Tracking Direct Marketing with GURLs & PURLs

Direct marketing campaigns are notoriously difficult to track in terms of ROI and effectiveness.  It’s hard to know which of your organization’s communications best reaches your audience, the artfully designed postcard and brochure or the large billboards and posters placed throughout your area. Organizations usually have to rely on methods such as surveys and historical estimates to track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. One possible solution to this tracking problem is to utilize customized URLs with your organization’s marketing efforts. When someone clicks on a custom URL, they are directed to a custom landing page seperate from your organization's main site and specific to your marketing campaign and can be individually noted using online analytics. There are two types of custom URLs currently available for marketing campaigns (and also great for puns): GURLs and PURLS

PURLs or Personal URLs will include both a message specific to your marketing campaign and the recipient’s name inside the URL. They are totally custom and best fit for E-mail and direct mail campaigns. PURLS contain the recipient’s name generated from your organization’s mailing list and leads to a custom landing page that can offer content specifically tailored for that person. For example, if Technology in the Arts were to have a membership campaign, our PURL would look like this:

www.ThomasHughes.JoinTechnologyInTheArtsToday.com

GURLs or General URLs are the more generic version of a PURL, usually including just a campaign name, but offer the same advantage with tracking. The landing pages are also more generic and the ability to customize the offer based on who clicks the link is lost. GURLs are a better fit for marketing efforts like signage, billboards, and print advertisements. For instance, say I wanted to use a custom URL for a newspaper advertisement for our website’s membership campaign; the GURL would look like this:

www.YourTechnologyInTheArtsMembership.com

If your organization decides to try out utilizing either GURLs or PURLs, or both, in its next direct marketing campaign, here are a few things to consider when choosing a service:

Cost – According to easypurl.info, the cost of a PURL can range from 4 cents to 12 cents per purl. The price varies based on the amount needed. For example, a campaign using about 10,000 PURLs can average about 10 cents per PURL.  This is a case when you might want to go with a less personal, but less expensive, GURL. For both PURLs and GURLs, there is usually a setup cost for both the template and landing pages to which the custom links are directed.

Lifespan – These custom links won’t last forever, so this is an important question to ask when choosing a service. GURLs tend to have a longer lifespan that PURLs, which contributes to them being better for instances like billboard and signage where you are trying to reach a less specific audience.

An example of the PURL results and ROI tracking data taken from getsatisfaction.com

Data – What kind of tracking abilities comes with the URL service? In a recent post, we discussed the advantages to using custom URLs for tracking a variety of metrics using Google Analytics. Check into the kind of metrics that are offered and how well you can import, export, and integrate the data into your current database.

Exhibiting Online with Open Source Software

Has your organization been giving some thought to creating online components for its upcoming exhibitions? The demand for having exhibition-related content available online is not only increasing, it has grown into an expectation. Web publishing can be a costly process for many arts organizations, especially if a web developer and designer is required for each exhibition.  A more cost-friendly alternative is to consider using open-source, publishing software for creating collections and exhibitions online. Here are two currently available, free downloadable options designed specifically with cultural institutions in mind:

Omeka – Launched this past year, Omeka was designed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Omeka features a variety of themes and plugins while offering a management system similar to that of the blogging site Wordpress. Here is a great video tour of the software.

Collective Access – Also utilizing a management system similar to many blogging platforms, Collective Access was developed by software firm Whirl-i-Gig in 2007. Click here to demo the software.

Both sites offer links to exhibition sites built with their software, which are worth checking out to see what’s possible using these open source systems.

So what is open-source software, anyway? A software is considered open source when the firm who created the software makes the source code available to the public and opts out of certain other copyrights that are normally reserved.  This means that any user can alter, customize and develop for that software as they sit fit to meet their project’s needs. An important thing to keep in mind is that in the tradition of open source software, the user must share this new, modified code with the public as well.

Before your organization goes forward with publishing an exhibition or collection online with this kind of software, there are some questions you should consider:

What is the user experience like?

