Culture, Digitally Minded: A Tailored E-Marketing Suite in Just 3 Months at the Beethovenfest Bonn

From order to go-live in three months, in time for the festival start on August 28.

• Project duration: 3 months from order to go-live
• Start: early April with a two-day requirements workshop
• Key user training: completed by early June
• Festival start: August 28

The biggest hurdle was time: implementation and data migration had to succeed in just under twelve weeks, with the platform running stably in time for the festival start on August 28. The team needed an intuitive solution for newsletters, press distribution lists and personalized VIP communication, GDPR-compliant and without burdening ongoing festival operations.

• Implementation and migration in around 12 weeks
• Managing newsletters, press and VIPs from one system
• GDPR-compliant communication
• Historically grown contact data from different sources

The starmate consultants implemented the project in three core areas:

• Address and profile management: Contact data from legacy systems was migrated in a structured way, cleansed and divided into segments for audience, press and VIPs.
• Email marketing in the festival design: A uniform, accessible template conveys the corporate identity. In training sessions, the key users were enabled to set up and evaluate campaigns themselves.
• Campaign automation: First flows such as welcome series for newsletter subscribers and reminders for concert highlights run automatically.

The Beethovenfest has a scalable communication platform. A few weeks after go-live, the team sent the first campaigns independently.

• Fully operational E-Marketing Suite in three months
• Time savings through a central, cleansed data structure and automation
• Target-group-specific outreach to audience, press and partners

“The tight schedule before our festival start was a real challenge. The starmate team reacted immediately as true mates, flexibly created capacity and guided us through the entire process in a structured way. Thanks to the new E-Marketing Suite, we save valuable time in day-to-day business and can finally address our audience, the press and our VIPs as personally and relevantly as a world-class festival deserves.”

Michael Schneider, Head of Communications & Marketing, Beethovenfest Bonn

By the start of the festival season on August 28, a functional, privacy-compliant and personalized email marketing solution had to be in place. As early as April, we started with a two-day requirements workshop straight into the concept and customizing phase, with a particular focus on consolidating the contact data.

By early June, the key user training was completed. Since then, the festival team has independently managed personalized campaigns, press releases and VIP mailings via the suite.

Consulting team

1. Kick-off & analysis (April): Two-day requirements workshop on use cases and data structure.
2. Concept & customizing (April/May): Technical setup of the EMS and adaptation to the Beethovenfest's processes.
3. Design & template development (May): Flexible, accessible email template in the Beethovenfest design.
4. Data migration & training (June): Migration and cleansing of the recipient data, training of the key users.
5. Go-live & campaign start (June/July): Launch of the platform and sending of the first newsletter and press campaigns.