I’m thinking about our arts and cultural sector’s recovery, and while there’s so much to consider, my mind keeps going back to four letters: R-F-M-G.

• Recency
• Frequency
• Monetary (investment)
• Growth

These customer metrics and concepts fuel revenue resilience, drive business sustainability, and (I’m convinced) are key to our thriving into the next decade. More on that in a minute.

First, I’d like to consider the narrative that I know we’re all hearing in the media, at conferences, and in our board and staff meetings related to the field’s recovery from the impact of the 2020 pandemic(s).

I’m hearing that no other sector has been hit as hard as ours (I believe this to be true and continue to search for a worse-off industry); that some number of non-profit and commercial arts and creative businesses won’t make it and will close their doors (we’ve begun to see this in the US and UK); and that audiences are 50% down compared to 2019 (more on that below).

Leaders in our sector are stating and claiming that the subscription model kills innovation and needs to go. That pricing is the problem. That programming is the problem. That WE are the problem.

That everything must change.

At TRG Arts, we agree that much has to change. Especially as it relates to audiences and patrons. But as we consider change, we should understand current realities. We should be grounded in data, rather than anec-data. Right?

Many of you are familiar with TRG's Arts & Cultural Benchmark, which we developed at the beginning of the pandemic and continue to make free to the field for benchmarking purposes. There are more than 400 (and growing) global organizations and 350M arts consumer transactions within it, regularly reported on and studied by us; findings are distributed to participants. Here’s what the Benchmark tells us:

Globally, across arts sectors, audiences are 20% down compared to 2019. In 2021, that number was 50%, making 2022 a big recovery year (and we know not every organization is producing at 2019 levels). That gap-closing has been driven by new audiences (who have always made up a big chunk of arts audiences) who are younger, and a bit more diverse than in 2019. The field is also re-engaging lapsed audiences at higher rates. And crucially: the largest group of current audiences that have continued to participate are what we at TRG like to call “sticky”—they’ve attended six, 10, 12 times in recent history.

Which brings me back to RFMG. And subscription. We all know that the subscription model has been wildly successful in business in the past ten years. Yes, those models have differences compared to the traditional fixed-seat subscription model often seen in the arts. But the evergreen truth in customer loyalty is that the higher the Recency, Frequency, Monetary (investment), and (participation) Growth a customer has, the more durable the revenues coming from that customer and the lower the cost of keeping them. Of COURSE the traditional subscription isn’t the model for everyone. The subscription isn’t the point. The point is our field needs change—a change in attitude that results in a change in focus toward relationship and retention of audiences and patrons. Our work in the United Kingdom tells a critical story to this end: having given up on the traditional subscription and seen the resulting decline in sticky patrons over a decade, organizations in those countries are testing new models in packaging, membership and more to reverse these trends now.

Our sector’s recovery requires that we not just acquire new audiences, but that we’re OBSESSED with how to develop long-term relationships with them. We’ve got to keep them sticky, no matter who they are, with whatever tactic helps develop their RFMG with arts and cultural organizations

How? I’ve got three practical steps I’d like you to try get started:

1. Prioritize the audience/patron/customer groups that are the most important to your organization, missionally or in revenue terms, or both.

2. Describe those groups with data. Measure them in RFMG terms. How recent are they on average? How frequently do they participate? What’s their average investment? Have they been growing participation and frequency? Create a goal to grow one or all of these metrics in each group.

3. Finally, review your marketing, development, and box office expense budgets and evaluate: how much $$/££ is allocated to retention? Make it a goal to redistribute some of your current plans to the retention and RFMG growth of the groups you’re prioritizing.

Let’s move toward total recovery with an eye on 2030 and where we’re headed—which is toward communities that abound with and cherish the creative energy and fuel that non-profit and commercial arts, entertainment and cultural contribute. A focus on RFMG will be part of the change that gets us there.