JAM today, jam tomorrow

If you are not a member of the Arts Marketing Association, you really should be.

The latest issue of JAM (their magazine) focusses on customer development and includes excellent articles by Heather Maitland (looking at research tells about audience loyalty; Katy Raines on how assessing audience loyalty is essential (as she says "do the maths" - a lady after my own heart); Caroline Griffin shows how using CRM well can support artistic risk; Sharon Ament makes the case for lifestyle segmentation; and Tim Baker argues that it's not yet time to write off the subscription scheme. Additionally there is an inspirational extract from Seth Godin's book and a case study from Claire Byers at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

You really should get a copy - the membership fee is worth it for JAM alone. Check out the AMA here.

'Still Life' at the Penguin Café

Yesterday I was visiting Birmingham Royal Ballet and was fortunate enough to catch a rehearsal of 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café. I have to confess I was amazed: The music was at times haunting others inspirational; the costumes were stunning; and the use of a simple but evocative sets and lighting set the whole thing ablaze.

So what's it all about? Well to borrow the description from BRB:

"Simon Jeffes and his Penguin Café Orchestra provided David Bintley’s inspiration for 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café, his witty and poignant look at man’s effect on the world around him. A morris-dancing flea, a ballroom-dancing ram, a sleepy rat and a woolly monkey are among the animals featured."
A performance to experience. It is on at various locations throughout the UK as part of BRB's Pomp and Circumstances suite - click here for more info.

Customer retention vs Customer acquisition

I had an interesting conversation over lunch yesterday. We were discussing why new customer initiatives seem to be much more attractive to marketeers than customer retention activities.

Even though all our marketing eduction, and experience, tell us that it is much cheaper to sell to existing customers and patrons yet it seems that more effort is put into customer acquisition. That is not to say that customer acquisition is not important - it is the only way to grow a business over time. But by ignoring or just paying lip service to existing customer retention and development it makes new customer marketing nowhere near as efficient as it should be. If you are not actively marketing to your existing customers then how do you know the most profitable sectors targets to pursue for new customers.

By actively market, I mean continually profile and develop strategies for specific customer groups. Perhaps that is the problem - perhaps we have too much data to even get our heads around. Ideally, we'd market to our customers on a one-to-one basis, although that is not always going to be economic. Also, once we start this sort of analysis the faithful standard socio-economic categories just don't cut it - that makes new customer marketing much harder. And the problem with tight segmentation in new customer marketing is the worry that you may lose some potential customers not in those groups - challenging.

So why? You will have your on views but a couple of things we discussed were: customer retention programmes are not as glamorous - it is the acquisition which has the advert budget; and retention programmes take a lot of analysis, thought and rigorous testing and refinement - a lot of detail. Perhaps it's just the math.

Given today's market place, hanging onto your customers is going to be critical. As budgets get cut, will it be new customer recruitment or customer retention that will feel the pinch first?