A Tale of Two Audiences: How We Helped Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival Achieve Email Marketing Success

Summer festivals are a welcome escape for audience members, but their short sales windows can present specific challenges for marketing teams. This has certainly been the case for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF), whose fast-paced summer sales cycle contrasts with the steady, year-round approach of other arts and cultural organizations.

The festival’s small but mighty staff partnered with CI on email strategy and creation to promote their 2024 season, which included three new plays performing in rep and required audience education before people were ready to transact. We helped HVSF successfully appeal to their local community and tap into the tourist market of nearby New York City, freeing up the HVSF team to focus on other important on-the-ground work.

YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?

Located just north of Manhattan, HVSF is a nonprofit theater that presents a rotating repertory season of both Shakespearean and contemporary works in an open-air setting overlooking the Hudson River. We’ve partnered with their marketing team since 2017 on digital advertising strategy, and more recently on content creation and email strategy. 

With the festival’s condensed summer sales timeline, we were cautious not to overwhelm email subscribers while still sharing all the events happening at HVSF and encouraging them to attend. 

First, we determined HVSF’s key audiences and what was important to them: 

• HVSF hosted special nights tailored to local residents, so highlighting those performances to nearby audiences was a no-brainer. There were also specific events for families, but all plays were generally family-friendly with $10 tickets for kids, and we wanted to keep that top of mind.
• Tourists are an important audience for HVSF so it was crucial to tailor some content explicitly to them. While we timed messaging to allow for planning popular getaway weekends, we also wanted to highlight the ease with which NYC residents could escape on a whim and with minimal investment (i.e. no need to stay overnight). 

Users in the above audiences could also fall into either of the following groups, which are not quite as distinct:

• Recent and Loyal Ticket buyers are what we might call “low-hanging fruit,” but that doesn’t mean we can expect them to just show up. Since this season featured only new works, even regular HVSF audiences were unfamiliar with the shows. Providing context was key to converting these dedicated attendees.
• Finally, while it was important to communicate with the Email List subscribers who have raised their hands to hear from HVSF, they were less likely to purchase tickets than past ticket buyers. Therefore, we adjusted the frequency of emails to this group so as not to overwhelm them.
  

As we mapped out emails to these different audiences, we decided how to mix and match the plays, readings, picnics, and pizza nights to appeal to each group. A theme that ran throughout all communications was one of urgency. With the short season and the fleeting feeling of summer, we played up FOMO to bring people in.

PUTTING NEW PLAYS IN CONTEXT

With a lineup of brand-new plays, we worked to show audiences why they should be interested and why they would not want to miss out! We sent several emails highlighting each show, finding many angles to entice audiences. These were designed to be eye-catching and easy to scan, with a clear hierarchy to the information.

GETTING AUDIENCES’ PLANS IN PLACE

While we know our seasons by heart, our audiences don’t. In the spirit of hospitality, we chose to lay out specific weekend plans for audiences to take out all of the guesswork and reduce friction. Again, the scannability and compelling design were crucial to bringing users in when sharing a lot of information.

TAKEAWAYS

Ultimately, we delivered an email strategy and calendar with 30 emails spanning two months. We wrote copy for eight of those emails and built four in-platform. Those emails built in-platform were designed to act as templates to help the staff easily execute the other emails in the strategy.

By the end of the 2024 season, delivered emails were up by 10% year over year—more audience reach! While normally we would expect unsubscribes and complaints to increase with a larger audience reach, we saw spam complaints, unsubscribes, and email bounces decrease significantly due to strategic segmentation. Here’s what worked well:

• Creating audience segments allowed us to speak directly to potential ticket buyers with tailored messaging. What matters to tourists is not as relevant to locals and vice versa.
• Making it easy for audiences is crucial. From easy-to-scan emails to taking research and planning off their plates, make it easy to say yes.
• Capacity Interactive taking on the email strategy and content creation lightened the load on the shoulders of the on-site client, making email execution simpler and easier.

READY TO STRATEGIZE?

Let’s talk about how your email strategy can be refreshed to improve campaign performance across the board!