Free drink anyone?

If you’ve ever visited the Brooklyn Museum on a Target First Saturday, you know what a special experience we try to provide for our visitors. Free from 5pm‒11pm the first Saturday of every month, our public programs team puts on one heck of a good time: live music, dancing, art-making, book talks, films, curator tours, you name it. So it may come to you as no surprise that First Saturdays have historically been a challenging time to get visitors to use ASK. On one level, I really don’t blame them; there are so many cool programs going on, it’s tough to choose how to spend your time. Plus, we use most of our attention-grabbing capital on letting people know what, when, and where those cool events are taking place through giant printed schedules, stanchion signs, and handouts.

How do we insert ASK into this eclectic mix? What would get people’s attention during First Saturdays and compel them to download and use the app? We started by simply trying to raise awareness: we distributed dedicated palm cards about the app to as many people as possible.This helped, but didn’t really net a big jump in numbers. We then tried a few different programming ideas:

• The first idea was pop-up gallery talks (about 10 minutes long) led by ASK team members, who would encourage visitors to continue the conversation via ASK at the end of the talk. Most people were just happy to participate in the talk and then went on their merry way.
• The second test was offering an ASK experience using the model of a First Saturday program, which included a set meet-up time and (free) tickets. This didn’t work at all. We only had a handful of takers.
• The third test built on the more programmatic idea, but went beyond a general invitation to “explore with an expert” and instead offered a more guided experience around a specific theme. This worked a bit better, with a few more participants, who enjoyed the opportunity to explore around a theme.

Former ASK team lead, Monica Marino, leads a pop-up talk during a First Saturday in 2015. While participants enjoyed the talks, this didn’t translate to app usage.

Even after these tests, however, we still hadn’t landed on a formula that worked. At this point, you might be asking yourself why we didn’t just wave the white flag and move on. Simply put, First Saturdays are our busiest times, with anywhere from 5,000‒12,000 visitors (and occasionally more) over the course of the evening. That’s a lot of potential ASK users. We weren’t ready to give up yet!

After some months of testing these approaches, we held an ASK team meeting and batted around ideas for what to do next. One of the team members (shout out to Roko!) half-jokingly suggested offering people a free drink — after all, First Saturday is like a big party. We all chuckled, but also wondered if that could be the answer. After confirming with our legal counsel that we could, indeed, offer such an incentive, we ran a test doing just that: every 25th user would receive a free drink (beer, wine, soda) on us. We included the incentive on all the printed materials (large printed schedule, handouts) for First Saturdays and also printed dedicated palm cards. Did it work? You bet it did.

We rolled out the drink incentive idea for the October 2016 First Saturday with great success. We advertise on the printed handout for the night (center) as well as a dedicated palm card (right front/back). We then hand out physical coupons (left) that the winner takes any of the bars set up around the Museum.

The average use rate and number of chats has tripled with the incentive. That’s a staggering figure. What’s more, our engagement is still pretty good. We measure engagement by the average number of exchanges, which in general over the course of the project has improved from about 13 messages in 2015 to 15 in 2016. For First Saturdays before the incentive, we averaged in that 13-message range. With the incentive it’s a bit less, an average of 10. Since one of our big concerns was that people would download the app simply to ask if they won, that’s not too shabby a result. In fact, only a handful of people have cut right to the “did I win?” question. For most, the incentive seems to provide an ready-made excuse to start a conversation, and they keep using it even if they ask (and find out if) they won.

This phenomenon brings to mind an observation ERm made as part of our recent evaluation: some people feel pressure to ask a question, which is contributing to their “app-rehension” (ha-ha). What other kinds of easy ways in might we provide to ameliorate this pressure? We have kicked around the idea of offering other incentives and even a competition around the questions people ask (a great idea from Bloomberg Philanthropies). For now, we’ll continue to offer the drink incentive on First Saturdays and as long as our engagement stays true to the tenets of ASK. After all, it is a party.