How to Boost Member Engagement with Exclusive Events

In a world where new media is being dropped every hour on the hour, making heads turn and attention spans wane, drumming up your own engagement is vital to a successful enterprise. There are a million ways to farm engagement, both organic and not, but one of the best avenues is through exclusive member events within your theatre. 

In fact, hosting exclusive events for your members is a key strategy to help your organization grow and your engagement to remain steady. Putting in place an engagement plan with these exclusive events and offerings can powerfully impact your membership results, helping numbers grow and member participation increase. 

But why do exclusive events matter for your members and for your theatre? Well, these events:

• Make patrons feel seen and appreciated, leading to increased brand loyalty and repeat customers 
• Encourage patrons to spend more money within your theatre, either for event ticket VIP upgrades, merchandise or concessions, increasing your Average Order Value
• Offer vital networking opportunities for you to connect with important members, and for members to connect with one another 
• Attract the attention of other high-profile potential members who enjoy being involved in community efforts and have capital to spare 
• Present tailored, personalized offerings and services to members who might want or need a little extra attention 
• Allow access to exclusive benefits that regular members cannot get, like meet-and-greets, tours, early bird specials and more. 

In essence, VIP events are about elevating the guest experience and fostering long-term relationships, ultimately benefiting both the event organizers and the VIP attendees. While it’s clear that building up a loyal and engaged member base takes time and hard work, the right offerings will help you to boost engagement in no time. On The Stage provides a few ideas to get you started. 

Boosting Member Engagement

1. Know Your Audience

Any good business knows that the customer is king – and the best way to appeal to a customer (or in this case, a patron) is by knowing them well, and understanding exactly what they’ll like. That said, the best way to start your process of offering exclusive events is by studying up on your audiences and learning more about their likes, dislikes, interests, and purchasing patterns in order to curate experiences they’ll enjoy. We present a couple of steps to help you better learn about your audience. 

Study the data. Take a look at the purchasing data over the last six months or the year. Which of your audience members are consistent visitors, VIP members, or have a subscription package? What is the average age range of this demographic? How often are they providing feedback? What shows have they enjoyed the most in your season? Enjoyed the least? Have they visited any of your events before? Which did they visit, and which did they skip?

Create separate archetypes for your most common patron demographics with descriptions of their important shared character traits to give you a strong launching point.

After creating your patron archetypes, decide what events these targeted demographics will enjoy the most and are most likely to visit. Perhaps your most viable demographic is female ticket holders ages 40-50. What shows and events appeal to them?

Perhaps you’ve noticed a wane in Gen Z ticket holders 30 and under. Their purchasing history and interests probably vary from others, so how can you appeal to them and offer events they’d attend? How would these events be different from other audience archetypes? Work with your events and marketing teams to offer experiences that would engage the target demographics you’re aiming for, then use audience segmentation to create tailored marketing efforts to reach them where they are. 

2. Create VIP-Style Experiences

People – no matter their demographic archetype – enjoy feeling valued and like a Very Important Person, especially if they’d spent the capital and the time to get to their status. That said, now that you understand your audience demographics and what they would most enjoy, it’s time to start planning and executing those VIP-style experiences just for them. The range of offerings, of course, runs the gamut, but we present just a few options:

• Behind-the-scenes access: This can take form in a variety of ways. Perhaps some of your demographics are interested in the ins and outs of how a theatre production is made, with boots-on-the-ground access. For them, why not offer paid backstage tours before a showcase? Others, perhaps younger generations, would prefer behind-the-scenes digital content, whether that’s a rehearsal blooper reel or bonus musical scenes, quick-change mastery videos, exclusive digital cast interviews, or general rehearsal clips. 
• Meet-and-greets: For those patron demographics that have a real love for theatre actors and the technical components of the work, consider offering paid meet-and-greets with cast members, lighting and sound technicians, or other hard-working members of your team. Cast talk-backs or technical talk-backs are a great way to get interested parties to delve further into your work and perhaps get them involved on a more intimate level with what you have to offer. 
• Early bird access: Purchasing tickets to showcases can often be a stressful, time-sensitive endeavour, especially if you’re looking to secure preferred seating or tickets on a specific and popular date. A great VIP-style experience you can offer to your members is early bird access to season tickets or a singular show, in which they have first choice of seats and guaranteed ticket access. Many members will pay for this extra convenience that will make them feel both valued and a tier above the average ticket-buyer. 
• Exclusive merchandise: As we’ve stated before, perhaps ad nauseum, merchandise is the perfect marketing tool that excites patrons and acts as a walking billboard for your theatre. Why not offer exclusive designs or specific merchandise forms just for your VIP members? You’ll make them feel important while adding to your bottom line. (Psst: Don’t forget to enact money-saving bundles to encourage an increase in the Average Order Value! 

3. Promote the Perks

All the hard work you’ve done to create these VIP experiences and perks will likely fall by the wayside if they aren’t marketed correctly. That’s why you’ve got to promote your perks well – and in a widespread manner – to ensure all your loyal patrons know about the many benefits they could be getting, and non-members are missing out on. Marketing in and of itself can be a complicated endeavor, but there are a few surefire ways to spread the word about what you have to offer:

• Deploy email marketing. While many people get 100s of emails a day, you can help your email correspondences stand out with tailored messaging for your aforementioned demographic archetypes. Just ensure that when using the email marketing method, you keep your communication brief and to the point, with a snappy subject line to ensure the message is opened.
• Harness your social media channels. Social media marketing is perhaps the easiest and least expensive way to spread the word about your theatre, its VIP offerings, and everything else you have to offer. Ensure your content is dynamic and engaging, not static text posts with little visual interest. As we said, attention spans are waning, and every second counts to avoid the doom scroll! 
• Utilize your website. An out-of-date website is a surefire way to lose potential patrons, minimize the impact of your SEO, and set a bad precedent when it comes to the perceived professionalism of your theatre. Ensure your website is up-to-date, utilizing the latest software, and has all the relevant information about your theatre and your perks front and center on the landing page. 

4. Gather Feedback

We’ve mentioned the importance of data already – what with gathering your demographic archetypes and tailoring your offerings to please the members you want to target most. While that is a great way to start the process, it’s also a great way to end the process: gathering personalized feedback from your members to see what they want next. Whether you’ve just hosted an event, offered specific VIP perks for your members, released a line of exclusive merchandise, or just want some ideas on what to do next, utilizing quick surveys or polls will help you even further tailor your offerings to your patrons. 

You can send email surveys for more targeted, specific results, or post polls on your social media channels to see what sticks with the general public. Either way, the goal is the same: See what you did right on your last go-round, what you did wrong, and how you can better serve your patrons at your next VIP event. 

How On The Stage Can Help

It’s clear that the benefits of exclusive events are massive: You’re building loyalty, padding your bottom line, increasing your Average Order Value, and helping to forge stronger bonds with your patrons and the community at large. That said, consistency is key: you should always be planning new event programming for your members to foster that all-important engagement needed to keep your theatre top-of-mind in your community.

If you’re looking for a little help along the way, On The Stage can help with any and all event planning facets, including marketing, box office sales, fundraising reporting, on-demand merchandise creation, and so much more. If you’re ready to take your theatre to the next level, book a personalized demo today.