Bicha Gallery uses Evently to connect with their customers

Bicha Gallery is a contemporary art gallery on the South Bank in London. The gallery hosts a wide variety of exhibitions featuring paintings, photography, sculpture and drawings, as well as events including art fairs and book launches. The gallery wanted to find a better way to tell customers about its new exhibitions and events.

Bicha Gallery was sending out email updates manually with no way of monitoring the results: a process that took some time as the gallery has over 6,000 contacts. John Bryson, director of the Bicha Gallery, explains:

“Doing those emails probably took me about 5 hours to design the layout for each campaign, and 3 hours every time to send. Worse still, we couldn’t monitor the results so we had no idea if anyone was even reading the emails, no way of knowing if what we were doing was having any effect.”

There were also problems with the email system’s design and format options:

“The system we were using gave us little flexibility in the design of the emails, and we need our emails to be the best they can be. The way we communicate with our customers is really important to an art gallery. It adds to the experience of dealing with us and raises people’s perceptions of the business.”

Looking for an easier and more effective way to communicate with his customers, John started using Evently to help with his email marketing. Now he creates customised emails to showcase the gallery and its exhibitions.

“Our branding is simple and minimal. It’s really important that the art we’re exhibiting is the main focus of any communication: that’s what draws people in. I’m now designing our emails in less time with greater control. I never worked on the programming side of design before, but working with the Evently system has helped to get our e-communications just right.”

What’s more, it takes much less time. Using the Evently technology to send the emails saves John hours, leaving him more time to focus on the gallery. The design stage is uniform and publishing is at the click of a button.

After just a few months, Bicha Gallery has seen a real change as a result of its email marketing. John explains:

“We can now actually monitor results, which has made a huge difference to us. Our email open and click through rates are much higher than ever before, and well above industry standards. We’re really bringing the gallery to the front of the line once a month.”
“And it’s not just the evaluation reports that tell me it’s working. Visitors to the Bicha Gallery tell me that the gallery’s communications are excellent. Art fair organisers, who visit different galleries all of the time, comment on how well designed and organised our email communications are. Even new artists say that they love the overall look of the gallery, the brand – and the emails are part of that.”