I have been writing about the importance of providing audience focused marketing and experiences for a number of years now. These three links are just representative of the hundreds of posts I have made on the subject. Even having written all that, it is often difficult for me to remember all the tips and ideas when it comes time to put them into practice.
Therefore, I was happy to see that Ruth Hart posted her “Three foolproof tests for customer-centric arts marketing” on LinkedIn. Additionally, she provided a link to a customer-centric arts marketing check list on her webpage. I eagerly downloaded it last week and it is great.
Now if you go to download the check list, you will note that she asks for your contact info in exchange for the list. That may make you a little wary of providing it. You don’t know how your contact info is going to be used. Is Ruth going to start spamming you will emails trying to sell you a service?
I mean, I am pretty sure someone scraped my contact information from LinkedIn or married my email address from one source to my LinkedIn profile because I get repeated emails about franchise opportunities referencing an former job title and location from people every week with subject lines saying “Re:Re:Re:Re: Executive Director opportunities.”
Stuff like that is pretty annoying.
But I have a pretty high level of trust in Ruth to conduct her communications in a constructive manner. I have been following and interacting with her for awhile and she seems to practice what she preaches in terms of not doing stuff like spamming ticket buyers, etc with sales pitches or donor requests. She writes about how that will erode relationships with audiences and community, and from what I have experienced she seems to follow her own advice. I haven’t gotten spammed by her yet.
And no, the link I provide to her check list isn’t some sort of affiliate program where I get something if you sign up.
While I would usually like to excerpt multiple suggestions from that list, I want to honor the work she did to put it together.
Except, I will note that this post does reflect one of the points on her list and include that one:
Provide info to eliminate “threshold fear” such as concert running time, what to wear, and other FAQs
By trying to assure you, quite sincerely, that my experience thus far has shown me that Ruth won’t spam you if you provide your contact info in exchange for her list, I am attempting to eliminate a type of threshold fear you might have.