Long-term relationships with venues
'It's important to establish a good relationship with all the venues that your company visits, but it's particularly important when you know the relationship will be ongoing. Knowing that you will be visiting a venue the following year or on a regular basis can be beneficial to the company and the venue.
In the last year, CandoCo have identified a number of 'partner venues'. Partners commit to receiving two visits from CandoCo in two years and agree a shared plan of audience development and research work at the venue. For the partnership to work, a commitment has to be made by both the company and the venue and they must communicate regularly.
The partnerships have been used as an opportunity to pilot audience development initiatives with the venues (be they education or marketing-led) that can be tracked over two years.
It is hoped that these relationships will continue in the future, providing Candoco with a sound core of venues for a UK touring schedule and the venues with a growing opportunity for audience development and attendee loyalty.
The marketing campaigns for each of our partner venues differ according to the type and location of the venue, its audience, its past contemporary dance programme and our agreed shared aims for the project. There are certain elements of marketing activity, however, that I try to keep consistent when I know we'll be returning to a venue;
- establish an understanding or agreement with the venue about the use of audience data following the visit. Even if we can't add the data to our in-house lists, be sure we will be able to mail the contacts and track their attendance to the next visit
- undertake proactive data capture to expand our in-house database
- keep our audience 'live' or in other words - keep our company fresh in their minds. We might mail out a newsletter or email newsletter in between visits with information about the creation of new work, interviews with company members, behind the scenes info etc. This reminds the recipient of the great time they had at our last performance (we hope!), flags up the date of the next visit nice and early and makes the recipient feel special, as they've been singled out to receive the letter. (We'd probably send a further letter from the venue or ourselves nearer the performance date)
- hang on to any press cuttings and remember any journalists who reviewed the production favourably. They will be good people to contact for preview features for our next visit
- if we have the resources, conduct audience research to gauge responses to the production
- keep a track of ticket sales for own records and to inform targets set for next visit'