The sixth and final part of my series of Arty Face articles (February 2) on the recommendations of Dan and Chip Heath in their book Made to Stick covers story telling, which essentially means using newsletters effectively in the arts marketing context.

The January 17 edition of Arty Face contains the fifth installment in my series on sticky messages based on the advice of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick. It gives a brief overview of the advice on using emotion to connect with the audience.

The fourth part of my series of Arty Face articles (January 11) on the recommendations of Dan and Chip Heath in their book Made to Stick covers credibility.

One of my Team Member clients in Southern California, Music at St. Matthews, recently sent me this nice note:

"Something must be working. We had about the biggest crowd we've ever had last Friday. Granted, it was Handel's Messiah, but the interesting thing was that we had a lot of advance ticket sales and a goodly number of walk-ins." -- Tom Neenan, Artistic Director.

In past years, nearly all of this chamber orchestra's sales had come from subscribers, so we worked on the branding, e-newsletter, website and brochure for the 2011-2012 season to make it easy for potential patrons to find the information they needed to purchase single tickets or subscription add-ons.

It worked.

One of the orchestra's long-time supporters wrote, "... something inspired you and your colleagues to turn the internet into a lively source of information about your programming and musicians who will perform .... And the layouts of your printed brochures has also suddenly improved."

The letter included a nice donation, so I'd say that's one patron who really knows how to give a compliment!

Part 3 of my series on crafting sticky marketing messages, based on Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, continues in the December 28 edition of Arty Face with an explanation of why concrete, specific messages are stickier than abstract ones, even though the abstract ones might be technically more accurate.