Three Case Studies of Orchestras That Are Growing Their Audiences
Different budgets, different locations, different approaches
My last post talked about the concerning headlines in the arts: layoffs, closures, emergency fundraising…all largely due to shrinking audiences. And while the situation is bleak for some organizations, the focus of the article was about proposed solutions.
This post examines three arts organizations who have adopted some version of those solutions — three case studies of orchestras of various sizes and locations who’ve enacted customer-centric strategies from our work together, each in their own way, and who have grown their audiences as a result, now bucking the broader declining trends.
Each organization’s approach is detailed below, along with an explanation of the results, but to give away the end of the story, here’s the snapshot.
What strikes me most, perhaps, about each of these orchestras is how they asked questions: Why do we do it this way? Who are we serving when we do that (in at least one of the examples below, they decided the answer was “no one”)? Who do we want to make this easy for? How do we track that? And through their inquiries, experiments and plans emerged.
I’m so grateful to each of these organizations who have bucked the declining trends and were willing to share about their journey and work publicly here. Let’s meet them.
Three Organizations, Three Sizes, Three Locations
A Regional Orchestra, A Mile High
Even though Fort Collins isn’t the actual mile high city (they’re only an hour or so away from nearby Denver and sit at 5,000 ft above sea level), this regional orchestra had what felt like a mountain of challenges. Like so many arts organizations coming out of the pandemic, they too were trying to build back their audiences. They also faced the additional inflection point of preparing for a major leadership change as Executive Director Mary Kopco announced her plans to retire in 2025.
“We knew that things would have to change,” said Marketing and Communications Director Jeremy Cuebas. “We couldn’t keep doing things like orchestras (including us) had traditionally done them and hope to build back stronger than we were before.”
From examining existing marketing practices across print, digital, and website, to evaluating staff structures, the team — with support from their board — was determined “to break through the noise that our audiences are facing” in Cuebas’ words, and, according to Kopco, “to make sure the Fort Collins Symphony has the necessary infrastructure in place” to carry them forward.
A Large Orchestra Down Under
Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) is one of the largest arts organizations in Australia as a full-time orchestra of around 80 musicians. In addition to performing concerts almost every week, they also perform in several ballets and operas each year, as well as undertake regional tours across the vast state of Queensland.
In mid-2017, Matthew Hodge arrived as Director of Sales and Marketing. At the time, the chief executive and many of the senior leaders were new to the company — most having been there less than 18 months. And the marketing team — usually about four positions aside from Box Office staff — had shrunk to only one. Sales for classical concerts were declining, the overall revenue budget for the year was not looking good, and the organization was in the middle of a rebrand. “It was a pretty intense time to be stepping into the role,” said Hodge, “there was a lot of work to be done.”
A Community Orchestra in the Arizona Non-Desert
Executive Director Stephanie Stallings, a musicologist by training, served on the board of the Flagstaff Symphony for three years before eventually taking the helm in 2021. During that time, a few board members would occasionally bring up concerns about a structural deficit and attempt to identify strategies to cope, but they kept coming up dry (desert pun…though honestly, Flagstaff is more surrounded by pines than sand) aside from cutting the number of concerts in the season. The trouble was, they only had six concerts total per year to begin with, so cutting didn’t feel like a palatable option.
Stallings’ predecessor, who served mostly during the shutdown, “did a marvelous job of not just keeping us afloat,” she said, “but of increasing the organization’s cash reserve while we were dark. When I took on the job in the middle of the 2021–22 season as we were coming back to live concerts, I knew it was the ideal time to try some fresh ideas moving forward into a post-Covid world and build the audience leading into our 75th anniversary year in 2024–25.”
The Approach: Different Focus Areas for Each Organization
Fort Collins Symphony: Go Hard or Go Home
With a leadership change on the horizon before them, I don’t know how else to describe the FCS approach except to say they went full throttle, simultaneously updating their communications, ticket prices, venue signage, and the subscription renewal process.
Communications
Cuebas started changing how the organization communicated on the website, in their copy, over social media, through emails, and in all the information provided before and after concerts.
