Stage Entertainment - the company that, among other things, handles marketing for Joop van den Ende Theatre Productions - cooperates closely with E-mark. The first shared goal set by Stage Entertainment and E-mark was realizing e-mail database growth for Theatre Productions and Theatre Package Deals. The result of this cooperative effort was an increase in ticket sales via e-mail that continues to this day.

E-mark started by ensuring clarity and consistency in newsletters and modification pages, in order to ensure that e-mail communications per production are uniform and understandable. The results have been nothing short of spectacular, even for a widely acclaimed e-mail marketing firm such as E-mark. Where a ‘normal' newsletter would expect to generate a net open ratio (amount of unique views) of around 30%, Stage Entertainment's mailings for both selected divisions frequently score in excess of 40%.

The main factors that form the foundation for this success are not only the clean database and beautiful brands, but also the personal way readers are approached and addressed, as well as the unique offers we recommend to make exclusively through the e-mail medium. This exclusivity is clearly communicated to the reader, creating a strong sense of attachment to the party making them the offer.
Stage Entertainment immediately realized the added value this represented for their brands, which is why we began a search for even more methods to gain an insight in the buying behavior of their customers. With this goal in mind E-mark developed the Blue Man Group survey, the first online survey with video! In this survey readers were asked whether they knew the show, why they had decided (not) to attend a performance and what reason they might have to decide to buy a ticket. To strengthen the brand experience and enhance the enthusiasm of potential buyers a teaser video was included. Naturally, the expression that "one good turn deserves another" also rings true for online marketing, which is why a number of prizes were divided among those that completed the survey. The results were spectacular:

• The Net Open Ratio for the mail was 44% in a database of almost 13.000 people.
• The percentage of unique viewers that opened the enclosed survey was 46%.
• The percentage of unique viewers that completed the survey is full was 80%.

A fantastic score for online market research! Within a very short time span we have been able to expand our cooperation with Stage Entertainment to a continuous string of successes. On a number of different occasions we've fielded other surveys that were just as successful as the Blue Man Group survey. The e-mail databases are still growing with every mailing, meaning the shows are becoming more well-known and more potential customers are reached as time goes by.

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