{"id":990,"date":"2020-01-19T17:37:09","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timcorpus.net\/?p=990"},"modified":"2020-07-10T11:52:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:52:06","slug":"yearly-sales-heat-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timcorpus.net\/index.php\/2020\/01\/19\/yearly-sales-heat-map\/","title":{"rendered":"Yearly Sales Heat Map"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When are your tickets selling? When are donations coming in? Is there a hot time of the year for activity from audiences? What day is most popular for people to donate? When do ticket sales actually ramp up?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

These are all questions my Box Office Manager and I at the Lake Forest Symphony were asking. We felt that if we had a little more information about the buyer, we could reshape how we market\/interact with them and when<\/strong>. We were in an particular situation where we had access to some<\/em> data over the years, but not all. And, we didn\u2019t have a good way to show the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For anyone who has a CRM, it’s possible that can churn this data out for you automatically. However, we were in a situation where this wasn’t possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a fan of analytics and \u201cbig data\u201d. In every non-profit I\u2019ve worked in, I\u2019ve always tried to implement more analytics. We know that all sorts of companies big and small are trying to find more information about us, the customer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hell, how many times have you had that moment when you\u2019re discussing a topic and then the next time you look at your phone, there\u2019s an ad for exactly what you were talking about. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In my experience, the arts are far behind on data mining. I\u2019ve met folks who still preach that if concerts are good enough, audiences will attend. I wish that were true, I really, really, really do. But unfortunately, it\u2019s just not what I\u2019ve seen. Perhaps this is my own lonely experience, but good enough has never been good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re not usually harnessing the power of data, or if we are, perhaps we don\u2019t have the capacity to make the changes we want to. The first step in making changes is to find the information. As a great man once told me, \u201cwe don\u2019t know what we don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, let\u2019s ask a specific question about our customers. What day do buyers buy? <\/strong>This seems remedial and obvious, right? If we knew this, we would plan our social media and e-blasts around those days. If you\u2019re using social media and email platforms like Constant Contact, EMMA, and MailChimp, you can also see what days\/times are best for your e-blasts and posts. Now let\u2019s add an additional element showing what day people actually act in your box office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a visual person when it comes to information. Reading information or data sets never seemed to stick in my head as well as visualizations did. I like charts. Of course, there are many ways to analyze and learn from your data. This is just one way to visualize the data differently. I found that Board Members, staff members, volunteers, and donors appreciated new ways to look at our data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here comes the Sales Heat Map<\/strong>. I found a template from Vertex42.com<\/a> that fit exactly what I was looking for. To be clear, I didn\u2019t create this document. I did modify it some for my own use, but Jon Wittwer is the genius behind this document. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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original file<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here\nwe have data from one year and from multiple years in a clean visual format.\nThrough this document we can see the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n