Making sense of data
I’ve been deep in preparations lately for the session I’m presenting at the Patron Manager Community Meeting that’s coming up in May. The session is called Unlocking Reporting Superpowers: Using data to answer marketing questions, so I’ve been thinking about reporting even more than usual (which is hard to believe, because I think about reporting a lot – here’s an old blog post about some of my favorites.)
Though many of the details in my presentation are specific to Patron Manager users, two of the main takeaways are relevant to all arts marketers, no matter what CRM you use.
Provide context
No matter what report you’re using or data you’re extracting, chances are, it doesn’t mean much on its own. We can only truly understand it when we put it in context.
Your report shows you that 200 of your patrons are new to you. Is that good? You won’t know until you dig a little deeper. What percentage of the total audience is that? How does it compare to other events you’re doing this season, or a similar event last season? How does it compare to the goal (if you have one) for new buyers?
You should also consider this number in relation to the event itself and your marketing strategies. If you had a big name attached or you put significant resources into a new patron acquisition campaign, you would expect results to be higher than your average. Did you marketing strategies work? Does a big name actually draw more new folks?
Ask ‘Now What?’
Understanding trends from past events may be interesting but isn’t useful unless you apply your learnings in a way that will impact the future. Here’s a few things you can use this information for:
Create informed goals for the future
Repeat successful campaigns
Re-imagine less-than-effective ones
Re-allocate budget and/or staff time
Target the most responsive segments
Depending on the pace of your season, it might be difficult to stop and go through a robust analysis after every event, but I’ve found it useful to capture the stats and make note of some basic observations right after closing. Then, when you can, either mid-season or at the end, go back and do a thorough analysis. The sooner you do, the sooner you can put your learnings into action.
Need Help?
If it seems like you’ll never be able to find the time, consider giving me a call (of if you’re attending the Patron Manager Community Meeting, please stop by my sponsor table to chat!) Working with a consultant for a short-term project like this might be the best way to make sense of your data and create actionable plans around it.
Every data analysis project I work on is completely customized to the needs of the organization – there’s nothing cookie cutter about them. We’ll start by learning what questions are important for you to get answers to and determine what data we need to answer them. Then I’ll dig in. I’ll deliver results in whatever form is most useful for you – spreadsheets, slide deck, presentation, written report, or all of the above. Just as data can only be useful if it’s put in the right context, data analysis is only useful if it is in a format that is useful for you.