Demographics and Buyer Behavior Survey Open Cohort

Welcome to the Demographics and Buyer Behavior 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 an archive of recorded cohort sessions and other survey resources as they become available.

Cohort Membership

The following organizations have opted into this cohort:

Appell Center for the Performing Arts
Arizona Science Center
Cal Performances
Center for the Arts at George Mason University
Chamber Music Cincinnati
Chamber Music Detroit
DANCECleveland
Hylton Performing Arts Center
Madison Symphony Orchestra
Mayo Performing Arts Center
New 42
New Conservatory Theatre Center
Northrop, University of Minnesota
Shenandoah University
The New Group
Tucson Symphony
UMS
Penn Live Arts

Key Dates

All organizations send emails requesting cooperation with the survey on Tuesday, June 11. The precise time of deployment is up to you.
All organizations send reminder emails on Friday, June 14. The precise time of deployment is up to you.
The survey closes on Monday, June 17, 11:59 pm PT.

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. You can also use this form to let us know if you’d like us to give additional people access to the dashboard and/or invite them to the online sessions.
Look at the Customizations tab on this webpage for instructions about customizations and survey incentives.
Please make sure you've added our domain to your email's allowlist and added alan@wolfbrown.com and erin@wolfbrown.com to your contact list, as sometimes emails end up in your spam folder otherwise.

Customization

There is limited customization in this survey. You may choose to include or exclude certain questions on the survey. In addition, you are allowed to customize one question asking your patrons to identify which series/program category/product line/venue they have attended (for organizations with multiple product lines or venues), for the purposes of filtering your results by this variable.
Please fill out our customization form in order to include any of these questions. Your customization details must be submitted to WolfBrown by Wednesday, May 29th.

Incentives

You can include an incentive for the survey if you’d like to increase response rates. You’ll need to choose the incentive and create a form to collect email addresses from respondents at the end of the survey. Email Alan Kline at alan.kline@wolfbrown.com for more details and to get it added to the survey.

Deployment Logistics

Email List Selection (Sampling Plan)

Given that this is a demographic survey of your audience, 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 9/1/2021 to the present date. Smaller organizations might extend the look-back period to 9/1/2020. If you have more than 10,000 ticket buyers in that window, bring the look-back date forward in order to reduce the sample size and target more recent ticket buyers.
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.

Recommended Email Language

Recommended language for the two outbound email messages may be found here. Use your own branding and design.
Before Tuesday, May 30, 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 & Test the Survey

Download and review the protocol

Familiarize your team with the survey protocol (located on the right of this page).
We strongly encourage staff of participating organizations to take the online survey as part of your preparatory efforts.
A test version of the survey (formatted for the Madison Symphony Orchestra) is available here.
The protocol was designed by the WolfBrown team over the past six months, based on industry best practices and decades of experience with this line of questioning. Skip logic is used to shorten the length whenever possible.
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.

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 Thursday, August 3, 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.
Download a Word Document with suggested language for outbound emails here.

You can also find this text below.

Outbound message 1, requesting cooperation

Timing: June 13, 2023, specific time is at your discretion.

Use your own branding and design.

Make certain you use the correct survey hyperlink.

Sender Line: [Organization Name]

Subject Line: Requesting your help with a survey

[we are open to other subject lines that would lead to higher click-through rates]

Dear [FNAME],

With every year, we strive to gain a better understanding of our audience – who buys tickets, who accompanies them to our programs, why they come, and how similar or different they are from the larger community we serve.

Would you take a few minutes to complete a survey for [organization]?

We cannot be successful unless we know who we serve. This basic information is incredibly helpful both internally and to our funders and other supporters.

Your responses are anonymous.

The survey’s privacy policy is available here. This is strictly research – no sales or fundraising is involved.

After completing the survey, you’ll be redirected to a webpage with selected results, so that you might compare your answers with those of other survey takers.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Here’s the link. [embed link]

Sincerely,

[Name]

[Title]

P.S. If the above link to the survey is not active, please cut and paste the following link into your browser address line: [insert link]

Outbound message 2, reminder message

Timing: June 16, 2023, specific time is at your discretion.

Use your own branding and design.

Make certain you use the correct survey hyperlink. If possible, send reminder messages only to those who didn’t open the first message.

Sender Line: [Organization Name]

Subject Line: Last chance to participate in an important survey

Dear [FNAME],

I contacted you several days ago with a request to take an important survey.

Would you consider participating? Time is of the essence, as the survey closes on Monday night.

The questions explore your background and are quite straightforward.

Your answers would be extremely helpful to [organization]. No sales or fundraising is involved.

