Driving Ticket Sales With Targeted Email Marketing for Bach’s 91st Season

Organization Mission

Since 1935, the Bach Festival Society has inspired the human spirit through world-class music featuring powerful choral performances and innovative programming that celebrates the legacy of J.S. Bach.

Challenge

With the 91st season approaching, Bach Festival Society partnered with Curley & Pynn to increase awareness and maximize ticket sales. Our goal was to generate immediate awareness and urgency around the launch of the 91st season through earned media and a new email marketing campaign to drive ticket sales and support a strong start to the season.

Solution

Our team reviewed the 2025–2026 season booklet to understand upcoming Bach programming and identify newsworthy stories. We met with the administrative and artistic leaders to uncover unique seasonal elements, differentiators and potential selling points based on past seasons.

With that information, we prioritized the first four concert programs of the season ahead of Bach’s annual holiday programming, which consistently sells out. This approach helped to build early momentum and focus subscriber attention on the season launch. Using these insights, we developed a storytelling plan and email content calendar. In partnership with Bach, we developed and distributed 20 emails from August through November 2025 to maintain engagement and consistent patron touchpoints. Content included concert previews, composer and program highlights, artist interviews and season subscription information, aiming to make classical music more relatable and accessible to a general audience.

Results

Email marketing efforts for Bach’s 91st season launch helped drive strong early momentum. Ticket sales goals for the first four programs were all met or exceeded. Emails about the first four concert programs of the season achieved an average open rate of 37.7%, surpassing the 35% objective, with segmented post-performance emails sent exclusively to attendees driving particularly high engagement. Click-through rates averaged 2.3%, just shy of the 3% target, reflecting steady interest in the content delivered.