Uncovering Your Audiences

Every organization has audiences they already know about — newsletter subscribers, returning subscribers, last season's buyers. But inside your Encore Pro data, there are almost certainly audiences you haven't thought about yet: the first-timers worth nurturing, the lapsed buyers worth winning back, the loyal multi-show fans who deserve to be treated differently.

This article is about using Encore Pro's segmentation tools not just to organize your existing contacts, but to actively surface the groups that are most worth your attention.

From Reactive to Proactive Marketing

Most audience marketing starts from a show: 'We need to sell tickets to Cinderella, who should we email?' That's reactive — you have a product and you're looking for buyers.

Proactive audience marketing starts from the people: 'Who came to us last year and hasn't come back yet? Who's been to three shows — what would make them a subscriber?' When you think this way, your segments become something more than campaign lists. They become a way of understanding your audience.

Encore Pro's segment builder is well suited to this. Because segments are dynamic and always up to date, you can build a set of audience definitions once and return to them regularly to see how those groups are growing or shrinking over time.

Six Audiences Worth Finding

Below are six audience groups that tend to yield strong results for arts and entertainment organizations. Each one can be built in the Encore Pro segment builder.

1. Lapsed Buyers
Why it matters	These are people who came before but haven't booked in your current season. They already like you — they just need a reason to come back. This group often responds better than cold prospects because the relationship is already established.
How to find them	Filter by event date (booked in a previous season) and exclude anyone who has booked in the current season. The resulting group is your lapsed pool.
What to do next	A targeted re-engagement campaign works well here. Acknowledge the gap — 'We've missed you' — and give them something worth coming back for: a new production, a member offer, or a first-look preview.

2. First-Time Buyers
Why it matters	First-timers are your highest-risk audience — they came once, and the jury's still out on whether they'll come again. Studies consistently show that getting someone back for a second visit is the biggest lever for long-term retention. If you can convert a first-timer to a second-timer, you've dramatically increased their lifetime value.
How to find them	Filter for contacts whose first event date falls within your current season. You can refine further by looking at contacts with exactly one show booked to isolate those who haven't returned yet.
What to do next	A follow-up email after their first show — sent within a week or two — goes a long way. Thank them for coming, share what's coming up next, and make it easy to book again. Consider a small incentive for their second visit.

3. Loyal Multi-Show Buyers
Why it matters	These are your most engaged non-subscribers — people who have booked multiple shows in a season without being on a membership or subscription. They're your best conversion targets for subscription programs, and they respond well to 'insider' messaging.
How to find them	Filter for contacts who have booked two or more shows in your current season. You can layer in a date range to focus on a specific period.
What to do next	This group is ideal for subscription conversion campaigns. They've already demonstrated multi-show intent — you're just formalizing it. Frame the subscription as the natural next step, not an upsell.

4. Cross-Sell Opportunities
Why it matters	When someone books one show but not another, you have a natural conversation starter. Cross-sell segments let you find people who attended a specific production and target them for a related one — by genre, artist, or programming theme.
How to find them	Create a segment filtered to contacts who booked Show A. Then, when building your campaign for Show B, use this segment as part of your audience (alongside your broader lists). You can also refine it by excluding anyone who has already booked Show B.
What to do next	Campaigns built on cross-sell segments tend to feel more relevant because they're grounded in something the recipient actually did. Reference their previous visit: 'You loved Oklahoma — here's something we think you'll love just as much.'

5. High-Frequency Buyers
Why it matters	Beyond your formal subscriber base, there's often a group of frequent single-ticket buyers who are effectively subscribing through their behavior — they just haven't committed to a plan. Finding them lets you have a very targeted conversation about the benefits of formalizing that relationship.
How to find them	Filter for contacts with three or more shows booked in the current season, or four or more over the past twelve months. Adjust thresholds to suit your programming — a busy presenting organization might set the bar higher than a producing venue with a shorter season.
What to do next	Treat this group like VIPs: offer early access, priority booking, or exclusive events. The goal is to make them feel seen, and to convert behavioral loyalty into formal membership.

6. At-Risk Attenders
Why it matters	As a season ends, a subset of your single-show buyers may be about to lapse before they've had a chance to deepen their relationship with you. Identifying them before the season closes gives you a window to act.
How to find them	Filter for contacts who booked exactly one show in your current season, and whose event date was more than 60 days ago. This surfaces people who attended earlier in the season but haven't come back.
What to do next	A light-touch campaign — 'There's still time to catch one more this season' — with a curated shortlist of upcoming shows can recover a meaningful portion of this group before the window closes.

Turning Segments Into Action

Once you've built a segment and confirmed the audience size looks right, there are two main ways to act on it in Encore Pro.

Email and SMS Campaigns

When creating a new campaign, the Audience step lets you select any saved segment as your target. You'll see the contact count update as you add or remove segments, so you can sanity-check the size before you send. For most of the use cases above, a one-off campaign is the right tool — a timely, targeted message to a specific group.

Automations

For audiences that are defined by something time-sensitive — like a first-time buyer in their first week after attending — Automations let you build a sequence that fires automatically when a contact meets a set of conditions. This is particularly useful for first-timer nurture sequences, where timing matters and manual campaigns won't scale.

Tip: Before launching any campaign built on a discovery segment, check the audience size carefully. If the number looks much larger or smaller than you expected, it's worth revisiting the filters. A segment of 40 when you expected 400 usually means a date filter is off; a segment of 4,000 when you expected 400 usually means a condition is missing.

Making Audience Discovery a Habit

The most effective use of these segments isn't a one-time campaign — it's building a small set of audience definitions you return to regularly. At the start of each season, check your lapsed buyer count. A few weeks into a run, check how many first-timers you've seen. As the season closes, see who's at risk of lapsing.

Over time, watching how these numbers shift tells you something meaningful about the health of your audience — and gives you a structured basis for making decisions about where to focus your marketing energy.

Uncovering Your Audiences

Using Encore Pro's segmentation tools to find the groups most worth your attention