A smart e-blast…

Maybe I am late to the party, but I was very impressed with the message I got on facebook from a couple of friends. 

Give the gift of great theater - go to www.reasonstobepretty.com/share and send a customized e-blast to your friends. It's that simple.

I was struck by not only the simplicity of this but the pure genius of getting instant word of mouth from a trusted source.  This is the third example I have found/discussed that asks an audience member to participate directly in the marketing of a show.  Long Wharf Theatre puts postcards in their lobby and asks audience members to address them and return them to the box office to be mailed – a “wish you were here” campaign and I have been having several conversations about encouraging audience members to tweet about shows during intermission or after a show. 

Of course the one problem with the e-blast campaign is that it is not immediate.  I have two friends performing in the show, worked at the theatre it was originally produced at, know most of the production team and producing team, and I LOVED the show off-Broadway, yet, I still haven’t made my own e-blast up.  Now I could tell you that I am seeing the show May 2, and I was waiting until then to send it out, but it would be a bit of a lie.  Frankly, I have been touting the show left and right on facebook and twitter – to the point that many friends thought I was working on it.  Unfortunately even though I see the box office grosses each week, so I know that I should have sent the blast the minute I got the message, the message itself didn’t imply any urgency to me. 

This is the issue with all three ideas.  If you are going to ask the customer to work for on your behalf, you need to make them feel needed.  Some how you have to get them to know that if they loved the show, they HAVE to tell everyone they know or the show won’t be around for them to see or their friends will miss out on something.  In the case of the Reasons e-blast you are asking them to take the time to type up to fifty emails.  That is a lot of work and time commitment (at least suggest they copy paste them too).  I have to wonder if it would have been a good idea to have hire a few people to stand outside the theatre at the end of the show with postcards with the link on them – with a message that implied “save this show.” 

For the postcards, what if they were handed out with the programs and the pre-show announcement asked people to turn them into the box office (and said where they could pick up more in the lobby). 

Certainly we can also think of ways to ask audiences to tweet their thoughts on the show through encouragement in announcements – I noticed at least one or two nonprofits must be using computers in their lobbies to send out tweets of audience responses on their institution’s twitter account. 

After all if I got an email, postcard or tweet from someone whose opinion I trusted, I would check out the show.  It certainly seems worth the cost of a bit of manpower to make it happen.

I have to go now – I have an e-blast to send out through www.reasonstobepretty.com/share.  In case I don’t paste your email in.  TRUST ME GO AND SEE THIS SHOW.  Don’t wait, buy your tickets now.