do keep popping them into the Q&A if you’ve got ideas. So let’s start with a question about email programs. Are there any specific email programs you’ve seen? And by email programs we’re talking about automated emails that could be set up in advance and sent out to people on a rolling basis based on the behaviors they take. Have any of the panelists seen any programs like that that perform better than others? Frank, would you mind kicking us off with that? Yeah, I can take this. I would say, for this, we don’t generally compare, like, program to program because they all have different purposes, right? Your welcome program, it’s probably gonna perform a little better than a lapseed booker program, someone who hasn’t already been engaging for 18 months or so. So really we like to try to compare these more to, like, the program versus what you would do manually. How it allows you to do more, it’s more timely, it saves you time. And that is where we see the the real benefit of it and start to outperform what you could do manually, but comparing a program to a program because they are so different with different purposes and even within the same program, two organizations can send vastly different emails with the program. We don’t generally compare a specific program to outperforming a specific program. That’s what I have to say. Lovely, thanks, Frank. Alison, I think the next one might be really well placed for you. So we’ve got somebody who works for an arts charity that produces free public art across the UK. They’re interested in how you might engage subscribers when they have no real product or venue year-round. They’ve got no live projects to talk about right now. So they’re producing retrospective content and spotlighting artists, but would you have any other recommendations for that organization? Yeah, I think those are great ideas for sure and I think, you know, this may not be something you can produce retroactively, but moving forward people love sort of, like, behind-the-scenes content, especially, like, time lapses of maybe art being installed or those sorts of things would be really great sort of content to create and then sort of keep in your back pocket. I would also just sort of consider, you know, the cadence that you need to be emailing at when you don’t have something to promote, necessarily. Like, it’s okay to sort of take a step back and maybe you’re looking at more of a monthly or every other week email on the time when you’re a little more dark and then you can ramp back up to your more normal cadence when you have more to talk about. Super, thanks so much, Alison. We’ve got a couple of questions about sharing resources, a request for the PowerPoint from the session and the recording. Just to confirm, we will be sending those things out to you so you can look back on all the great advice you’ve received today. And also it’s somebody asking, if you’re using Spektrix and Dotdigital, how you can see the sort of metrics that we’ve talked about today? If you’re already using Spektrix, we’ll be sending out some guidance on that so you can compare your performance against the email benchmarks report that should reach you in the next couple of days, but the quick answer is to go into the Analytics section of Dotdigital and go to Account Analytics and you can start to see that information there, but we’ll send you lots more information about filtering and organizing that information soon after this session. So many great questions, just gimme one moment. Somebody is asking about examples of emails that have got great revenue per email. We’ve seen a few examples today, but if either of you, Frank or Alison, got any really great examples of emails that you know have performed really well in terms of direct revenue. I mean something I’m thinking of just necessarily an email specific, but just thinking about emails that really talk specifically to the correct segmented audience. So really hitting on the head. You know, you have a Shakespeare show and you’re able to talk to those folks who’ve gone to Shakespeare shows at your venue before and really speak to them through that lens rather maybe a more general, you know, here’s the show we have on, come on and really be able to to speak to them more specifically. Tend to see that perform well. Yeah, I was gonna say something similar where even if, for example, if it’s, the call to action is to make a donation or the call to action is to do X, if we can talk to our segments in ways of we know you’ve donated in the past and we can tell them how that their past gift has already made an impact, will you consider doing this versus someone who’s never donated before, right? Changing that language so it’s very specific to the people always perform better than the one-size-fits-all messaging or the, you know, blast it out or even, like, just changing two emails, right? The more we can do with Alison’s point of correctly segmented size groups outperform others. Great, thank you, both. I think if anyone in the room has got any emails that they’ve sent that have performed extraordinarily well, we’d love to hear that. So questions are welcome, but if you’ve got any success stories you want to share, pop those in the chat as well and we’ll really happily share those with the room. We’ve got a couple of questions about pre and post-event emails. And as Frank mentioned, they get some of the highest performance and are therefore some of the points at which we know you’ve really captured your audience’s attention. Some quite interesting questions about how can we add kind of, you may almost also like cross-promotion