Enhancing Patron Experience, Revenue, and Efficiency

Saratoga Performing Arts Center

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Saratoga Springs, New York

Arts Center

Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) is one of America’s most prestigious outdoor amphitheaters. Its tranquil setting draws lovers of arts, culture, and nature for performances by leading music and dance companies, concerts by Live Nation, community and education work, and much more.

Eric Brower, Senior Director of Ticketing, Data, and Analytics, talked to us about the benefits of their move to Spektrix from Theatre Manager - from the positive impact on teams and patrons, through to the efficiencies made possible by a wide choice of integrated partner solutions.

“I feel like Spektrix is part of our team and has our best interests in mind. I go to in-person Spektrix Hubs every year to get to know the team and get to know other Spektrix users, and if we need to figure out how to do something, like start a new membership campaign, the team’s always willing to hop on a call and talk it through. You can talk through your strategy and the outcomes you’re trying to achieve, as well as how to implement that in the system.”

Eric Brower

Senior Director of Ticketing, Data, and Analytics

Internal efficiency and increased revenue

Before their move to Spektrix, the team at SPAC were spending a lot of their time on repetitive tasks: exporting mailing lists to upload to MailChimp, tracking donor notes in Excel, or waiting for custom coding before they could run even simple ‘buy one get one free’ incentives.

a view of the exterior of the saratoga performing arts center during a concert with audience members sitting on the lawn

“By offering those packages, we were able to increase the attendance from people that are coming to one performance, to attend three or more. It’s 1-2%, but it’s a lot of people when you’re talking about 60,000 people through the gates.”

Growing reattendance through flexible Box Office tools

The box office team got started with Spektrix quickly, and two years in they’re running a whole range of incentives, memberships, and subscriptions. The drag-and-drop offers engine is intuitive, and they save time through subscriptions that can be both purchased and redeemed online.

This gives them the flexibility to mix and match offers for different strands of their program. For chamber music concerts in the Little Theater, there's a fixed series subscription; for regular visitors there are year-long memberships; and to drive reattendance, there are multi-buy discounts for patrons buying for three events or more.

In year 3, they plan to keep growing customers’ understanding of what’s available, aiming to further increase reattendance across multiple audience segments. Easy access to system reports on desktop and mobile will help them track and report on sales at every step; as Eric says:

“I can do anything in Spektrix on my cell phone that I can do on the computer. It’s great to log in and be able to pull a report if I’m out of the office.”

Meanwhile there'll be even more touchpoints to remind patrons about relevant events and offers, including targeted cross-selling in the purchase pathway and special promotions designed for Community Program participants.

Multiplying donations with a centralized patron record

A major factor in the move to Spektrix was the need for better software for the Development team. Previously, donor notes and records of pledges were managed in Excel, and only added to the system when they made a payment - meaning paid and unpaid pledges were tracked in different places, and the system felt clunky and laborious.

“We love the Opportunities interface and the pipeline where you can move people between stages easily and see where everybody’s at. That’s been a huge help for us in increasing donations and strengthening relationships with our donors and members.”

With every patron interaction taking place in a single system, donor notes, pledges, and transactions are now tracked instantly against customer accounts. And with real-time updates to the patron record, membership and subscriber benefits apply instantly - even with those items still in the customer’s cart.

One instant benefit of an integrated system was the ability to add targeted donations asks in the purchase pathway. SPAC had always asked for add-on donations, and raised around $7,000 each year. Since their switch to Spektrix they’ve begun suggesting donation amounts based on cart value, and have seen donations rise to over 700% of their previous revenue.

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Collaboration and strategic support

With Spektrix, all support and training is included in a single service charge, with a growing bank of online materials and a team of 40+ experts on hand to support users across North America. That doesn’t just mean support to fix hardware issues or implement new ideas within the system. Where many other software providers charge consultation fees, restrict the speed or scope of support, or focus only on the technical aspects of their system, Spektrix provides expertise in arts management, web integrations, strategy, reporting, and far more - helping Eric and his team get best value not only from their technology, but across every aspect of their work to drive donations and build reattendance.

“You can call the client success team and talk through your strategy and the outcomes you’re trying to achieve before you get to how to implement that in the system. And you’re wondering how you’re going to pay for it? You’re going to pay for it in increased revenue in your first year, easily.”

Smooth onsales and happy customers

Eric and his team used to dread each new season going on sale. Each year, they launch a full program of ballet, orchestra, and jazz, including major performers like John Legend, who in 2024 will appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra - boosting an already popular event to arena-level demand. Five different priority booking periods are designed to give access to patrons with different membership levels: but, three years in a row, at every presale and at general release, their system crashed. That left the Box Office team dealing with calls from angry customers about a cumbersome purchase pathway that saw them lose their place in line, struggle to apply membership benefits, or fail to log into their account. With Spektrix those customer pain points have been resolved, year-round.