No two web publishing software systems are exactly alike, so make sure to take a detailed tour before committing to one.  A clean and simple user interface will drastically shorten training time for your staff and save a lot of future headaches if you pursue more complex projects. Omeka and Collective Access are both strong examples since each offers a blog-like user-interface specifically designed with cultural institutions in mind.

Omeka offers services that cover a wide range of needs for cultural institutions

An example of how Collective Access allows you to build relationships between items in your online collection.

How much storage will you need?

What kind of content and media will your project involve? What kind of storage and back-up will be needed? Remember that server space is essential, whether it’s your organization’s internal server, a web-hosting service’s server, or buying some space from a server provider online. In addition to their software, Omeka offers a web-hosting service with different plans priced according to number of sites and the amount of storage needed.

How easy is it to customize?

This goes back to the importance of taking a detailed demo of the software. Many of the platforms have multiple themes available to make the task of designing your organization’s site a lot easier. However, you should test the platform to determine how difficult it will be to change those themes and customize them to fit your organization’s unique brand image without requiring the help of a web designer.

What kind of support is there for the software?

When an open source software is downloaded and installed on your server, all of the support and maintenance responsibilities for that software rests with your organization. A server provider will be able to fix bugs and issues specific to your server, but maintaining the software is up to you. Omeka and Collective access offer extensive documentation and guides as well as online forums, but support and troubleshooting are left to you. This is one of the advantages to Omeka’s hosted option; they will provide service support for both server and software issues.

How is the software upgraded?

When the system you use comes out with a new version, who installs the upgrade? How easily can an upgrade in the software be installed and configured? With both Omeka and Collective Access, the users have to manually perform the upgrades, but extensive documentation and guides are provided. This is another benefit of a hosted service option like Omeka.net; they will install and configure software upgrades for you.

So while these open-source, publishing software systems are free, there are some costs to consider.  Be sure to do your research in order to determine if these open source tools will meet your budgetary and technical constraints for experimenting with online collections and exhibitions.

Giving Thanks for Your Fans

Thursday marks that wonderful time of the year when we gather with friends and family, give thanks, and have a perfectly valid excuse to eat too much food and take a nap. So in this time of giving thanks, has your arts organization thought about how you give thanks for your online communities? Offering ways to thank and reward your organization’s online community is an important part of online social engagement. It reinforces for your followers how much you appreciate while giving them great incentives to spread your brand. These rewards can span from offering exclusive content only available to your online fan base to having something tangible like a specific event or rewards day at your organization focused on your online community.

Take for example the recent move by Barry and Fran Weissler, producers of the musical Chicago, to reward their Facebook fans. On January 30, 2011, Facebook Fan Day will mark the first time that a Broadway show will fill its house exclusively with their Facebook fans -- for free.  Yes, the tickets were free, but they were not simply first come, first served. Tickets were distributed chronologically to those people who got ten of their friends to “Like” the Chicago Facebook page.

Facebook Fan Day generated quite a bit of buzz and interest in a production that has been running for 15 years.

Brooklyn Museum's special offer on Foursquare

While an idea like Facebook Fan Day is a great way to reward and expand your organization’s online presence, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a one-time offering. The folks over at Brooklyn Museum have included an on-going rewards program for their Foursquare community. By becoming Brooklyn Museum’s "mayor" on Foursquare during their First Saturday social event, a visitor can receive a free one year membership for their 1stfans social event program. One advantage to using a location based platform is that it requires users to be present at the event in order to and claim the reward. Rewarding your social media fans can increase their loyalty to your organization, give them some incentives to get through the door and create more advocates to spread your brand.  What does (or could) your organization do to give thanks to members of your online communities?

Arts & Technology Round-up

Happy Friday everyone! Here are some interesting happenings in arts and technology to round out your week:

• Magic Fiddle app turns your iPad into a violin.
• A team of conservators digitally recreate a missing part of Brömserhof Museum's 16th century mural.
• Integrating technology into the theatrical performance.
• Check out this Museum of Soviet Arcade Games outside of Moscow.
• Artist Mark Bradford and the J. Paul Getty Museum offer online art classes with Open Studio.
• Google and the Gagosian invest in art startup Art.sy.
• Digital projection mapping: turning building facades into canvasses.