on those posts and also how might we leverage those emails for cross-selling or upselling? I had some really interesting conversations with Spektrix users in Edinburgh last week. We’re doing our in-person hubs at the moment. And we talked a lot about how to use those really high engagement touch points very strategically to make sure you’re not shouting too much at those people at that time to make sure that you’re really emphasizing the vital information that they do need, especially if they’re coming to your organization for the first time or if they’ve got access needs to take into account and they really need to know what they can expect when they reach you, but there is definitely an opportunity within that to help them understand not only how they can access your venue but can they get refreshments when they get there or do they need to stop at the supermarket on the way there and get something less good probably on route or afterwards. How can you sell something to them? So the recommendation from that conversation really were to keep it really minimal in the pre-event information, make that really focused on their visit and how you can make that as strong and impactful as possible. That doesn’t take away from your opportunity to help them know about drinks and merchandise and refreshments and other things that they can do in your venue. And then after the event, that’s really your opportunity, when they’re on a high and they’ve left, to really help them walk away and think about, oh, I loved that, what a great experience. How can I come back to the next thing? Alison, you’re nodding, have you got anything to add to answer? No, I totally agree with you that there is that sort of, like, post-performance glow. That is a great time to really capitalize on that. And as I know I said many times, what really, any ways you can position those sort of upsells of, like, the beverages or food at the venue as really the benefit to the audience, it’s gonna come across much better than just sort of like, hey, here’s more wasting than us money. You’re really framing it in a way that is a benefit to them. Lovely, somebody’s asked about automating that. Kind of you may also like cross-promotion on, let’s focus on the post-event email. We’ve talked a lot about segmentation today and really focusing in on the genre or something that you are promoting. So there are opportunities certainly in Spektrix, potentially in other systems. I’m not sure where you’re from or what system you’re using, but certainly in Spektrix you could put a slot into that post-event email that would really focus in on events that met a certain genre or that tied in with the types of events that you were seeing and that would allow you to set that up and not have to rebuild it individually for every single post-event email. Other idea is welcome. Let me have a look. Sorry, so many questions. We’ve probably got time for a couple more. Alison, you have just flagged a question that’s got an interesting one. Somebody’s got a large mailing list and a lot of show producers ask to be, ask for their events to be promoted to that entire list and they don’t listen when they state that they are only sending to a targeted audience. I’m sure that’s a problem that will resonate with lots of people who take external events into their venues. Can you answer that one? Yeah, I guess my thought is you own your own list. You know, these show producers do not own your list. So it is at your discretion who you email. That is sort of, I know, the more aggressive answer maybe, but that is how I feel about it. And that you are at risk, frankly, of, you know, diminishing the returns that you get on your list if you are sending your whole list emails that they did not opt in for, that they are not expecting, that are maybe not relevant to them. And I think that is really the way to frame that, that you are not going to sort of expose yourself and your list to diminishing returns by sending emails that are not relevant to everyone. So really being clear of, like, these are the segments that we’re going to send to that are relevant to this show. Maybe there’s a way to come to a compromise where maybe it’s included in a larger email that you’re sending maybe to the larger list, but the whole email isn’t only about that show, but those are the ways that I would approach that. I would add to that, that if you do have your metrics kind of benchmark and you’re able to show that in the past when we’ve sent like this, it performs X, in the last year when we’ve sent segmented, it performs Y. It can be a way to come back with some data to back up, you know, what you’re trying to do. That can be helpful in that conversation. Lovely, thanks, we’ve had a few questions about people’s right to upsell on customer service emails. We’ve talked a little bit about that and whether you can do that to all of your customers or just those who’ve opted into marketing emails. Again, you’ll need to check how your specific system is set up. I know we’ve got people using different CRM and emails systems in the room today and people from lots of different regions. So two things to check for yourselves before we give you anything solid in terms of this answer. Check where you are and whether you’re using GDPR or PIPEDA in Canada or other rules in your state or country in the US and check how your system is set up In Spektrix. Your pre and post-event emails are not sent as customer service emails. Your ticket delivery and transaction confirmations would be, but your pre and post are actually part of your marketing email set up. You still might want