- Website — they introduced simpler copy, more interesting information about each piece for new audiences, more information ahead of time, clear venue, directions, date, and time. They started treating each concert page “like an educational landing page,” in Cuebas’ words. “We learned the vast majority of people visiting these pages are not our subscribers. Some current audiences may come to read the program notes or guest artist bios, but the majority of this traffic was people coming to learn more about (and hopefully purchase tickets to) these concerts.” FCS also added a Newcomers Guide, which is linked at the bottom of every email.
- Emails — instead of “just repeating our old, typical marketing copy over and over again with a button to ‘buy tickets now,’” they filled each email with informative content, including links to videos, online program notes, guest artist intros, and where you’ve heard the music on the program before on TV, the movies, etc. “It [the emails] became about why each concert and piece was interesting, rather than just the fact we were playing it.”
- Pre-concert email — the venue still sends out a basic reminder email to ticket holders, but FCS decided to send out a big FAQ before each concert with links to the program notes; invitation to the pre-concert lecture; info on food, drinks, and parking; and the repertoire list as well as length of each piece.
- Social Media — they shifted their channels to provide lots of educational information, a lighter tone, and more videos. For example, a close-up video of a violin solo at rehearsal (“just one of the blazing violin solos…”), or the double basses performing a technical passage (“look at those fingers fly!”).
Ticket Prices
FCS expanded the overall range of prices, going lower on the bottom end for greater accessibility, and higher on the top end where demand for the most-desired seats warranted it. This higher-end price increase also served to make their subscriptions more attractive as they communicated that subscribers would not incur the price increase when they renewed.
It’s important to note that the Fort Collins team originally had a larger pricing overhaul planned that included a full house map redesign, but they ultimately decided it was too big a change for their subscribers. They kept coming back to the mantra that they needed to make it “as easy as possible” for patrons to subscribe and then to renew that subscription, and too much change was only going to add complication, friction, and frustration for these important audience members. Further price changes are still in the plans for later, but this was one area the full throttle team strategically chose to let off the gas.
Subscription Renewal Form
Continuing the theme of making it as easy as possible to subscribe, scrupulously updating one little sheet of paper, aka the renewal form, turned out to reap big rewards. We’ll flesh out the results in a moment, but first, what drove them to be so meticulous about this one document?
“We decided that the first place to really focus on retention was with our subscribers, since they account for about 75–80% of the ticket income for an average concert,” Cuebas said. “Plus, each renewing subscriber is more likely to return next year, and the next. As we started updating our ticket form for the 2023–24 season, we realized that just updating the dates and prices would work [as in, they could mail it out that way and have a functional order form], but wouldn’t actually move us closer to our goals.” He continues:
- “It started with small formatting issues, but it was clear that the whole form needed to be reorganized from the ground up.
- We asked, “What is the point of this form for 90% of people” and the answer was obvious. They just want to renew at their price. So we simplified that. I wanted to make the decision to renew and the action easy for them to renew, so instead of listing all the options on the front of the form with a seating map and everything, we simplified it to a checkbox to ‘keep my seats.’
- After that, we started finding every little reason that a returning subscriber would decide not to renew and remove those barriers. Instead of making them fill out their price category and do the math, we did it for them and printed it on their form (this took hours of extra work to prep the spreadsheets since our venue doesn’t explicitly include the price category and our pops concerts totals aren’t included in the subscription totals, but it was worth it).
- I previously worked in the box office at the Colorado Symphony for three years, so I was also looking at it through those eyes, too. I knew what questions people would call in for, what they would fill out wrong, and that as little math and reading as possible was optimal for our regular audiences. Designing a generic order form that could be used for anything meant that nobody was going to be able to use it correctly.
- Finally, instead of leaving a lot of space for people changing their seats to do the math on the form, we said that any seating changes or additions could be worked out directly with the box office. At a bigger organization this may be overwhelming, but since 90% of our subscribers would just check the one box and pay, and the other 10% would most likely fill out the form incorrectly and have to get a call from the box office anyway, we just saved that confusion for everybody.
- We made a lot of little changes — but we eventually got to a form we think we can keep for years.”
“I knew what questions people would call in for, what they would fill out wrong, and that as little math and reading as possible was optimal for our regular audiences.”
— Jeremy Cuebas, Marketing and Communications Director, Fort Collins Symphony
In the Venue
The final part of the Fort Collins pedal to the metal changes was evaluating the in-person concert experience.
