Advanced Analytics Move Centre Stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Challenges

• The challenge was to reach broader, more diverse audiences while encouraging a core of loyal customers to visit more often.
• Needed to target marketing efforts more effectively to improve box office sales, which would also improve their funding appeals to its patrons and sponsors.
• Wanted a way to better understand its audience and use the knowledge to plan theatrical productions more accurately.
• Lacked the technology infrastructure, software and skills to perform the audience analyses and segmentation vital to creating the bold marketing plans needed.
• The only source of box office information was from a basic ticketing database that offered no insights into the demographics or behavior of audience members.

Solutions

• Enter two new seasoned players stage left: the global management consultancy, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture and its analytics software partner KXEN.
• Profiled current and potential audiences with the results leading to a marketing strategy for audiences in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London.
• Loaded more than seven years worth of ticket-buying data of some 2 million patron visits into systems at the company’s Customer Insight Center in Milan.
• Using technology from another partner, Teradata, Accenture then created a new audience database that could be easily and quickly segmented by customer behavior.
• Developed the audience analysis required to drive real customer insight, enabling improved marketing, sales and customer loyalty.
• KXEN’s InfiniteInsight® combed through the large volume of RSC data and identified specific audience segments and patterns of attendance behavior.

Results

• The InfiniteInsight® powered analysis revealed some of eight distinct audience segments attending Stratford and six attending London, only four of the Stratford segments made a significant number of return visits accounting for 59% of the RSC’s income.
• The audiences to target were so clear cut and they could even tell from the analysis exactly when to communicate with different groups to maximize response.
• Stratford ticket buyers up by 50% to more than 320k.
• Regulars, the highest revenue earners, increased by more than 70%, from 40k to more than 68k.
• London bookings sold out significantly earlier following targeted mailings.
• Stratford family shows bookers up by more than 20%.
• New and lucrative London newcomer market identified.