Here’s the link. [embed link]

Sincerely,

[Name]

[Title]

P.S. If the above link to the survey is not active, please cut and paste the following link into your browser address line: [insert full text of hyperlink]

Dashboard Access and Cohort Sessions

Schedule

Your participation in the various cohort learning activities will greatly enhance the value you get from your investment in the survey cohort. Calendar invites with a Zoom link will be sent to all liaisons and contacts who requested them. All activities are optional. Recordings will be posted here on the cohort webpage within several days of each event, and they may be shared with anyone within your organization.

Would you find captions, visual descriptions, or other accommodations helpful during the session? If so, please write to Alan Kline at alan.kline@wolfbrown.com, so we can do our best to make necessary arrangements to ensure your full participation. If you need transcripts or closed captioning after the recording is published in the archive section of this page, you can find options on the Vimeo recordings.

Deployment Logistics Session

Topic: We will cover list selection criteria and email deployments. This session is your chance to ask questions about the details of deployment.
Date: Monday, April 28 at 2:00 - 2:45 pm ET / 11:00 - 11:45 am PT (45 min)

Opening the Conversation

Topic: Meet and greet your fellow cohort members and discuss how you plan to use the results.
Date: Monday, August 7 at 2:00-3:00 pm EDT | 11:00 am-12:00 pm PDT (60 minutes)

Dashboard Orientation Session

Topic: A guided tour of the dashboard, tips on filtering data, tagging open-ended responses, and other technical information on the dashboard tool.
Date: Wednesday, May 21 at 2:00-3:00 pm ET | 11:00 am-12:00 pm PT (45 minutes)

Small Group Study Session

Topic: After a short orientation, cohort members will break out into pre-assigned small groups to discuss a specific module of survey questions and generate takeaway observations, followed by report outs. Takeaways will be compiled in a shared Google Doc for all to see.
Date: Wednesday, August 30 at 2:00-3:30 pm EDT | 11:00 am-12:30 pm PDT (90 minutes)

Culminating Session: What have we learned?

Topic: WolfBrown staff will synthesize the takeaways from the small group work. Cohort members will be invto reflect on next steps for their organizations.
Date: Wednesday, September 13 at 2:00-3:00 pm EDT | 11:00 am-12:00 pm PDT (60 minutes)

Dashboard Access

You’ll have access to your results in your dashboard as they come in on the deployment day. This will be your first chance to see the number of fully completed survey responses from your own patrons and everyone else’s.
To access the dashboard tool, please create a password using your email as your username. If your email is not set up as a login, fill out our contact form to be added as a user. Once you’ve created a password, we recommend you bookmark our login page, so you can easily log into the dashboard directly.
We highly recommend the Dashboard Orientation Session for anyone in your organization who is new to the dashboard or needs a refresher. Calendar appointments with a Zoom link will be sent to all liaisons and contacts who requested them using the contact form. The recording of this session will be posted on this page.
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 results will add an element of transparency to the process and help to maintain the goodwill of survey takers.
A successful learning experience depends on cohort members’ efforts to make sense of the results. This is not a typical process where the consultant conducts a statistical analysis and prepares a lengthy report several months after data collection. Instead, results are available through the dashboard, and the sense-making process is crowdsourced by the cohort over a period of several weeks after data collection. The time you spend in the dashboard will reap benefits for your organization and for the cohort.

Tagging Your Data

In order to identify trends in the survey's qualitative data, quantify the frequency of certain responses, and find notable responses in the future, we encourage all organizations to add tags to their respondents’ verbatim responses in the dashboard. Responses can be tagged by clicking on the response in the dashboard and typing the tag in the box below the response. We will guide you through the tagging process during the Dashboard Orientation Session.

Questions?

Please reach out to Alan Brown, Managing Principal at WolfBrown, with any questions.

Email: alan@wolfbrown.com
Phone: 415.796.3060

Email Language

Tagging Scheme

Demographics and Buyer Behavior Survey Open Cohort

Welcome to the Demographics and Buyer Behavior Survey 2023 Open Cohort!

Cohort Membership

Key Dates

First Steps

Customization

Incentives

Deployment Logistics

Email List Selection (Sampling Plan)

Recommended Email Language

Review the Protocol & Test the Survey

Download and review the protocol

Suggested Email Language

Outbound message 1, requesting cooperation

Timing: June 13, 2023, specific time is at your discretion.

Use your own branding and design.

Make certain you use the correct survey hyperlink.

Outbound message 2, reminder message

Timing: June 16, 2023, specific time is at your discretion.

Use your own branding and design.

Make certain you use the correct survey hyperlink. If possible, send reminder messages only to those who didn’t open the first message.

Dashboard Access and Cohort Sessions

Schedule

Deployment Logistics Session

Opening the Conversation

Dashboard Orientation Session

Small Group Study Session

Culminating Session: What have we learned?

Archive

Deployment Logistics Session

Opening the Conversation

Dashboard Orientation

Study Session

Look at the shared document draft from the meeting.

Culminating Session

Report Template

Dashboard Access

Tagging Your Data

Questions?