RPO levels up digital capabilities with Feathr platform

Engaging new audiences is an important part of any marketing strategy, and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) has always made a point to reach out to recent movers who are new to the area as well as current residents who are also first-time ticket buyers. 

New movers receive a postcard welcoming them to Rochester and offering them two free sets of tickets to one of three selected concerts. First-time ticket buyers receive an email the Monday after their ticketed performance thanking them for coming and offering them 50% off one of two selected concerts. 

While both efforts produced high return rates, the RPO lacked an effective way to follow up with those patrons who didn’t convert right away.

Herb Griffith is the VP of marketing & communications and Lauren MacDonough is the director of marketing. Together they have some tricks up their sleeves, but they knew it was time for RPO to level up its digital capabilities and start utilizing real-time patron data to better engage these new audiences.

Why Feathr?

It’s not that RPO wasn’t online, they just weren’t getting the data they needed to assess the effectiveness of their efforts. The team was active on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. But what was lacking were insights into customer journeys and ways of connecting with those soon-to-be concertgoers.

Herb says, "We were placing our own Facebook and Instagram ads with minimal feedback but had no way to further engage with or even see what those patrons were doing — certainly nothing that we could track ourselves."

As a small team, finding the right platform was key. They could add another email provider or an ad platform. But ideally, they wanted to do it all in one place: social, email, and digital ads all working together, while eliminating the time spent jumping between tracking platforms that couldn’t communicate with each other. 

"We were impressed with the fact that Feathr could do everything that we were currently doing but also had this whole other layer in terms of digital advertising,” Herb says. “It allowed us to not only leverage search ads, retargeting, geofencing – all these abilities that we simply hadn’t had before – but also gave us instant access to the patron behavior data behind it all."

But it wasn’t only about shiny new tools. It was the newfound ability to know who was on their website and what they were up to. They could now walk alongside the customers throughout their journey, and help connect them to what they were looking for.

Herb says, "Once we got Feathr and installed the GTM tracking pixel on our website, that kind of opened up the box and allowed us to watch the customer journey in real time." 

Setting up a winning strategy

Much in life boils down to preparation. So when RPO added Feathr to its toolkit, they didn’t want to run campaigns just to run campaigns. They wanted to set themselves up for long-term success.

They knew they were sending a lot of emails. And in crowded inboxes, they were getting through to some of their most loyal supporters, but they needed to enhance email efforts by finding new synergies.

Lauren says, "We tend to rely too much on email because it’s easy and it’s quick. But everyone's getting a lot of emails these days, so we needed to have a plan for people who don’t always open their email." 

One of the first digital ad campaigns Lauren launched was an email mapping campaign. These campaigns serve display ads to people from an email list. So even when someone doesn’t open their email from the RPO, they’re still hearing about the next concert with a well-timed display ad. 

Lauren knew that for an initial campaign, she wanted to start with people who were already well along their way in the marketing funnel. These people already knew the value RPO offered. All they needed was a nudge.

"Most of the patrons we were converting only needed a quick reminder,” says Lauren. “But Feathr showed us firsthand exactly how many times our audience needed to be reminded before finally subscribing, which is extremely helpful to know." 

A puzzle piece falling into place

As marketers, Lauren and Herb are both numbers people. They want to know exactly what they’re getting into and what they should or shouldn’t expect.

They also know every marketing campaign is different. With Feathr, they not only have the ability to see past performance data more clearly, they can now better predict where they are headed and what adjustments are needed along the way.

Herb says, "We try to be a very data-driven organization and listen to what the numbers are telling us. And it's impressive when you look at the results of these campaigns and what we were able to accomplish with the amount of resources we put into them." 

And all the analysis led to some clear conclusions.

Lauren says, "The ROI on the subscription campaign was huge because it was really the first campaign that we’ve designed end-to-end and it produced great results. So that's a huge win for us."

Sometimes when you try something new, you’ve got to celebrate the little wins. But Lauren and Herb aren’t overcelebrating here. These were big wins, and they came fast.

Herb says, "The subscribers we converted through Feathr meant those accounts didn’t go to telemarketing. So in addition to making 42 sales, we ended up saving nearly $10,000 in commissions."

It’s only up from here

So what do you do after a big win?

For the RPO, though there will be time for celebrations, they’re using these early wins to set the stage for even bigger ones. Next, Herb and Lauren can reinvest their newfound revenue and share their patron data with their new media buying agency to help better integrate strategic decisions across channels.

Herb says, "We're going to get them on to Feathr so that they can see what we're seeing in real time and have access to the same dashboards that we do."