Cultural and arts organizations in many cities across the United States are benefiting from the creation and management of combined databases of their patrons. These cooperatives provide three main functions to help achieve a number of marketing objectives:
1) Create Easy Ways to Exchange Lists: Exchanging lists of active patrons is the least expensive and most effective way to augment one’s pool of prospective patrons. Cooperative databases frequently establish protocols for list exchange that ensure efficient exchange of names.
2) Share List Hygiene Expense: List hygiene, address correction, and merge purging of patron databases are necessary to mount effective direct marketing campaigns. Cooperative database participants share in the expenses for this hygiene, allowing each organization to save significant money.
3) Research and Analysis: The cooperative database can be used as a research tool to learn more about arts and cultural attendees and their behaviors within the market. Analysis can be performed to obtain descriptive information about patrons (i.e. demographics and psychographics) or information about how attendees interact within and between each participating organization. Ultimately, participating organizations can use this information to learn how best to market to specific constituent groups in order to maximize sales and reduce marketing expenses.
TRG is the nation’s leading provider of data management and consulting services in support of community cooperative database initiatives. TRG currently operates many of the largest and most successful community cooperative databases in the US.
At the core of TRG’s service package is our best-in-class web-based data management system, eMerge. eMerge is a secure and easy-to-use online list selection system that allows our clients access to their data to share names, view list counts, run reports, and order lists 24 hours a day. Our system continues to evolve, staying ahead of the curve of our clients' needs. eMerge was created to give users direct access to their data so that our highly trained database marketing account staff has more time to interact with, counsel, coach, and train our customers on best practice direct response tactics, adding value to any campaign planning. eMerge has been in operation serving our community database clients since 2004.
For more information on eMerge, or to schedule a demonstration of the system, please contact Phillip Matthews at pmatthews@trgarts.com.