Enjoy the weekend!

Social Media Spotlight: The Guggenheim and YouTube Play

Welcome to the third installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.

This month’s spotlight is the Guggenheim Museum’s strategy with YouTube Play, the recently debuted biennial celebrating creative talent in the realm of online video. The response leading up to Youtube play was massive, with over 23,000 video submissions and over 46,000 subscribers to the YouTube Play channel. The channel, to date, has been viewed over 23 million times. 25 videos were selected by an esteemed jury and celebrated on October 21^st with an event at the Guggenheim in New York that was live streamed worldwide.

I recently had a chance to chat with Associate Curator Hanne Mugaas about YouTube Play:

Where did the idea originate for the Guggenheim to team up with a social media site like YouTube?

The Guggenheim had already collaborated with Google on Design It: A Shelter Competition, where on the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from around the world to submit a 3-D shelter for any location in the world using Google SketchUp and Google Earth. Ideas for new collaborations originated from this project, and a celebration of online video became the next step.

Instead of using their existing YouTube channel, the Guggenheim decided to create an entirely new channel for YouTube Play. What drove that decision? Did it have a positive effect on your original channel?

Since the project is a collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim, we wanted a channel for Play content exclusively. The fact that it is a biennial (the project will continue every second year) is another reason why we wanted a separate platform. The project has certainly had a positive effect on the Guggenheim YouTube channel, and it has made it possible for us to reach new audiences.

Since its creation last May, the YouTube Play channel has gained over 46,000 subscribers. How did the Guggenheim cultivate such a large number of fans?

The project is unique in its global scope, which has generated extensive interest. We got 23,358 submissions, which is unheard of in a traditional art context. The pairing of YouTube and Guggenheim made people curious about the outcome. Most importantly, the shortlist and the top 25 videos have a diverse range of high quality works; videos that make you want to spend time on and revisit the channel.

In addition to YouTube, the Guggenheim also has a major presence on other social networks and social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, & Flickr. What roles did these other sites play in your social media strategy with YouTube Play? Did the fact that YouTube Play culminated with a specific event affect your overall social media strategy?

The social media sites were important in getting the word out, and to drive submissions. We also started a blog, The Take, which contextualizes the project through writing by art, film, and Internet experts. We did frequent YouTube Play updates on Facebook and Twitter to keep people informed about the progression of the project. These were certainly important tools for the event, especially to make people aware of the live stream, and the external projections on the Guggenheim building in New York.

Speaking of events, the Guggenheim took full advantage of YouTube's new streaming service to live stream the YouTube Play event from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  How was your experience with streaming video?

The live stream was a very important element given the global scope of the biennial; this way, anyone anywhere could watch the event live. It was a successful experience for us, and the feedback has been very good.

What advice would you give to other, smaller arts organizations that want to experiment with live streaming their own events?

Streaming video is a great way to make your content available to a global audience, either it’s an event, a panel or a talk. To watch a live stream is special, and as a cultural producer, it is a great asset to know that people around the globe are watching.

Thanks again to Hanne Mugaas and the Guggenheim Museum. Visit the YouTube Play channel to check out the 25 selected videos from the exhibition and view selected clips from the live streamed event.

Is your organization doing exciting work in social media? Leave us a comment and let us know. We may feature you in an upcoming spotlight!

Firing Up Museums With Sparks! Ignition Grants

From digital archiving techniques to mobile websites, museums around the country are finding news ways to innovate in our current and rapidly changing information age. There is now an emphasis on experimentation and testing the boundaries of what traditionally defines a museum. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has initiated a new grant program with this emphasis in mind and is seeking proposals for the current fiscal year. The Sparks! Ignition grants can be up to $25,000, are available for a period of up to one year, and have no matching requirements. Yes, you read that correctly. No matching requirements.

