Dance House Helsinki (Tanssin talo)

Background: Dance House Helsinki – Finland’s first venue dedicated entirely to dance

Dance House Helsinki is an extraordinary place. With its architecture of floating steel walls and staggered building volumes, it is Finland’s first and most significant landmark designed entirely from the principles and requirements of dance. The approximately 5,400-square-meter venue includes state-of-the-art performance spaces, dressing rooms, a rehearsal studio, restaurant facilities, and foyers.

Dance House Helsinki offers a high-quality and diverse program for anyone interested in dance. The program consists of performances and events produced by dance, circus, and cultural organizations, as well as the organization’s own productions. Concerts, club events, and film screenings are also part of the offering.

A central part of the program is the long-term collaboration with selected program partners, including Zodiak – Center for new dance, Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth, Tero Saarinen Company, and Cirko – Center for new circus.

The challenge: Fragmented customer data and limited resources

Being a venue operator comes with certain challenges. Because Dance House Helsinki primarily works with partners and visiting productions – rather than producing its own content – it does not fully control all ticket sales and marketing. Access to data is therefore limited. Saara Oranen, Communications Manager at Dance House Helsinki, explains:

– We collaborate with several producers who sell tickets both through their own systems and through us. This means that the customer data is fragmented, and that we don’t have full control of the entire customer journey. That makes it especially important to gather and structure the data we do have.

Another challenge, common among cultural organizations with small marketing teams, is limited resources. Time, budget, and staffing are often in short supply.

– As we don’t have the opportunity to invest much in paid advertising and marketing, our own channels are extremely important. Data helps us understand what works, when to communicate, and how to stay relevant without spamming our audiences, says Saara.

The solution: A GDPR-compliant communications platform for dance organizations

MarketHype provides a platform for audience development and marketing, purpose-built for organizations like Dance House Helsinki. Here, the organization can consolidate data from multiple sources and partners and have it cleaned, verified, and continuously updated – all in full GDPR compliance.

Dance House Helsinki began using MarketHype at the end of 2023. In parallel with workshops with MarketHype's Customer Success team, insights gained during onboarding were used to develop the organization's overall data management, as a project.

– For us, the onboarding process was also a chance to systematically review our data sources and GDPR routines. We were able to use onboarding insights to improve our data processes overall, which was very helpful, Saara explains.

With consolidated, accurate audience data in place, Dance House Helsinki is now able to follow visitor profiles, segments, and behaviours to better understand its audiences and target communication more efficiently – all within the same platform. The MarketHype tools most frequently used by Saara and her team include:

1. Email tools (directly connected to website signup forms): For creating personalized and targeted newsletters and email campaigns.

2. Automations: For communicating before and after performances.

3. Segments: For analyzing audiences and creating target groups based on productions, event types, venues, and more.