Promotion and Marketing in the Digital Age

Promotion and Marketing in the Digital Age

The Mojekarte platform comes to Zagreb theaters

The Zagreb theaters that adopted the multi-functional integrated digital platform Mojekarte in the 2017/2018 season, namely Satirical Theater Kerempuh, Zagreb Youth Theater, Drama Theater Gavella, and Center mladih Ribnjak, are renewing their contracts for the 2019/2020 season as well. This is a good moment to summarize the key results of the first two seasons of cooperation.

When the Mojekarte platform was selected through a public tender as the most suitable solution for the marketing and sales needs of these Zagreb theaters, the main strategic goal of the cooperation was to build solid foundations for a gradual transformation of classical promotion, marketing, and sales of theater products. We are not talking only about tickets here, but also about other products such as gift vouchers, value cards, and similar items, into modern e-promotion, e-marketing, and e-sales supported by effective and advanced information tools. Let us briefly look at the differences between the classical and the modern approach.

Classical (manual) and modern (digitized) processes

If we try to explain it in the shortest possible way, it is enough to say that the differences lie in everything. There are so many differences between classical processes and modern, IT-supported e-processes, and they are of such a nature, that one would have to write an entire book to describe them clearly, explain them, and produce direct quantitative and qualitative comparative analyses between the two. The phenomena and challenges of transforming classical, predominantly manual processes, with their inevitable subjectivity of management, into modern e-processes driven by advanced information technologies, with the resulting objectivity, or what we could call standardization of management, are the subject of professional research and analysis. They are also a contemporary topic that has found its way into the curricula of higher education institutions.

The first research in the field of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) began in the early 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, the field had gained significant weight and importance and moved into the focus of everyone who in any way deals with the phenomenon of the organization as a living organism and the effectiveness of its management.

Because every theater has its own specifics, BPR methods need to be adapted to each stakeholder individually, which ultimately leads to adjustments for every single person within the organization. Understandably, this requires a longer time horizon. However, well-led activities with clearly defined goals should, over a period of three to five years, bring the participating theaters to a new level at which the organization, in the area of promotion, marketing, and sales, accepts and internalizes a new digital paradigm, what we might call the new digital mindset of the organization.

In line with this new digital paradigm, e-marketing and e-sales address and target each viewer personally, in other words individually. As a consequence, in this new paradigm their data acquires a newly defined value and becomes the foundation of modern, direct, and as far as possible personalized e-marketing and e-sales. Within this paradigm, most communication with the potential viewer takes place through modern digital channels such as email, social networks, SMS, Viber, and others.

The foundations of modern ticket marketing and sales are: an own online shop, a quality customer database, and multi-channel digital communication

The first characteristic, and at the same time a recurring theme of the first two seasons, is tied to online sales. All participating theaters increased online sales in the second season of cooperation and lifted them to a level that, before the move to the Mojekarte platform, was simply unimaginable for any of them. Here are the concrete numbers:

Drama Theater Gavella +3%, Zagreb Youth Theater +19%, Satirical Theater Kerempuh +25%, Center mladih Ribnjak +281%.

Because the largest share of online sales takes place through the customized online shops we built for each theater as part of the rollout, the theaters can effectively use registered customer data, in compliance with GDPR, and incorporate it into modern e-marketing processes. From this point of view the number of email addresses collected in the marketing database (CRM) is, of course, important. We could even say it is the key data point. Let us look at how the marketing databases grew in each individual theater:

Center mladih Ribnjak +260 email addresses,

Zagreb Youth Theater +2,700 email addresses,

Drama Theater Gavella +6,500 email addresses,

Satirical Theater Kerempuh +15,700 email addresses.

Each email address in the marketing database (CRM) increases its usable value, and at the same time its nominal value, since each individual address can be assigned a monetary value. The generally accepted value is somewhere between 3 and 5 EUR. If we therefore value the marketing databases (CRM) in each theater at the median value of 4 EUR, we arrive at the following results:

the value of the CRM at Center mladih Ribnjak is 1,040 EUR,

the value of the CRM at Zagreb Youth Theater is just under 10,800 EUR,

the value of the CRM at Drama Theater Gavella is 26,000 EUR,

the value of the CRM at Satirical Theater Kerempuh is 62,800 EUR.

Further growth of the marketing databases in the coming seasons, while at the same time learning and acquiring the skills to make optimal use of this potential and developing creative e-marketing, is the next key task that the theaters will tackle, with our support, in the 2019/2020 season. How successful they will be will be shown by the sales results.

The Mojekarte digital platform is a herald of change

The Mojekarte digital platform is a herald of change and a promoter of a modern concept of digitalization and high-quality, dynamic management of promotion, marketing, and sales processes. This includes new sales strategies, new communication and sales channels, modern e-marketing built on a high-quality CRM, data analysis as the basis for measuring promotional and marketing effectiveness, and more.

Advanced digital tools that support this modern concept are built into the multi-functional digital platform Mojekarte and ready for immediate use. Good business practices in different environments and various sectors where ticket sales are characteristic show that the Mojekarte platform has already taken deep root in culture, sports, entertainment, tourism, and other industries.

Zoran Bistrički, e-business consultant