- They replaced the NO PHONES ALLOWED signs that the venue had produced with friendlier signs encouraging pictures before the show, afterwards, and during intermission.
- They noticed the venue house manager had been “yelling at audience members” to exit the theater after the concert, so they now have some of their own staff and volunteers nicely ask patrons to bring conversations to the lobby so the rest of the team could finish their break down.
- The symphony also runs a slideshow in the hall before each performance, and they added trivia about each piece they were performing, plus basic information, such as what “Op. 3” means when you see it in the title of a piece, why their concertmaster search was important, and definitions for words like “suite, concerto, and overture.” It wasn’t a heavy lift to incorporate these elements, they realized, because a lot of that information was already going out on social media and email blasts too.
- During the performance, slides also display the movement, title, and translation for each piece at the top of each movement. When they have room, they also include an image of the composer or any other significant visual (for example, a painting if appropriate).
All of these changes inside the venue originally came out of internal conversations about applause during movements. Cuebas reflected, “We didn’t want to take a hard stance on clapping or not clapping to be announced from the stage, but knew we had to do something. So we decided to inform newcomers by sharing the origins and reasons for the tradition of not clapping between movements. Plus, we share a story about Wagner telling people not to clap during arias, only to have to later tell people that they are allowed to clap at the end of the opera.”
Queensland Symphony Orchestra: Use A Trojan Horse
Going from a marketing team of one to staffing back up, sure, there were some quick wins to be gained by setting up a regular rhythm of email newsletters, venue advertising and working with a digital marketing team to ensure regular online advertising for all their concerts. But the big opportunity came on the heels of the company rebrand that had just been completed as Hodge came to the organization. Since that major change was ordained and accepted, it provided a gateway for a whole slew of other changes beyond the visual identity. This approach to change management is sometimes referred to by organizational psychologists as a Trojan Horse: using an idea that’s welcomed in by others as the vehicle to “smuggle” in additional ideas.
Hodge used the new visual brand and an accompanying markedly different season brochure as the Trojan Horse springboard, the innocuous container with a persuasive exterior. His team subsequently set out to update “every touch point that we could get our hands on,” in his words, “to make it more friendly to a broader audience.”
- They not only overhauled the photography, they also scrutinized all copy to make sure it either didn’t use jargon or defined it. “Taking our cue from the language of podcasts, we tried to make our language as conversational as possible,” Hodge explained. “I stopped using the former brochure copywriters — they wrote beautifully, but everything sounded like it was written for an academic paper.”
- Rather than only using photos of conductors or soloists, they allowed individual concerts to have their own imagery, reflecting the mood of the music. (e.g. an epic mountain for Bruckner, a dramatic picture of a piano for a concert featuring a piano concerto). They also talked about what the repertoire sounded and felt like, not just a list of artists and pieces.
- User experience research was part of the approach, too. “From the previous ten years working in other classical music companies, I had always thought that there could be a lot to be gained from trying to make the language (particularly in copy) and imagery more friendly to audiences. Aubrey had released her research the year prior about Orchestra X, which backed up a lot of what I had thought. We also did our own external research after a year or so that found that, yep, sure enough, audiences did worry about what to wear and when to clap. Some things are universal!” Hodge concluded.
- QSO then created a new tagline: “Orchestra For Everyone,” which they started using on all their advertising materials. And this outward-facing slogan ended up having an electric effect internally. The phrase was eventually written into the strategic plan as well as the official mission of the company, and many of the musicians responded positively as well. “It subtly realigned everyone to focus outwards on the audience rather than inward on ourselves,” Hodge shared.
- Next, QSO asked a musician if they could stand in front of the orchestra at the top of the concert and give a few welcome remarks to the audience. For decades, musicians had always entered the stage in silence and there had never been any spoken communication between them and the audience. But allowing various musicians, all with different personalities, to speak to the audience, created such a connection with the audience it became a tradition. Just like in ancient Greece, defenses were down; the Trojan Horse was working.
