We defined a data strategy to drive more effective ticket sales and efficient marketing spend

Company Andrew Lloyd Webber’s publishing, promotion and franchise business

Industry Media and Entertainment

Enhancing the theatre experience with the Really Useful Group

The Really Useful Group (RUG) is an international entertainment company that produces and coordinates Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatre shows, not just in the UK but in 148 countries around the globe. These include such iconic productions as The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Starlight Express.

Background, Aims & Objectives

RUG recognised a need use data to optimise marketing efforts, create amazing experiences for audiences (both during and before/after a show), drive repeat purchase, improve pricing strategy, discover unknown customer segments, and increase loyalty. The key elements of the brief were:

To use data to better understand and engage with theatregoers, in order to improve show production and marketing in a competitive entertainment marketplace
To create a single customer view (SCV), to enable targeted marketing campaigns for new shows
To use data to inform its pricing and product strategy, and ensure that it is putting on the right shows, in the right countries and theatres

What we did

Audit data and test concepts

Over three months, Cynozure worked on a series of trials on selected shows in selected markets. Data from multiple sources, including new market research, online transactions and social media, was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of current marketing campaigns, improve marketing efficiency and inform decision making.

The results of these trials informed the overall data strategy, and the development of a comprehensive data analytics platform to enable data insights to be communicated across the group. During the test period RUG achieved three times ticket sale uplift and a 5% increase in ticket sales.

Use data to connect with theatregoers

RUG wanted to use data to understand how to better engage with theatre-goers through their Global Audience Project:

To improve the insight into their customers’ behaviour
To better understand which shows were most popular amongst which audience segments
To mitigate the impact of seasonal variations in ticket sales
To become a more data-driven business

There had traditionally been a high risk involved in launching a new show and RUG recognised the need to improve the way they used customer data for sales and marketing. Cynozure identified opportunities to use data to better understand their audience and improve pricing strategy for tickets and merchandise. They also created a single customer view to consolidate customer data on 3rd party systems, such as affiliate site Ticketmaster, who account for a large percentage of theatre ticket sales.

“Cynozure was engaged to help define a strategy for creating a data-driven business and a new Global Audience platform that is capable of delivering value for our shows, our theatres and externally. Most importantly we want to make sure we are bringing the right shows to the right audiences, at the right time, enhancing the theatre experience for our customers and creating loyal fans”

Philip Day, Director of Marketing and Communications, Really Useful Group

Create a data strategy to meet future business goals

Cynozure worked with RUG to define a data strategy that aligned with its current and future business goals. It helped build an analytics platform, called the Really Useful Insights Platform, that highlighted key data insights to management and could be used to implement marketing campaigns and ticket price strategies.

The Really Useful Insights Platform is now taking in data from all shows, venues and customers across the group. Cynozure assisted RUG on implementing and shaping its data analytics operating model, along with finding the right skills and teams to execute its data strategy.

Better data insights = improved marketing and increased sales

Since developing and implementing its data strategy, there have been significant benefits to RUG’s marketing and sales returns. These include:

A 5% increase in ticket sales.
A single customer view of theatregoers.
More targeted marketing with improved return-on-investment (ROI).
Use of The Really Useful Insights Platform has increased data-driven decision making across the organisation.
More insight on audience behaviour has informed The Really Useful Group’s pricing strategy.

Cynozure is now helping RUG to build out its in-house data capabilities in line with future projects and the goals identified within its data strategy.