Empowering heritage: connecting over 1 million visitors nationwide
Heritage Open Days (HODs) is England’s largest community-led festival celebrating history and culture. Every September, thousands of visitors explore hidden gems, join walking tours, workshops and talks; discovering new stories shared by dedicated organisers and volunteers. The HODs national team coordinates the festival, inspiring and supporting organisers to plan and showcase their events, bringing them together and connecting them with visitors.
The Challenge
In the lead-up to the festival, organisers across the country use the resources in the website's members area to plan their events and register them for publication on the event directory. Visitors plan and arrange itineraries by searching the website for events of interest to them. However, an outdated CRM created frustrations and barriers such as a limited map search functionality. The team also struggled without an integrated mailing system and limited audience segmentation.
To continue building the festival post-COVID, HODs needed a new platform that would provide deeper audience insights, targeted communications and improved engagement with event organisers and visitors.
The Project
Great website design and marketing tool, it was easy to use & the updated guidance was very helpful
Planning for the 2024 festival was well underway when the ReadyMembership team came on board. The team held a series of workshops to delve deeper into key user journeys and features with a focus on the new site being mobile-friendly to continue attracting a broad audience.
With 76% of submissions from returning organisers, adapting to a new login area and application process involved a steep learning curve.
Organisers had to learn a new single-sign-on process and step-by-step event submission process. Website prompts and automated emails confirmed that submissions had reached the HODs team for review.
Thanks for the coordination, publicity and event directory...we had a host of enquiries before we put out our local promo material!
In March 2024, a streamlined event registration process went live. While there were some early challenges, the HODs team successfully resolved these, refining the system throughout the process and organisers began uploading their events at a record rate.
The 2024 festival saw the launch of a new visitors’ login area, taking the personalised festival experience to the next level.
An interactive map with advanced search capabilities was developed, allowing visitors to filter events by location, date, and venue accessibility - giving them specific localised results. Another new feature allows logged-in website users to save a list of the events they are interested in attending - making planning much easier for festival visitors.
Benefits and results
"ReadyMembership has allowed us to better understand who is engaging with the festival throughout our annual cycle. These new insights have enabled us to streamline our organiser resources and further tailor our communications to our community. We’re looking forward to further using these insights as we evaluate the impact of the festival".
Alex McCann, Heritage Open Days Offficer
A reimagined online visitor experience
In June 2024, the festival event search and visitor login area were launched to the public, offering an enhanced personalised experience. 5,427 events were submitted online by 2,354 organisers and published on the new website where 52% of in-person visitors discovered festival events.
2024 festival website results:
- 2,500,000 page views / 400,000 users
- 3,500 visitor accounts created
- 1 million location searches / 200,000 map views
- Most searched counties – Merseyside, Kent, Cornwall, Suffolk, Dorset
- 24% of event organisers taking part in HODs for the first time
Emails promoting the festival got high engagement with an average open rate of 35.74% and a click rate of 11.68%. Over 1.1 million visitors attended in-person events across the UK.
As a regular festival-goer, I love the new map! It’s easy to use, it whittles down your results and even better, I can save my favourite events in my login area
A platform for ongoing festival success
A single view of organisers, coordinators and visitors has given the team deeper insights into their data - allowing them to refine their engagement strategies for future festivals. They are keen to make the most of ReadyMembership’s personalisation features to tailor messaging to different audiences.
Looking ahead, Heritage Open Days is eager to expand its online community and use the groups feature to enable organisers to connect and share experiences. With over 5000 events in 2024, they expect the festival to continue to expand. Their new platform has given them the tools to bring Heritage Open Days to more diverse audiences for years to come.
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