Boost Your Email Marketing with Audience Spectrum - a step by step guide

Audience Spectrum is a geo-demographic profiling and targeting tool. It segments the UK population by their attitudes towards culture, and by what they like to see and do.

If you're not already familiar with it, a good starting point would be to have a look at:

• The 10 segment profiles
• The Audience Spectrum map of the UK population. 

What does your organisation's audience profile look like? Which segments dominate and which are less well-represented? 

There are two ways to discover this.

Via your Audience Answers dashboard

If you have Audience Answers ticketing insights set up (i.e. a link between your ticketing system and our Audience Answers platform), you will find your audience profile in your overview dashboard.
Log in here >
 

Via a one-off report

If you don't have an Audience Answers ticketing insights dashboard, we can profile your audience in a one-off report.
All we'll need from you is a list of your bookers' full postcodes. 
Find out more >

It's unlikely you'll have the time to create targeted campaigns for all ten Audience Spectrum segments, so you'll want to narrow it down to 2 or 3 key segments. 

Try asking yourself:

• Which segments will be more naturally drawn to your offer? 
  e.g Dormitory Dependables prefer more mainstream product, Trips and Treats are often looking for family-friendly opportunities. 
  Use the segment profiles to help >

   

• Which segments are already well-represented among your audience? 
  You won't see a great return on your efforts if you only have a small number of people to contact.

The Audience Agency can add a segment 'tag' to individual customer records on your own ticketing system. 

This allows you to, in your own system, build mailing lists by Audience Spectrum segment.

If you don't have this set up yet, find out more here, and get in touch. 

Design and create email campaigns specific to each of the Audience Spectrum segments you are looking to target. 

You'll want to consider:

• What is the segment's main motivation (and then emphasise this). eg. Experience Seekers are looking for a social opportunity, Metroculturals are looking for quality and intellectual stimulation.
• What practical information will help each segment make the decision to book (travel / parking, food and drink, family suitability etc.)
• What tone of voice, imagery and language is most likely to resonate with your target segment?

Use this knowledge to personalise the subject lines, body content, call to action, images, and timing of your campaign.  

Useful resources:

• Audience Spectrum segment Motivation Guides >
• Audience Spectrum Genie: a GPT tool which can help refine your content for each segment.

Bring it all together, hit send and await the results!

Monitor: Tracking the performance of your email campaigns will help you make improvements for next time. The key metrics to keep an eye on are:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Revenue generated (if applicable)

Experiment: Take advantage of the tools available in most email systems for split-testing. This will help you build a clearer picture of the sort of language, tone, imagery and subject lines which are most successfully engaging your target segments. 

Automate: Set up automated workflows or triggers to send the segmented campaigns at the right time and to the right segments. Forward planning for this can be intensive but perhaps try this first with something like pre-show emails where the content can be tailored to that segment and see if the response differs.

Most success in e-marketing campaigns comes from continuously refining your approach based on the insights gained from performance analysis. Adjust your segmentation criteria, content strategies, and campaign tactics as necessary and just keep experimenting.

Useful resources:

• The Audience Agency's newsletter and free events programme 
  Stay up to date with future Audience Spectrum developments
   
• Audience Spectrum workshops for you and your team 
   
• Case studies: How are other organisations using Audience Spectrum?
   
• Our library of Audience Spectrum Guides