The Sparks! Ignition program is intended for all eligible institutions that want to utilize innovative methods to address some of the current problems that museums and libraries in the U.S. are experiencing. For more information about the application and to find out if your institution meets the criteria for eligibility, visit the IMLS website .

On November 3^rd, IMLS staff will be offering a webinar explaining the purpose of the grants, articulating the application process, and answering questions. Your organization will have to move quickly though, the application deadline for all Sparks! grants is November 15^th, 2010.

Future Focus: The Public Art Archive

Sharing information and digital media about public art has never been an easy task for arts administrators. The Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) seeks to change that when they launch the Public Art Archive - an online, searchable database for public art in the United States. A tool for both arts administrators and the general public, WESTAF’s vision is for the Archive to serve as an easy to use, central source of information about public art. I recently had a chance to speak with the creators of the Public Art Archive and take a guided tour through the site.

The Public Art Archive has a straightforward, user-friendly interface.  Entry to the Archive takes place through a simple search bar on the front page, powered by Solr, an open-source search platform from by the Apache Lucene project.  You may already be familiar with Solr, as it is the search engine used by both Etsy.com and FoodNetwork.com.

Solr allows you to refine simple searches on the Archive through multiple filters with a variety of search criteria such as artist, location, materials, collections and even nicknames. The search criteria and vocabulary for the site was built from the same standards as those used by reference websites like ARTstor and the digital library projects at Harvard.

Once they’ve found the artwork they are searching for, users are presented with a variety of information and media about the work. In addition to the artwork’s basic info, users can view pictures and video, download PDFs about the artwork, and listen to audio describing the piece.

While the capability for all this content is built in, individual administrators must submit all information and media for each artwork. The Archive has no limit on the amount of content that can be submitted for each work and submission of the content is free. At a minimum, the site requires a full description for each work, as well as its location, and one high quality image.

To enable use of the Archive when an individual is physically in front of a work of public art,  the Archive will be accessible from any web-enabled mobile device. No specific apps will be required, users just plug the main url for the Archive into their phone's web browser to access the full functionality of the site.

The Public Art Archive will also be fully integrated with Google Maps.  By clicking the site’s “Map This” icon, users will be able to view exactly where the artworks are located and build custom maps of artworks that can be shared with others or saved for later use.   Administrators can use the mapping function to create custom maps for use in tours of their collection, maintenance tasks, and advocacy initiatives.

The ability for organizations to create personalized pages so they can maintain their identity will be added as the Archive progresses. WESTAF also plans to have licenses available to give organizations access to the more administrative functions of the Archive.

The Public Art Archive will be launching in the near future, but until then visit westaf.org to check out some of WESTAF's other projects that offer technological solutions for arts administrators.

The Handheld Guide: Experimenting with Mobile Technology in Museums

There has been a lot of buzz lately about mobile technology with the release of mobile apps by some major museums like MoMA, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. Reviews have been mixed, but the discussion about the way mobile technology should be used in museums has definitely picked up speed.

The popular view of mobile technology seems to be focused (a little too much?) on one main format - having a downloadable, mobile application. While developing your own app can be a good way to deliver content to your visitors, it is definitely not the only approach. I decided to take a look at four different ways that some museums have been experimenting and implementing mobile tech in their institutions.

The TAP home screen and numeric input screen. via the Indianapolis Museum of Art blog

Providing not just an app, but also the device itself - TAP at The Indianapolis Museum of Art

The IMA wanted to include all their visitors in their mobile tech program, not just those who own a smartphone. So they took the extra step of providing gallery goers with an iPod Touch for the duration of their visit. By placing the device in the visitor’s hands, everyone has access to the digital content the IMA provides and no user is alienated for not owning or having an incorrect mobile device.

The iPods cost five dollars to rent and only contain the TAP app and an instructional video on how to use both the iPod and the app in tandem with the galleries. The app works on a numeric input system, a 3-digit code is associated with every piece in the tour that presents users with different content such as video interviews with artists, text files, pictures, and audio files explaining the artwork.