to separate out upsells depending on people’s subscriptions. So depending how your subscriptions are set up, you may be asking people, are you happy to receive information about fundraising, for instance? And if they’ve said no to that, you, again, might be looking at segmenting your information to remove that, but again, by using lists and segments and personalizing your content, you can be careful to make sure that you are offering them the service that will be of benefit and that will enhance their visit, as Alison talked about before, but being careful that you are treading that line of not marketing to people who have asked not to be marketed to or marketing about specific areas like fundraising that they haven’t sought out. I hope that starts to answer that question. I’m not gonna try and give a definitive answer ‚cause that is not our role and there’s a lot of different people and set ups in the room, but hopefully that helps a little bit. Alison, Frank, anything to add to, go on, Frank? Yeah, I was gonna say, I can add just a little bit to that for the Spektrix users in the room using customer service emails and pre and post-event emails or if you’re just using one at the moment. As Bryony just mentioned, the customer service emails are that transactional email that’s gonna go to everyone regardless of marketing preferences. So you have an opportunity to use both, right? If your pre-event email is going a week beforehand to try to promote or supplementary upsell stuff for that event, you can send and schedule a customer service email to go the day before, the day of with just that essential need-to-know information that doesn’t have the marketing info. And if anyone that doesn’t get that first one will still get the second one. So you can use them in conjunction to really maximize your communication strategy upcoming into the event. Something I would add. Lovely, we are not gonna get to everything. Thank you so much for your questions. We will see if we can circulate something after the event with more of the responses, but last one I’m going to go to, it’s from Kevin, and he’s asked, so there’s some great advice in this session. Are there any easily accessible resources to guide he and his team step by step through the technical process to implement them? Alison, should we go to you first? Are there stuff that either Capacity or anyone that you work with has got that you would point people in the room towards? Yeah, I know we’ll share some resources. There are obviously resources on our website, capacityinteractive.com, around call-to-action generation and things like that. And there are definitely, I’ve been looking at really good emails as a place just for inspiration, emails from outside of our industry. I know we all see our industry’s emails a lot. So it can be sometimes a breath of fresh air to take a look outside our industry and maybe glean some ideas. Lovely, Frank, anything that you’d recommend from resources or tools from Spektrix? Yeah, I quickly mentioned it in my part, but we have activation workshops on specific parts. So if there’s an activation workshop on a specific system that you’re interested in, that can be even faster sometimes than, you know, trying to learn on your own because you’ll be in the room with an expert and other Spektrix users to turn something on, but we have our support center, our support team to reach out to. So if there’s not an activation workshop, I would say reach out to the team and let us help you. Fantastic, thank you so much. Thank you to Frank and Alison for joining us for today. And thank you to all of you who’ve joined us today, asked some really interesting questions and been part of the conversation. We really appreciate your time this afternoon or morning depending on what region you are in. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care. Thanks, all.
This session explores key findings from the 2026 Spektrix Email Benchmark Report.
The report, based on more than one billion emails sent by arts, culture & live experience organisations, shows how connected audience data, personalised communications, and shared organisational insight helps arts organisations build stronger audience relationships and more sustainable growth.
We’re joined by digital marketing experts from our partner Capacity.
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Learn what the highest-performing organisations are doing differently to drive stronger audience engagement, repeat attendance, and long-term loyalty.
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Learn how to report on what really matters. Measure revenue, retention, and audience growth, not just opens and clicks.
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Hear real examples and best practices from Spektrix and Capacity, with insights you can apply immediately.
Don’t miss out on the research-backed insights you need to make the most of your email marketing. Register today.
More resources
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The 2026 Spektrix Email Benchmarks Report
Download the guideDrive deeper audience relationships with benchmarks and best practices for arts email marketing.
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Event Email Marketing Automation: A peer-to-peer guide
Read the blogTeam members from Capital Theatres share practical advice for building confidence with automation.
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Personalised Email Marketing for Events
Read case studyHow Arizona Theatre Company increased engagement through audience segmentation and personalised digital marketing