- Eventually, the “orchestra for everyone” approach made its way to programming. Inspired by a past blog post that floated the idea of programming John Williams and Beethoven in the same concert, Hodge worked with the Artistic team to create a concert series called “Cinematic.” It was designed to appeal to movie music fans of all ages (read: what orchestras conventionally would categorize as pops), and they began experimenting with including traditional classical music pieces on each program. The musicians even dressed up in movie character costumes for the shows while performing Beethoven or Brahms. At a lot of places, that would be considered orchestra heresy, but for QSO, it was…well, for everyone. Cinematic now features about 10–15% traditional classical repertoire on every concert, and the movie audience loves the classical just as much as the film themes. But they didn’t stop there.
- Then, the organization tried the reverse: they created a series called “QSO Favourites” that was about 85% music historically categorized as “classical” and 15% movie music. That series also drew sizable crowds and became an audience favorite in the calendar. “Any idea that the audience for ‘classical’ music doesn’t want to hear ‘film’ music (and vice versa) is simply not true,” Hodge recounted.
Hodge recently moved on to another organization and added one last word: “The only strategy I would have liked to explore more fully is the Long Haul Model and having regular offers to get those newcomers coming back more often. We did this from time to time and saw success, and I would have liked to put this in as a regular weekly strategy.” No worries, mate (said with my best attempt at an Aussie accent); for this Long Haul retention strategy we turn back to Arizona.
Flagstaff Symphony: Focus on First-Time Buyer Retention
Soon after Stallings took the reins in Flagstaff, she decided to focus most of their audience building on the retention of first-time attendees in the then-upcoming 2022–23 season. She brought multiple things together to help them to do this:
1.Better Access to Data
Previously, because their concerts are held at the local university, they were locked into using the school’s ticketing system, which meant the symphony could only get attendance data after each concert took place. But in the summer of 2022, the university started using a new ticketing software program which gave the FSO staff real-time reporting access for the first time. Stallings ensured they we were able to import that data into their CRM to track first-time attendees and whether they returned. And, crucially, they could see in advance who was coming. This allowed them to:
- Send them a welcome email the week of the concert with details about the venue, parking, concert FAQs, and the pre-concert reception.
- Place a welcome letter on their seats with a time-limited special offer: $25 off their next ticket purchase, good for any concert in the rest of the season but expiring two weeks later.
- Send a follow-up email reiterating the same offer on the Monday following the concert they attended.
- Email them a reminder of that offer two or three days before it expired.
2. Gave Key Community Members a Reason to Come
They began each concert with a “Community Shout Out” (h/t to the Santa Barbara Symphony, who Stallings “lovingly stole this idea from” in her words), with invited groups attending as honored guests for the evening, and to who she gave each a shout out from the stage as she shined a light on those fellow local orgs doing great work.
3. Tweaked Subscription Packages
Even though Stallings’ strategy was primarily focused on newcomers, for the folks who actually did return — the multi-buyers — she brought in a page from the subscription playbook. For the last several years, the FSO had offered season ticket packages of 3, 4, or 5 concerts (the 6th concert is an add-on holiday performance). That all stayed intact, and the organization introduced the addition of a special (time-limited) offer to returning single ticket buyers (i.e. the multi-buyers) after each concert: a 3-concert package for $99. Then in the Spring when just a few concerts remained on the season, they offered those same folks two concerts for $66.
4. Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
Along with the new university ticketing system came new university administration that allowed FSO to begin selling wine and beer at their concerts. They also started hosting pre-concert receptions open to all that served as dynamic launching pads for concerts, fostering an inviting atmosphere for both newcomers and seasoned concertgoers alike. It also narrowed the distance between the stage and the audience: The Music Director and guest artists also attended part of these receptions and gave pre-concert chats about the music (note: Stallings calls these “chats” not “talks,” which you could say is just vernacular, but I think is indicative of her welcoming approach). The pre-concert receptions also offered several great opportunities for other concert enhancements, like photo ops or hot cocoa with the Nutcracker dancers, or a fun space for meetups among those aforementioned invited community groups).
5. Show Not Just Tell to Offer Social Proof
Lastly, the FSO team made sure to have a professional photographer capture everything — all the receptions, the activities in the lobby, the music director chats — and they use those photos often in their welcome emails, post-concert follow-up messages, and marketing materials, offering social proof to everyone who hasn’t yet attended that these events offer a fun night out, and reinforcing the successes and good vibes for everyone who has.
