Audience Experience Survey, 2023 Open Cohort
Welcome to the Audience Experience Survey 2023 Open Cohort!
Please bookmark this page, as it is not publicly accessible.
This page contains key information about the study for participating organizations. Here’ you’ll be able to access recordings of webinars in the archive section at the bottom of the page and other survey resources as they become available.
Cohort Membership
The following organizations have opted into this cohort:
Ballet Arizona
Cal Performances
Childsplay
Houston Ballet
LA Opera
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Tucson Symphony
UMS
FIRST STEPS
If you haven’t already, please immediately fill out the participation form, which identifies the individuals in your organization with whom WolfBrown will liaise on all matters related to the survey cohort.
This is a discipline-specific survey protocol, which means that a number of the questions are tailored for the artistic discipline(s) your organization presents. There are a small number of optional questions on the survey that you can chose to add.
Please fill out our customization form in order to include any of these questions. Your customization details must be submitted to WolfBrown by September 27.
Fill out this contact form if you want us to invite additional people to the webinars.
KEY DATES
All organizations send emails requesting cooperation with the survey on Tuesday, October 10 at 12 pm noon.
All organizations send reminder emails on Friday, October 13; the precise time of deployment is up to you. The survey closes at 11:59 pm PDT on Monday, October 16.
DEPLOYMENT LOGISTICS DETAILS
Deployment Logistics Webinar
Topic: We will cover list selection criteria and email deployments. This webinar is your chance to ask questions about the details of deployment.
Date: Tuesday, September 26 from 2 – 2:45 pm EDT | 11:00 – 11:45 am PDT (45 min)
A link to the recording of this session (and all future sessions) will be added to the bottom of this page shortly afterwards.
Email List Selection (Sampling Plan)
Given the goal of obtaining an accurate profile of your ticket buyers, you’ll want the results to be as representative as possible of your total (recent) audience. We’ve seen response rates averaging 5%, and ranging from 1% to 10%.
In light of this you’ll want to send out a minimum of 1,000 and a maximum of 10,000 randomly selected emails representing a natural mix of ticket buyers. Shoot for at least 3,000, if possible. The more, the better. In the end, you want to be looking at a respondent pool of 150, at minimum, and preferably 400 or more.
Generally, we suggest a look-back period of transaction activity from 9/1/2020 to the present date. Smaller organizations might extend the look-back period to 9/1/2019.
In any survey of this nature there is a natural bias towards more recent buyers, and more loyal patrons in general. Subscribers typically respond to surveys at twice the rate of individual ticket buyers.
Once you’ve assessed your counts, complete the sampling form to report your counts to WolfBrown. We need this information to calculate response rates.
Note: A minimum of 100 responses is necessary to view and analyze your respondents’ data in the dashboard. Organizations with less than 100 responses will be offered the option of remaining in the cohort with less than 100 responses in the dashboard (understanding that results are not stable) or a credit towards a future survey.
Suggested Email Language
Suggested language for the two outbound email messages may be found here. Use your own branding and design. Feel free to adapt the language to fit your voice and to what you’ve found best engages your audience or visitors.
Before Monday, October 2, WolfBrown will provide the liaisons from your organization with the survey hyperlink to be included in your outbound email message. The liaisons should first test the survey themselves.
REVIEW THE PROTOCOL
Download and review your protocol
Choral Music
Dance
Jazz
Musical Theatre
Hybrid Stage Plays & Music Theatre
Opera
Orchestra
Stage Plays or Children’s Theatre
Multi-disciplinary Performing Arts
Familiarize your team with the survey protocol.
We strongly encourage staff of participating organizations to take the online survey as part of your preparatory efforts.
The protocol was designed by the WolfBrown team with extensive input from arts administrators. We are indebted to the staff of LA Opera for their cooperation with validity testing and pilot testing the protocol.
Questions marked “Optional” may be included in the survey, at your discretion. We recommend including as few optional questions as possible, to minimize length.
All survey respondents, after completing the survey, will be invited to opt-in to Audience Outlook Monitor’s National Panel.
Upon completing the survey, survey takers will be redirected to an “Exit Dashboard” – an abbreviated, static dashboard page that provides results for a small number of survey questions for your organization (only), so that respondents can see how their answers compared to the answers of others. No open-ended questions are included in the Exit Dashboard. We feel that providing instant access to selected results will add an element of transparency to the process and help to maintain the goodwill of survey takers.