Learn how audience segmentation models and connected data help you build stronger relationships.
Audience segmentation helps arts, culture, and live experience organisations send more relevant campaigns, strengthen audience relationships, and support long-term sustainability. In this blog, we’ll review what segmentation is, how it can empower you to engage audiences more effectively, and an audience practical segmentation model you can adapt to your organisation’s needs.
What is an audience segmentation model?
When you use audience segmentation, you divide your audience into different segments. Each of these segments has a clear characteristic in common.
For example, let’s divide our audience into two groups:
- Locals: people who live within a 30-mile radius of your venue.
- Out-of-Towners: people who live further than 30 miles from your venue.
When your audience is segmented, you can replace a single standard message with multiple, specific messages, each shaped around the needs and motivations of a particular segment.
Let’s look at our Locals and Out-of-Towners. A last-minute offer of a ticket at a discounted rate might appeal to Locals, who can easily travel to your venue on short notice, but might not appeal to Out-of-Towners, who have to plan to arrange travel to your venue. If you send this last-minute offer to all of your audience members, you might isolate your audience members who live further away – they could feel like you aren’t responding to their needs. However, by segmenting your audience, you can ensure that the offer only goes to the people it will genuinely serve – in this case, Locals, who might be excited by the chance to attend a show the next day at their local venue for a discounted rate.
How do I start with audience segmentation?
Within your organisation, you should be able to start audience segmentation using the data you already have: where people live, the types of event they attend, the price points they choose, the donations they make, how frequently they visit, and more. If this data is spread across multiple systems, bringing it together can be difficult and time-consuming. With the right connected tools, audience segmentation becomes much easier, giving you a clearer, more complete view of your audience.
Having a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that connects ticketing, marketing, and fundraising creates an easy approach to audience segmentation. Your CRM should store different kinds of information against each contact, bringing together the data you need for effective audience segmentation:
- Demographic information: Where a person lives, how old they are.
- Records of their attendance behaviour: Which of your shows they’ve attended, what performance genres they seem to prefer, when they like to purchase tickets, the kind of subscription or membership type they have.
- Ways they’ve interacted with your communications: Which of your emails they have opened and read through, which mailers they have been sent.
A powerful CRM can connect all of this data, making it easier to build a full picture of your audience members and their behaviour over time. If you’re not sure how to access this information, contact your CRM’s support team (and if you use Spektrix, guidance from our Support Centre will tell you exactly how to see all this and more).
I’ve got audience data: now what?
Now that you’ve gathered audience data in one place, the next step is to decide how to use that connected data to create useful audience segments. Of course, not every way of grouping audience members will be meaningful or useful. With so much data available and so many possible combinations, knowing where to begin with audience segmentation can feel overwhelming.
Here is a simple audience segmentation model you can try right away. It divides your audience into four segments based on attendance and location data, giving you a practical starting point you can adapt over time.
Tips before diving into audience segmentation:
- Ensure that each segment is clearly defined.
- Every audience member should belong to only one segment – there should be no overlap – so people do not receive multiple, conflicting, or non-targeted communications.
- Communicate with people based on the original segment they belong to for the entirety of your season – continuity in tone, content, and offer design helps each recipient feel recognised and allows you to build on previous messages.
Segment 1: Frequent attenders
This segment will include everyone who has visited your venue three times or more in the last year. These are your most loyal audience members, which means you can design communications that assume a certain level of familiarity with your organisation and the experiences you offer. You can also contact them more frequently, confident that they are likely to welcome relevant, well-timed updates and offers.
Segment 2: Recent attenders
Your recent attenders segment might include anyone who has attended an event or signed up to your mailing list in the last six months, but should exclude frequent attenders. By targeting this segment, you can strike while the iron is hot: your communications can acknowledge their recent attendance, invite them back, and begin building a longer-term relationship.
Segment 3: Locals
Creating a segment for those who live within a short distance of your venue enables you to reach them with a tailored set of offers and messages. Group this segment using postcode lookup tools in your ticketing system, and be sure to exclude audience members who are Frequent or Recent attenders (Segments 1 and 2) to ensure each person is only receiving one set of targeted communications.
By excluding Segments 1 and 2, you’ve created a group of people who live close to your venue but whose attendance has lapsed. Because of their proximity, encouraging them to revisit is often a lighter lift, and they might particularly value a last-minute offer like the one we modelled in our first audience segmentation example.
Segment 4: Lapsed attenders and everyone else
This segment is made up of the remainder of your database – everyone in your audience excluding Segments 1, 2, and 3. This group is unlikely to appreciate a weekly email, so you will need a different communication strategy to re-engage them – for example, a personalised “We miss you” email with a targeted incentive, such as a ticket discount or an invitation to a season launch, reunion drink, or another event designed to show them they still matter to your organisation.
With your audience segments defined, the next step is to deepen your understanding of each segment’s desires and motivations. Our Key Messages Worksheet, part of our Motivations and Incentives guide, will help you establish key information about each segment that you can use to drive effective offers and communications.
Make this audience segmentation model work for you
Options for audience segmentation are almost endless, which means you can, and should, tailor your model to best fit your organisation and audience. Robust analytics and a user-friendly, connected system will help you determine the audience segmentation model that works best for you.
Once you’ve established your audience segments and started targeting them with tailored messaging, you can collect connected data that will allow you to analyse the effectiveness of your approach. See what’s working and what is not, then refine your audience segmentation and messaging accordingly.
At the end of your season, take a look at how audience members have moved between segments: did you transform recent attenders into frequent attenders, or bring some lapsed attenders back into the theatre? Over time, you can build a richer, more connected understanding of your audience and the kinds of communications and offers each segment responds to, helping you grow more sustainable audience relationships.
