• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, July 21, 2016

Telecharge, the official ticketing agency for most of New York City's theaters, wanted to connect closely with patrons from the dozens of Broadway shows like "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Miserables," with the goal of engaging new audiences and capturing lost ticket revenue.

"Potential customers were dropping off the site without making a purchase," said Kyle Wright, senior interactive marketing and analytics manager at the Shubert Organization. "Broadway can be a tricky business because you're dealing with a lot of time-sensitive products, so the strategy must be, nibble and show the results quickly."

To drive ticket sales, Telecharge partnered with Ve Interactive, a digital marketing and advertising technology provider, to create a targeting and retargeting strategy for abandoned shoppers as well as new prospective theater-goers, and to deliver effective campaigns for Broadway shows that achieved specified eCPA metrics.

Ve analyzed Telecharge's first-party data to create audience segments targeting shoppers by factors such as those who had previously expressed interest, and measuring the length of time since their last ticket purchase. When it came to ad buying, Ve leveraged a variety of channels, from Facebook retargeting to private marketplaces.

The initiative to date has delivered more than $2 million in revenue and 8,000 conversions generated across 26 Broadway shows.

Visitors to the Telecharge Web site who viewed a specific show page were entered into an audience segment that served ads for that same show. This show-by-show segmentation allowed the Ve team to serve highly targeted, very specific creative advertisements. Specific shows could then customize their calls-to-action by simply asking shoppers to come back or offering a deeper discount.

Another key strategy relied on cross-show targeting to drive interest to shows in the same genre. Ve built audience profiles to generate audiences for similar shows, and taking it a step further, also segmented the audience data by time period. New audience segments were created based on the ticket holder's purchase pattern from the previous month to target them for similar upcoming shows.

In this example, Ve built audience profiles using specific show targets of the most-popular shows to target new potential audience members for other shows.  Telecharge's target was $100 eCPA. Ve exceeded that goal by more than half, generating nearly $60,000 in revenue based on 1,280 conversions; $300,000 in ticket sales, and $46.75 eCPA.

In another example, the campaign drew on one show’s name recognition as the longest running show in Broadway history (presumably "The Phantom of the Opera.") Ads were served to top-of-funnel audience segments from select private marketplace inventory such as on The New York Times home page billboards that guaranteed high click-through and viewability rates.

In this instance, Telecharge's target was $100 eCPA, and Ve exceeded expectation for eCPA by nearly $25, generating $80,000 in revenue based on 1,044 conversions; $250,000 in ticket sales; 76.27 eCPA, and $3.14 return on ad spend.