3 min read
Not certain where to start with email marketing automation for your events? Team members from Capital Theatres share practical advice for building confidence with automation.
For many arts, culture, & live experience organisations, digital marketing can feel like something you need specialist knowledge to do well.
Automation, audience segmentation, Meta integrations, reporting dashboards – it can quickly become overwhelming, especially for smaller teams balancing limited time and resources.
But at Capital Theatres in Edinburgh, Scotland, Katie Daniel and Allan Ramsay have taken a more practical approach: start small, learn as you go, and focus on the communication that genuinely helps your audience feel more connected.
Katie, Allan, and the team manage audience engagement across three distinctive city center venues, offering a busy annual program of over 700 performances including drama, dance, musicals, family shows, live music, and holiday events. Using advanced automation and audience segmentation, as well as targeted digital advertising through a partner agency, they create personalized, ongoing communications with their audience members – fulfilling their promise to, "Share the extraordinary."
Katie is Marketing Account Manager at Capital Theatres, looking after show marketing campaigns as well as audience development initiatives. Allan is Digital Manager at Capital Theatres with responsibility for their digital platforms and customer experience. Both have a wealth of experience in different types of organizations including national companies, industry advocacy agencies, and smaller regional venues and producing companies.
We spoke to Katie and Allan in 2026, as part of a conversation around email marketing benchmarks and best practices. link to report
Despite their years of experience, the team didn't try to build highly complex programs immediately. Instead, they focused on manageable first steps that created real value early on.
Over time, those programs have helped them strengthen audience relationships, save time, and create more space for meaningful storytelling.
Starting small with event email marketing automation
One of the clearest themes from Katie and Allan’s experience is that organizations do not need to implement everything at once.
For teams beginning their marketing automation journey, simpler programs are often the most valuable place to start.
Welcome emails, birthday campaigns, and reactivation reminders - all of which exist as readymade program templates in Spektrix - can all help organizations build confidence while creating more consistent audience communication.
“As a first step, dipping a toe in with the templates helped to safely build my understanding of how the programs work and gave me confidence to try adapting these to suit out audiences and needs as an organization”
Katie Daniel, Marketing Account Manager, Capital Theatres
That gradual approach has allowed the team to refine programs over time rather than expecting perfection from the beginning.
Capital Theatres currently uses automated programmes including:
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Welcome journeys
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“25 and Under” audience engagement campaigns
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Reactivation programs for lapsed bookers
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Audience segmentation for highly engaged audience members and Friends activity
Importantly, the team approached automation as a way to support stronger audience relationships and efficiency – not only increasing volume.
Their reactivation program, for example, begins with a reminder email for audience members who have not booked in 12–18 months. Only later do they introduce a 15% discount offer.
That softer, relationship-led approach has delivered encouraging results, including an 18% re-engagement rate without any discounting.
Rather than relying immediately on incentives, the program focuses first on creating space for audiences to reconnect with the organization, trusting that they'll recognize the full value of the events and live experiences on offer.
Building confidence over time
The main barrier for many organizations is not a lack of interest in digital marketing tools – it's uncertainty about where to begin.
Throughout the conversation, Katie repeatedly returned to the importance of testing, refining, and adjusting programs gradually.
She has gradually edited Capital Theatres' automations over time, starting with the base template and gradually adjusting it to even better meet their needs. Small, incremental improvements have included:
- Adding exclusions
- Adjusting audience logic
- Refining journeys based on results
- Expanding activity only when it felt useful and manageable
This continual improvement mindset is important, because effective event email marketing automation is rarely about building a perfect system immediately.
Instead, success often comes from creating a sustainable process that can evolve alongside your organization’s confidence and capacity.
The conversation also highlighted how automation can support more thoughtful communication overall.
“Automation allows us to tell more of our brand story, and plotting out the program creates space for strategic thinking. The investment of effort at the beginning pays off by giving you more time to do the emails you wish you had more time for.”
Allan Ramsay, Digital Manager, Capital Theatres
This idea of using automation to create more space for meaningful communication feels especially relevant for arts, culture, & live experience organizations balancing increasingly stretched workloads.
When repetitive marketing tasks happen automatically, teams can spend more time focusing on creative campaigns, storytelling, and audience relationships instead of manual processes.
A practical first step into event email marketing automation
For organizations feeling uncertain about digital marketing automation, Capital Theatres offers an encouraging reminder that progress does not need to happen all at once.
Starting with one manageable program can be enough to begin building confidence:
- A welcome journey
- A birthday email
- A reminder for lapsed bookers
- A simple segmented campaign
From there, programs can evolve gradually as teams learn more about what works for their audience and organization.
Katie and Allan’s experience shows that automation is not about replacing human connection. It's about removing the baseline work, to create more opportunities for the connections that really matter.
And if you're taking your first steps into email marketing automation for events, that mindset can make getting started feel much more achievable.
Get started with email marketing automation in Spektrix
Spektrix offers expert support, training, and guidance to help you take your first steps into digital marketing and email automation with confidence.
- Learn what's possible with the readymade email program templates in your Dotdigital system
- Learn about Dotdigital Programs in the Support Centre
- Complete interactive eLearning around email design and automation
- Register for regular Activation Workshops to help you launch your first email automations or digital ads
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