3.05. Defining and Implementing Your Emailing Policy

To be effective, your emailing strategy must be based on a good understanding of your audience's behaviors, as explained in this guide (link to sheet 25 - Understanding audience behaviors to tailor your messaging: the importance of segmentation).

This understanding covers their ticket booking behaviors and engagement with your emails (open rates, click rates, reading habits...). It allows you to identify trends and coherent audience groups that will form segments: early buyers or last-minute buyers, people attending alone, others in groups...

It is also possible to create subgroups based on themes, but this categorization is more restrictive in terms of practice typology and offers less conversion potential. Finally, segmentation can also be structured around values and behavioral typologies, which requires a more substantial investment in audience research (link to sheet 26? Understanding audience behaviors, better attention to audiences).

As a reminder:

• Analyze user behaviors to identify:

- The most responsive targets.

- The times when impact is maximal.

• Create coherent groups based on:

- Behaviors (early buyers, last-minute buyers, etc.).

- Thematic typologies (according to content, with caution).

• Prioritize behavioral analysis over thematic categories, as it leads to better conversion.  

Long-term planning is fundamental to maintaining an effective emailing strategy. This does not mean that last-minute sends are impossible-in fact, quite the opposite: such sends become possible and effective as long as the overall sending strategy is planned. This way, adjustments can be integrated without penalizing other shows.

As a reminder:

• Establish a long-term emailing calendar:

- Plan sends for the coming months (or even the entire year).

- Adjust the calendar every two months for greater flexibility.

• Identify key moments:

- Season openings and closings, event or new service launches, promotions on particular shows, and cultural actions...

• Coordinate emailings with other communication channels, especially newsletters which should not be sent simultaneously with emailings.
• Synchronize emailing campaigns with other channels to reinforce the message. A message is more effective when it reaches an individual through multiple channels. In this respect, it is helpful to have a multichannel view of important messages to be conveyed.  

Your contact base is like your golden goose. It's essential to take special care of it and ensure you don't exhaust the people you're addressing by sending the same message repeatedly or over-soliciting them, for example by sending multiple messages in one day.

You can prevent such situations by maintaining an overall sending calendar and adopting a certain moderation in your email campaigns.

For reference:

• Determine the "capping" (a technique to control and limit the number of times an individual is exposed to the same publication or advertisement) and strictly respect it (it can also be used to oppose last-minute sending requests).
• Limit the number of sends to avoid saturation:
  • Avoid sending multiple emails too close together to the same person.
  • Ensure content varies for repetitive emails.

Your emailings must be tailored to the targeted individuals, which is why sending the same message to an entire database is prohibited. It is essential to adapt your messaging to the identified behaviors and needs of your targets through segmentation:

• Adapt the message to different targets:

- Personalize the subject, content, and visuals according to segments.

- Highlight a clear Call to Action to encourage action (purchase, registration, sharing).

• Work on the email structure to optimize engagement:

- A striking subject line to maximize open rates.

- A smooth and well-organized message to facilitate reading.

- Visible and engaging action buttons (e.g., "Book now," "Play" button on an image linking to a video).

• Ensure relevant and differentiating content:

- Do not repeat information already sent or texts available on the website.

- Emphasize a concrete benefit for the recipient.

• Adapt the offer according to buying habits, but not at the expense of your image or ticket revenue:

- Discounted prices close to the event convey a poor image of your offer and are unlikely to trigger sales.

- The trend is rather to reward early buyers.

- Avoid unnecessary price reductions (e.g., some audiences always buy last minute without incentives; it is not relevant to offer them a discount).

Individual behaviors are fluid, as is the composition of your audience. This is why it is important to adopt a continuous analysis approach to constantly improve your messaging and discover what works best for you and your audiences:

• Integrate an A/B testing approach into your strategy:

- Test different versions of the same email (subject line, content, CTA).

- Identify what works best to optimize future sends.

- Repeat this process regularly.

• Study statistics after each campaign:

- Open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates.

- Adjust strategies based on the results.

• [EN] A digital marketing toolkit (external link), Ticketsolve, 2023
  
• [FR] Quelle est la définition du capping en marketing ? (external link), Be a Boss, Julien van der Feer, juillet 2020