“We got a lot of complaints about the way our seat map looked online, we didn’t see a lot of conversions on mobile compared to desktop. And we’ve seen the opposite on Spektrix, we’re doing more on mobile and less on desktop and tablets, which is great. As more of our website visitors are mobile users, we get less complaints about logging in. Before, they needed to know their password, whereas Spektrix has the feature where you can receive a link to log in, so you don’t necessarily need your password.”

john legend standing with his arms crossed next to a piano against a dark wall

When it comes to big onsales, the stakes are even higher. With the 2024 season set up and ready to launch, including the big John Legend event, the team were nervous - other venues had seen high demand for the event, causing major ticketing systems to crash and fail.

On the day, Spektrix set up an instant messaging channel with Eric and the team, so that they could communicate directly and quickly resolve any issues. Eric stayed closely in touch with Client Success Lead, Jess, who monitored their system through the morning and shared real-time updates on site visits and open carts. Every pre-sale round went on sale successfully, with no issues to resolve - but the reassurance was welcome!

“We didn’t have any issues, so we didn’t need it. But it was nice that Spektrix was willing to do that. I guess we were a little nervous, and it was weird just sitting waiting for the phone to ring and nothing happened. Which was a good thing.”

Achieve more with integrated partner solutions

Eric and the team are excited by the possibilities Spektrix offers to integrate additional tools and features, based around their specific needs. They’re already working with dynamic pricing partner Vatic, and will shortly add integrations with Shopify, for merchandise and concessions; and with Sawyer, a platform for class and course registrations.

As with every aspect of Spektrix, there’s support on offer to help the team find the right partners, get integrations up and running, and to continue building new partnerships and networks.

“By having this partner ecosystem you can choose what’s best for you, but it still works with your main CRM. I can go into the Spektrix Partner Directory and look for a web developer or another partner, and it definitely opens up more possibilities.

Our development team are looking at a text-to-give program, and I’m talking to the partnerships team about how we can integrate that so it will add data to their Spektrix account as well. Fantastic.”

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Increasing ticket revenue with integrated dynamic pricing

In 2022 SPAC introduced dynamic pricing, after discovering a number of integrated partners on the Partner Directory. Eric spoke to two or three potential partners before settling on Vatic, who brought a deep knowledge of arts and culture and were able to guide messaging for customers and teams.

“It’s been like adding another full time staff member. We’ve seen great, huge results. We increased our revenue by 18%. Over the past two years we’ve been using it, for us, that’s a million dollars.”

The introduction of dynamic pricing for SPAC’s main summer events program has meant a few changes, like removing pricing from press releases and printed marketing materials, but with help from the team at Vatic it’s created little or no friction with patrons. By maximizing income from the most popular seats and performances, it’s easier to offer price points that work for every customer.

“If you want to come to Yo Yo Ma, and you want to sit in Section 1, you may pay $300. But you can also sit on the lawn for $30. By raising prices at the highest end, we’re still able to offer accessible seats at the lower end. And really we haven’t had much pushback from customers. Sean from Vatic has given us talking points like, ‘What were you expecting to pay? $80? Well, here’s a great seat we have for $80 in the back of the orchestra center. Still a great view of the stage.’ And that usually satisfies them.”

Instant insights and cross-team collaboration

Teams right across the company benefit from a centralized CRM.

Previously, in order to reach education and community participants, the marketing team relied on lists being uploaded to the system. In a busy office that often fell off the radar, creating delays in communicating with participants.

From summer 2024 classes will go on sale using the integration with Sawyer. This means full booking details will appear against the patron record in Spektrix, including contact information, the classes people attend, and how much they spent. With no manual uploads data’s more secure and instant, and every team member’s working in a single, shared CRM - no more Excel spreadsheets for education or other activities.

Next on the list is an integration with Shopify for patrons buying merchandise from the online store. This will make it easier to identify existing customers, apply membership benefits, and track purchases and revenue, giving the team an even fuller view of average spend and lifetime value for every patron.

“If people are coming to a dance class, we don’t want to wait six months until they come again, we want to get them to the New York City Ballet this summer, or at the very least one of our other ballet dance performances at the Little Theatre in the fall.”

Ready to make a move?

We closed by asking Eric to sum up the key elements that would make him recommend Spektrix to organizations looking to switch providers for ticketing, marketing, fundraising, and CRM.

Inclusive support designed to help you make strategic plans and put them into practice
Enhanced patron experience and online sales, especially during busy periods
At-a-glance reports and real-time data on desktop and mobile
A growing network of integrated partner solutions, tailored to the needs of arts and entertainment teams
Earned income and philanthropic giving has increased many times over, more than covering the costs of the service charge within a few years

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