Imagine for a moment you’ve just won tickets to the hottest new drama on Broadway. But there’s one stipulation to this win. You can only watch the last two minutes of the play.
For whatever reason you decide this is still a good deal. So you go to the theater and you watch the last two minutes of the show.
Now, within these last two minutes, the main character dies.
Everyone all around you is in tears. They’re on the edge of their seats enthralled by what’s happened on the stage.
But how do you feel?
My guess is you’re wondering, “What the heck is happening?”
And the reason why you’re wondering what’s happening, is because you haven’t been there for the whole story. You haven’t been along for the journey that the rest of the audience has been on.
So it’s a bit difficult to have as strong a connection to the work as everyone else.
Now let’s step back for a moment
How do you think OUR audience feels when all they receive from us are emails asking them to buy? Isn’t it a bit like sending them the last two minutes of the play?
Nobody really knows what the heck is going on.
And if no one knows what’s going on, how can they be invested in the story of your company? And if they’re not invested, why should they even consider purchasing?
So here’s what we have to figure out:
How can we make a few simple changes that’ll have a dramatic impact on our email marketing? How do we create emails that invite our audience on a journey that leads right to your work?
Over the course of several posts I’m going to share this concept of The Journey Factor: How to Build An Audience for Your Work.
My goal is to change your whole approach to email marketing.
Sounds exciting right?
Here’s a look at what we’ll be covering:
We’re going to look at three key areas in The Journey Factor: How to Build An Audience for Your Work.
And lucky you–the one and only, super-special-agent: James Bond-007, makes a special guest appearance to help us understand…
Why this a smart approach to e-mail marketing? <=== Start Here.
(Don’t worry this post will lead you to the next, so you don’t have to keep hitting the back button.)
From there we’ll be covering 3 key areas…
The 3 key areas we’ll be covering are:
- Email Marketing by the Old James Bond
- Email Marketing by the New James Bond
- Email Marketing: How to Get Started with the Super Amazing Journey Factor
So let’s do this people. Dum-da-da-dum-Dum-Dum-Dum-Dum-da-da-dum-Dum-Dum-Dum-DA-DA-DA-DAAAA—DA-DA-DAAA! (Come on, you know you want to do it.)
Questions? Thoughts? Feedback? Comment below.
If anyone can make James Bond relevant, it’s you. I’m clicking and reading….
Hi Nadine,
Nice to see your face over at the Bucket. =)
Thanks for reading. I’m off to attend to your other comments.
Dave
Very useful read. Well worth reading to the end.
Your suggestions make a lot of sense.
I want to suggest that they make sense in a way that should encourage theatre folk to reconsider the entire way we make and market theatre.
If we are only engaging our audiences when we have a show, we are — as you say — only including them in the last two minutes of the whole project.
We need to engage our audiences back before our babies are born.
Artist love process; lots of our audience will love it as well. Let’s tell them about it; let’s include them.
Sure the baby is important but let’s be frank it’s the process of making the baby that’s the most fun.
Opening our audiences to the whole process will work very nicely with the email marketing approach you outline here.
Thanks Sterling. I appreciate that. I’ll have more to follow soon.
My goal is just that, to have people reconsider their whole approach. Businesses are trying to tell their stories in order to better market themselves. The arts have the power of stories built in. There’s also a built in magical quality. We just need to share.
If you can get people reading and looking forward to your emails instead of hitting the delete button, you’re one step closer to building longer term relationships. These will pay off. One of the most satisfying things this past year was working with a client and hearing from audience members, “we love reading your emails.”
If the audience is reading that’s good.
There are specific things you need to do. But the first step is recognizing there’s a better way than “e-blasting” people.