TRG Arts has been busy teaching this summer on the road and on the web. We’ve rounded up our most recent insights from last month below, in case you missed anything:

The Art of the Upgrade

President Jill Robinson gave a webinar hosted by Blackbaud last week about increasing patrons’ investment in and loyalty to arts organizations through upgrading.

“The best way to increase loyalty is to ask the patron to take the right next step with you. That’s what we call upgrading,” Jill said. “That right next step is different for each patron. And the right next step is informed by information in your database.”

The most recent version of this webinar is now available here.

Slides from the presentation:

Awesome. Pretty Good. Awful. Which Prospects are You Contacting?

VP of Network Programs Will Lester presented a TRG webinar August 20^th on direct mail strategy and prospecting for new audiences. It’s difficult to know how well a campaign actually did just by looking at promotion code responses. How do you turn that into an actionable step for your next round of mail?

Will covers this question, plus stories about the helicopter drop, the MacGuyver maneuver, the story behind this webinar’s title and others from his experience working hundreds of organizations in 20 data network programs over the years.

Thanks to the over 400 arts managers who registered. The webinar recording and slides are available here. 

Fundamentals of Demand-based Dynamic Pricing 

at the Western Arts Alliance Conference

Director of Consulting Lindsay Homer gave a four-hour workshop on the principles of demand-based pricing at last week’s Western Arts Alliance Conference in Los Angeles.

“Pricing is the end point, rather than the beginning,” she told attendees. Before an organization can begin to think about the price of a ticket, they must consider many things: demand for productions, how the hall is scaled, when tickets will be discounted or comped and how they will manage inventory, to name a few. Find below Lindsay’s slides from the presentation:

The future of subscriptions: 

Is there one?

Senior Consultant Anita Hansen answered this question with a resounding “YES” at the 2013 Association of California Symphony Orchestras Conference.

Subscriptions are a significant source of revenue, too valuable for organizations to give up on. In many cases, subscriptions are dying in organizations only because organizations are killing them by not marketing them.

See the slides from her presentation here. 

TRG has more upcoming presentations this fall:

-Blackbaud Conference, Sep. 29-Oct. 1, Washington, D.C.