||| December 16, 2025 by William Rogers

NAMP: TimeLine’s Return on Investment

I’m excited to be able to share some of what TimeLine Theatre has been able to do using Return-On-Investment measurements.  Through an AEE Learning Circle with Philippe Ravanas in 2007, and a generous implementation grant from the Chicago Community Trust, we have been able to build a solid foundation and start creating effective tools to measure ROI.  

Over the next few blog posts I will share portions of a presentation I gave at the recent National Arts Marketing Project Conference about how TimeLine has been using ROI. I was thrilled at the response I have gotten (in fact I’ve been asked to give it again at another NAMP-sponsored workshop in Minneapolis in April, maybe I’ll see some of you there), and I hope you find this useful in jump-starting your efforts. 

Our marketing budget was cut 16% from last season ...measuring ROI has kept the impact of those cuts to a minimum

Some of this may be elemental, but it is a really good look at the kind of practical tools you can take away from the Learning Circles. Look for information about the next round of Learning Circles coming soon.  I highly suggest you sign up.
 
First, a little about TimeLine Theatre. We are in the midst of our 13th season as Chicago’s only theater company dedicated to presenting stories inspired by history that connect with today’s social and political issues. We produce four mainstage productions running at 7-9 weeks each, plus a play-reading series and occasional off-night productions. This is a large challenge with just four full-time employees to keep it all going, although we do have part-time front-of-house and technical staff, plus approximately 100 artists who work on our shows during a season.
 
Recently we completed a six-month, sold-out run of our Chicago premiere of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, to which I give credit for a nearly 50% increase in subscriptions this season. The success of productions like these supports TimeLine’s ambitious goals. Our annual operating budget has risen at a rate of approximately 15% per year for the past several seasons; for 2009-10 our budget is approximately $800,000. Of the total, just under 10% is allocated to marketing. Due to the economy, our marketing budget was cut 16% from last season — I have to say that the knowledge gained from measuring ROI has kept the impact of those cuts to a minimum.
 

KEY LESSONS & FIRST STEPS
 
FIRST — The return-on-investment formula itself. You can refer to my slide show to see this formula. If this is the one thing you take away from these posts, you have a powerful new tool that can make a difference at your organization.  (If you would like more details about Philippe's ROI Learning Circles visit our Resources Center by clicking here.)

Having this standardized, mathematical equation is incredibly helpful. In this case, math truly is your friend! Learn it. Use it regularly. By distilling any project down to one number — a percentage — it really does provide a simple way to compare diverse projects in terms of their costs vs. benefits.
 
SECOND — The need to embed tracking mechanisms into as many marketing efforts as possible. I’ll talk more about how I’ve used our database, simple paper coding as well as Google Analytics coding to track return-on-investment.
 
THIRD —  The importance of keeping in mind both realized value (already realized sales) as well as potential value (future sales). Some projects are just as important for their ability to attract new customers who may not yet be tied to real dollars as for the actual sales they bring in over the course of a particular project. If you don’t remember this, the ROI formula can sometimes lead you astray.
 
FINALLY — I tried not to let myself get overwhelmed. I breathed. I measured one project. Then another. You can’t tackle your entire marketing mix at once, and I think you’re doomed to failure if you try. But every measurement taught me something. I made changes or different choices, and sometimes saw improvements. And I keep gradually adding to what I know. 
 
For me, marketing has always been a fun game. But now instead of being essentially a game of chance, I’m much more playing a game of strategy.
 

THE POWER OF CODES

I started out tackling the more “traditional” marketing arenas — direct mail, subscription order forms, ticket sales. The only tools I needed:  My audience database and tracking codes.
 
I was already using some codes but we seriously stepped it up so that I was putting codes on everything. You may already be doing this kind of thing. If not, a few ideas of how we implemented codes:

• Of course, ticket sale source codes: “How did you hear about our production?” right in the database order form. Make this happen with box office staff!
• SIMPLE: Color marks on donor envelopes for all fundraising mailings, program stuffers
• Subscription order forms, every version has a different code depending on how someone could have gotten their hands on the form
• Brochure mailing lists: Ask mailing house to imprint codes with every address to track return on mailing list trades

We set up every code we use in our database so it is recorded at the time a sale or donation is entered.
 
Finally, we created reports that connect the codes to actual dollars earned, in order to have totals from which to calculate ROI.  Most are housed within the database and can be obtained with the running of a report. If you follow along on the attached slide show, you can see examples of reports for subscriptions and single tickets. If you spend some time at the start organizing how the codes are set up and how they connect to income, it will be fairly easy to extract the information when you need it.

EXAMPLE: Subscription form code “RenewMail1”. I probably spent less than $1,000 on this effort (stationery, envelopes, flyer, postage), but this single mailing to current subscribers asking them to renew for the following season garnered $68,000+ in income — or more than half the year’s total! Of course I always knew this simple mailing was important, but now I am aware that it is the single most valuable marketing communication we do each year.
 
My slide show  in the Resources section includes several other examples of measurements via codes, including an analysis of several seasons of TimeLine’s subscription brochure, especially an assessment of the brochure’s impact in attracting new subscription orders.
 
For now, I think this may be enough to digest in one blog post. I will be back to continue this discussion. Stay tuned, next time we will talk about ROI as it relates to your “Online Toy Box.”

Tags: NAMP, Return on Investment