Going high-tech

ZuCot Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in the Castleberry section of Atlanta that features international and multicultural art, as well as rotating exhibits from local artists. The gallery opened its doors in September 2009 and held its grand opening a month and half later.

Challenge: Getting buyers in the door

With any art gallery, even one located on a street with heavy foot traffic going by its doors, getting buyers to come in, browse, and hopefully buy is the key to survival. To get people in the door, galleries must host events, such as openings for new exhibits, that attract customers, says Audrey Johnson, Gallery Director and Curator at ZuCot Gallery.

For Audrey, the early challenge was to build a mailing list and assemble an invitation to ZuCot's grand opening celebration. "Getting the initial mailing list is difficult," Audrey says. "People wonder why art galleries have openings so long after the actual doors open – it's because they're building a mailing list."

The key, she says, is to get the right mix of art lovers, cultural types, and people who will actually make a purchase of art ranging in price from $1,000 to $5,000. Once that list is readied, the challenge then becomes creating an invitation that is interesting enough visually so that people will want to come in and give the gallery a look.

Solution: Going "high-tech" with invitations

Audrey says that art galleries tend to be a little behind the times when it comes to technology. "A lot of galleries still rely on snail mail and sending post cards," she says. "But it is expensive to print things."

ZuCot Gallery decided to go a little more twenty-first-century with invitations for its grand opening gala by using Constant Contact Event Marketing tool after being referred by a neighboring business. "We want to use technology to reach a broader art-focused audience, and this is an innovative tool that allows us to do just that," Audrey says.

This is a real time-saver as opposed to manually managing the list. Audrey loves the ability to create her own graphics for the invitations and control the formatting. Plus, she likes to be able to track everything about her mailings, including the number of registrants and opt-outs from her mailing list.

Results: Email invites trump postcards

While Audrey did send out some traditional postcard invites for the ZuCot grand opening, she found that she did not get many RSVPs from them, despite having an email address for people to send responses.

But, her online invitation sent via Event Marketing resulted in a flood of attendee RSVPs, with over 280 people registering online. Audrey said that overall, more than a quarter of the people invited ended up registering, which is above the norm with gallery events. The email-based invitation and online registration was such a hit, Audrey reports, that she plans on using it for all of ZuCot's events in the future.

Audrey is hoping that by using an email and event marketing service provider, it will be easier to manage and build the ZuCot's customer list. "I am essentially the only one that regularly works in the gallery and this is a real time-saver as opposed to manually managing the list," Audrey says of Constant Contact.