By sticking to one type of device, the IMA was able to tailor the user experience exactly the way they wanted, which was their main goal for developing a mobile program. This approach circumvents the need for an app store and allows for all content to be controlled in-house. The content management system is the same one used for their website and allows IMA to instantly edit and update their content without needing to go through a third-party developer.  The devices also have built-in polls and can provide both museum staff and TAP users with the real-time results.

Visit the IMA’s blog to check out the development process of the Tap Program and some of their ideas about developing a successful mobile standard for museums.

Integrating mobile websites and mobile apps: The Brooklyn Museum

A mobile website is the mobile-friendly version of an organization’s existing website. In a recent post, we examined the differences between mobile websites and mobile applications.

The Brooklyn Museum has developed a mobile website that is accessible from any web-enabled mobile device. In addition to sharing information about the institution, users are encouraged to get involved by recommending pieces of art work and apply descriptive tags through the Brknlynmuse and Gallery tag! features of the mobile website.

Brooklyn Museum's main website (left) and their mobile site (right). Via the Brooklyn Museum blog

To create a more accessible experience for those with more app-friendly devices, Brooklyn Museum also created downloadable apps for both iPhone and Android that simply wrap the current mobile website. The same functionality and features of the mobile site are there, the apps just act as a different port of entry. This has proven to be a more sustainable approach to their mobile strategy than building each app up from scratch.

You can find more info on Brooklyn Museum’s blog for their approach to their mobile website and their mobile applications.

Connecting to content with QR codes: The Mattress Factory

The Mattress Factory, an installation art museum in Pittsburgh, has been experimenting with implementing QR codes in their exhibits in an effort to reduce the number of brochures in their museum as part of a green initiative.  QR stands for “Quick Response”, connecting users to content within seconds of scanning the code with your phone. A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode that is readable by mobile devices with 3G access, a built-in camera and a barcode reading app.

A developer is not required to create QR codes; and with this method, a museum can start immediately experimenting with mobile technology.

QR code placement in the Mattress Factory's exhibition space. via the Mattress Factory blog.

The codes are free to generate and contain text information. Once you generate a code online, it can be printed out and placed next to the piece in your collection. For more media based content such as pictures, audio and video, the content must be uploaded to sites like YouTube or Flickr. The QR code will link users directly to that content.

More info on the Mattress Factory’s use of QR codes can be found on the Mattress Factory blog.

Taking advantage of an existing app: Augmented Reality with the Andy Warhol Museum

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to using a mobile device to view digital images overlaid onto real locations.  AR apps use a smartphone’s built-in camera and GPS to identify where the user is and overlays the content for that location.

Warhol, Warhol, Everywhere! A typical street view using the Andy Warhol layer. Via the Andy Warhol Museum.

The Andy Warhol Museum’s AR layer places images of Andy Warhol’s face over real-world locations in Pittsburgh and New York that were historically relevant to his life. Touching each icon provides users with pictures of artwork and/or content associated with each location and the way it played a part in Warhol’s career.  The Andy Warhol AR project is not an app itself, but a filter layer that is installed on an existing AR app called Layar, available for Android devices and iPhones.

You can find some more info on the Andy Warhol AR project here and how to create your own AR layers here.

So where does your organization weigh in? We would love to see some your opinions in the comments section of what you feel are some of the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches. What would most influence your organization’s approach to mobile technology?

Related Posts: Museums and the Web 2011: Thomas's Recap The State of the Mobile: The 2011 Museum & Mobile Survey

New Poll: One Social Site to Rule Them All?

There have been a lot of recent upgrades across various social media platforms over the past few months. Among them Twitter is rolling out their site overhaul, Facebook is upgrading their groups pages and photo-hosting, and LinkedIn has been bulking up their features as well. More and more, social media sites are starting to add each other’s specialties to their own bag of tricks. This points towards a trend of each site trying to become your one-stop-shop for all things social media. This brings up an interesting question.  Which is a better approach for an arts organization: participating in a single social media site that does it all, or continuing to use various sites to engage different online communities?