As Stallings shares about all these elements, she says some of it is lucky or even “miraculous” (like the university changes in ticketing and drink policy that came with new administration). That may be true, as anyone who has encountered these types of venue challenges before knows (I’ve been there too, and I see you). But also true is that Stallings seized the opportunities before her organization and brought them all together into a cohesive strategy. Without her leadership, the venue may not have offered to share the data or allow drinks to be served, and the community groups certainly wouldn’t have invited themselves, nor the first-timer welcome efforts gone into effect, nor the 2- and 3-concert mini subscriptions for returning patrons been rolled out.
“This sounds basic for many larger organizations,” she concludes, “but since we’d never been able to do it before, it had a huge impact.”
It’s not so basic, I contend though — for any of these organizations. All of these tactics from all three orchestras are easier said than done; all take time, effort, and focus; and all are definitely not done by every ensemble. And they all have results to show for their work.
The Results (Percussion Drumroll Here)
From all their mile high efforts, Fort Collins Symphony’s attendance is on track to not just meet, but surpass their pre-pandemic levels. Subscription renewal rates going into the 2023–24 season are now at their highest since 2016–17. “We not only recovered over the last few years,” Jeremy Cuebas summarized, “but expanded beyond the audiences that we lost.”
Back at Queensland Symphony Orchestra, “the results over my six years to 2023 were astonishing,” said Matthew Hodge. As well as making the budget goals every year (even that sketchy first one), they grew overall audiences by about 15%, and overall annual ticket revenue increased by 35%, also exceeding their pre-2020 level.
Most astonishingly, due to some creative use of video content while during lockdown, when they were able to open up again in late 2020, they hit their biggest sales number on record — even while audiences were still wearing masks. And the following two seasons (2022 and 2023) were the highest subscription numbers on record. QSO added performances to accommodate the growing demand of the audience. I don’t know of another major symphony hitting record subscription numbers and adding performances right now.
And in Arizona, Flagstaff Symphony is now seeing the forest and the trees. With their new access to data, they learned that typically about a quarter of their audience at every concert is attending for the first time. “I knew the national stat that only about 10% of those households would normally return,” Stallings said, “but through our efforts, we saw 26% of those households return at least once during the season.”
Most impressive, though, FSO saw a 40% increase in subscriptions year over year. They initially thought many of those subscribers were rejoining after Covid, but surprisingly, with only a few exceptions, they were almost all first-time subscribers. And as for their existing subscriber base, the orchestra is at 70% renewal rate to date [as of early September], and still renewing more into the fall as the season begins.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
These three organizations continue to push forward, looking ahead to what’s next.
Fort Collins Symphony says they “want to keep focusing on retention for our subscribers by moving things towards auto-renewals and better onboarding.” For their single ticket buyers, they’re “making lots of little changes to how we do things to retain them in every way that we can.” And for new audiences, it’s all about educational material. “I should note that our highest trafficked website pages are an educational blog post and a Peter and the Wolf page, visits to both of which come mostly from organic search, which we love.” They’ve also just migrated to a new CRM to better harness their own data.
Queensland Symphony Orchestra says, despite their growth, this upcoming season is the hardest in many ways, a real test for the work they’re doing because the programming is not all warhorses and box office blockbusters. They’re continuing to refine their plans to consistently retain new audiences.
Flagstaff Symphony is continuing to build. Cutting concerts isn’t ever discussed anymore. And for Stallings, training others in the organization to sustain the success is the primary focus.
Three different orchestras. Three different approaches. Three case studies proving growth is possible in this industry. None of these organizations went for a silver bullet. None of these organizations tried to solve their challenges through solely programming more blockbusters. Instead, a lot of little changes added up to big results for all three, a narrative we can all aspire to emulate.
The Fort Collins Symphony enrolled the entire organization in the Run It Like A Business Academy, including board members, executive director, and staff. Jeremy Cuebas also attended my Uplevel course in 2022.
I first worked with Matthew Hodge one-on-one in 2017 when he began his role at Queensland Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra is now in the Run It Like A Business Academy.
Stephanie Stallings attended my Leadership Development Course (now called the Uplevel) in 2021, and is now currently a member of the Changing the Narrative Community.
Interested in more case studies and data-backed strategies to grow revenue at your arts organization? Order my book, Run It like a Business: Strategies to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money — Without Losing the Art.
