In this Issue:

Who are your New Customers? | Who are the Best Customer Prospects in your Market?
Who Responds to your Offers (and who doesn't)?

Who are your New Customers?

In fall 2009, Berkeley Repertory Theatre produced the world premiere of Green Day's American Idiot – far and away the most highly attended event in the theatre's history. Robert Sweibel, Director of Marketing and Communications, wanted to know exactly how many new buyers attended the show and what demographic characteristics might differentiate them from other Berkeley Rep customer segments. He asked us to analyze these factors, with revealing results.

Not surprisingly, 80% of the American Idiot households that bought single tickets (nearly 40,000 tickets in all) did not appear in any other subscriber or single ticket customer segments over the past four years – they were truly new. And younger. 36% of unique American Idiot names were 19-45 years old, three times more than the average for subscribers and 1.5 times more than the average for single ticket buyers from previous seasons. In general, single ticket customers displayed considerably more demographic diversity than subscribers, especially in terms of children living at home and age of children.

Recognizing the specific time and cost concerns of these customers, the theatre has chosen to make a limited number of email offers to its unique American Idiot names – and only for productions that reflect, as much as possible, the qualities of the show that brought them to the theatre in the first place. If the strategy works, the approach can be applied to other single ticket segments.

As Sweibel notes, “Berkeley Rep strives to engage with our community in ways which are personable, authentic, transparent and, of course, effective. Enertex provides a lot of information on our customer segments in a way that is very digestible, enabling us to figure out how to do that well.”

Enertex was able to put this marketing intelligence to good use when it came time to market American Idiot on Broadway in New York City. We participated in campaign planning and consulting, list acquisition, data processing, and back-end analysis for the Broadway transfer.

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