You’re thinking about buying a Data Center license, so what’s the first concern you might have about this decision? Maybe “How much is it going to cost my organization?”

Data management is a daunting task for any ticketing venue. Sometimes the tools designed to help you manage it are just as daunting to use. You’re doing the right thing by researching. This article’s purpose is to provide an overview of Data Center, cover the factors that impact the price of each plan and help you make an informed decision about if Data Center is the right tool for you.

Here at TRG Arts, our team is dedicated to using our industry knowledge to educate the wide world of Arts and Culture for building organizational resiliency by focusing on consumer relationships, financial stability, organizational frameworks, and people-centric teams. If you’ve encountered us before, you may know that data is our jam. However, we want you to have a comprehensive understanding of all your possible options, even if Data Center isn’t what you choose - that’s okay! Today, we’ll be covering some basics about the cost to acquire a Data Center license (including what plans you can choose from, how each plan’s cost may vary, and other factors to consider).

Before we get into the thick of discussing pricing, we’ll start with the overview of what Data Center can do for your organization.

What is Data Center?

Many cultural organizations’ marketing and fundraising efforts fall short. If you haven’t been making data-informed decisions, then you’ve likely experienced sporadic engagement, low consumer retention, and high campaign cost-of-sale.

Data Center takes the guesswork out of building your marketing and fundraising campaigns by harnessing the power of your database. Every dollar that you spend on a campaign should be working for you. A Data Center license enables you to combine consumer data from multiple sources and then segment your lists based on specific consumer behaviors to create targeted mail, email, and phone campaigns. You can ensure your lists are up to date by using our routine National Change of Address updates.

Beyond targeted marketing, you can grow your consumer base by joining a TRG Community Network through Data Center. You’ll be able to discover and target new prospects most likely to respond to your campaigns through our permission-based list trading tool. Data Center anonymizes previous ticketing/fundraising patron data from your organization and compares it to your peers when your organization is part of a TRG Community Network. This allows you to better understand your market and increase your reach to potential prospects within your community. You can also leverage digital ad campaigns by utilizing our partnership with Mogo Arts.

To summarize, here’s a quick list of Data Center’s benefits:

• Combines consumer data from all your sources for creation of segmented lists useful for direct marketing.
• Helps you understand your audience and spot trends. Empowering you to send the right offers to the right consumers.
• Grows your consumer base through TRG Community Network trades with other nearby organizations.

What Are the Plan Options and What is the Difference?

If you are still reading, you must be seriously interested in a Data Center license, but which plan is right for your organization? Each plan is designed for different sized organizations with different data needs and has various associated costs specific to it. This will impact how much you end up paying annually for your license or during start-up.

Data Center Basic License ~ $2,000 annually (~€2,025/£1,765)

Data Center basic licenses require manual data imports, meaning dedicated staff personnel at your organization will convert data from your CRM (customer relationship management) to Excel, and then import it to Data Center periodically (we recommend at least once every 30 days). Data Center is compatible with any CRM that provides unique patron identification numbers to each name within your database.

There is no limit to the number of data imports you can add to Data Center and the baseline cost for a basic license is $2,000 annually, but discounts or add-ons may apply depending on factors we will discuss shortly, mainly your organization’s budget size and the network you are in.

Data Center Advanced License ~ $8,400 annually (~€7,900/£6,800)

A Data Center advanced license offers automated data importing from your CRM. This means no dedicated staff at your organization need to spend time manually inputting your new data each month. Heads-up, currently automated imports only work with customers using Tessitura as their primary customer relationship software, but others are soon to be available for use with this automated transfer. An initial setup cost of $5,000 may also apply to your advanced license to initiate the automatic data transfer.

Some factors that will impact cost for an advanced license will be your organizational budget size (in other words your data load), whether you are interested in discounts available by joining a community network, and the frequency of your data imports. With automated data import, the default is one import per month, but if you want to upgrade to twice per month, the annual adavanced license will start at $11,000 before add-ons or discounts apply.

Here is a Quick Summary of Baseline Costs for Each Data Center Plan:

Basic:

• Baseline $2,000 annually (depending on organization budget size)
• No set up fee
• Discounts may apply for community network participation
• Unlimited manual data imports (at least once every 30 days)

Advanced:

• Baseline $8,400 annually (depending on organization budget size)
• $5k set up fee
• Discounts may apply for community network participation
• Automated data imports every 30 days (bi-monthly automated import licenses starting at $11K annually)
• Ideal for most organizations with Tessitura as primary CRM

Why Does Community Network Participation Impact Price?

When multiple US-based organizations in one community purchase the Data Center software service, they form a TRG Community Network. They are able to trade mailing lists with one another and run analytics about their data without needing to be on the same ticketing or donor management platform. Whether you have three organizations participating or 300, you will form a robust dataset that you can use for prospecting and research. Trading arts patron data within a local network creates a larger, more loyal arts community and more effective marketing.

So why does participating in a TRG Arts Community Network mean discounts for your Data Center license? In short, we want to incentivize Data Center users to participate in Community Networks because the more data in the network, the more value the organizations in the community get from it. It’s a win-win for you, as you pay a lower price for more added value. Think of it like buying in bulk from a wholesaler, more value, and a better price per unit.

Other Factors to Consider:

The larger your budget size and presumably your data set, the cost, and the value of what you get from Data Center increases. An advanced license can potentially offset another salary for your organization by making your data management automated and simple to use.

The other thing to remember is that each Data Center license comes with support. TRG Arts has a dedicated team of Data Center experts available to show you how to use it, maximize it and answer any question or issues as they crop up.

If you decide Data Center is not the right tool for you at this current time, that’s ok! Thank you for being informed and interested in our product. Some other solutions you might investigate for your data needs include:

• Your CRM System.

  Whether you use Tessitura or another system such as Spektrix, Patron Manager, Audience View or more, you can usually build insights directly from the data in your CRM. We think you will miss the ability to benchmark your performance against other organizations or to trade within your network, but there is a lot you can do directly with your CRM.

• Activity Stream.

  While Data Center’s Community Networks and access to TRG’s team of live consultants is unique in the market, other companies such as Activity Stream offer you effective ways to manage your campaigns and take advantage of segmentation and list building tools.

• Acxiom and Other Database Marketing Companies.

  If you need to build lists for your campaigns or perform research on your existing database, companies such as these can help. You will usually have to find another tool to evaluate your campaign performance and track your sales performance.

• SMU Data Arts

  If you are looking for data-driven analysis of trends within the sector, SMU does make its academic analysis and insights available to advance the impact and influence of the arts.

Conclusion

Data Center is a tool designed to complement your CRM database, allowing your organization to harness the full power of your data to develop your current customers and find future ones. While there are functions in Data Center that you can also do in your CRM, ultimately there is no substitute for the community networks and list trading Data Center offers. If you are a US-based organization, use Data Center to take the guesswork out of building your marketing and fundraising campaigns and make every dollar that you spend on a campaign work for you.

TRG Arts is all about building a thriving arts and cultural industry and Data Center is one of the tools we offer to help your organization grow. We hope you found this article informative as you make your decisions, but we know you may still have questions. If you would like to inquire about cost, data security, or learn more about the capabilities of Data Center, we recommend scheduling a demo with one of our knowledgeable client success managers.