We have lots of little organizations within our two sub-licensees. Tessitura gets used quite differently in each one. 

The Yale Repertory Theatre use it more traditionally, for ticketing, marketing initiatives, a little bit of education. We also have two cabarets which are run by our students and completely turn over and are rebranded every year. We don't know what they're going to ask for, so we needed Tessitura because it could potentially do anything that we needed it to do off the cuff, out of the box. Because there's a new managing director every year, we don't know what they're going to want to do, and we needed something that was capable of changing on a dime. We also have the School of Music, and they do countless performances, and a lot of them are free. They have lots of different subscription series. And they needed something that they could use generally as quickly as possible to get things up and running, and keep things in order. 

Comp Ticket Site

We have this really awesome comp ticketing site that L2 helped us build. When you log in with your Yale University ID and password, it automatically finds you or creates you a new record in Tessitura, and goes through all of the Yale University records to determine if you're a Drama School person or a Music School person, or neither, and will display what options you have for free tickets. 

So, if you're not part of either of those schools, you're just part of the Yale community, it will just display the performances that are available to all of Yale. If you're a Drama School person, it will display all of the free tickets for opening nights, for Studio Series productions, those kinds of things. And if you're a School of Music person, you'll see all the School of Music events that you have options to get into. 

It's really kind of cool, the customizations that we've put in place, so that it delivers exactly what you would want to see.

We're actually able to look at over 10 years' worth of history for people, and really be able to tell their story and what they're doing, across Yale, for any of the organizations using Tessitura. And that's been meaningful in many, many ways.

Ticketing & Marketing

Online ticketing was a huge thing. It became far simpler for patrons to buy tickets online. How quickly the box office staff could process tickets was really nice. 

At the Yale Rep, we have three separate locations, and the School of Music has lots of locations where they could potentially sell tickets. And the Cabaret has a tiny little office. And we're able to have Tessitura in all of those places: as long as we could get a laptop there and a printer, we could sell tickets quickly to people. We were no longer sending people to one location; we could go to the actual venues, and be prepared for people to come and serve their needs.

For marketing, it was huge because for the first time, they had data. We also quickly implemented T-Stats, when it was first out. We were slicing and dicing information and for once, we could tell the story of our patrons — which was huge for our marketing department. We actually started segmenting more properly. We were targeting the right people with the right messages. And we were able to say, ‘This is why this person did this.’ And now, because we've had Tessitura since 2005, we're actually able to look at over 10 years' worth of history for people, and really be able to tell their story and what they're doing, across Yale, for any of the organizations using Tessitura. And that's been meaningful in many, many ways.

Yale School of Music

Tessitura Hosting Services

I love Tessitura Hosting Services. Without it, I don't know that we could've upgraded as quickly and frequently as we have. Tessitura Hosting Services has been a huge resource for us. Particularly when we went from version 10 to 11, and 11 to 12, we had someone to call, we had someone to talk to. A lot of times, they did a big piece of it for us. Whenever there was any kind of issue, there was always someone right on the other side to help us. 

Before we went to hosting, we had the servers at Yale. And you never knew when it was going to go down. You never knew if someone was going to pick up the phone. It was very, very difficult. So when we moved to hosting, it was friendlier, it was nicer. There was far less pressure on us. Our box office was happier because they didn't see the servers crashing. At all. 

TN Express Web

TNEW has made it so easy for us to have e-commerce pages. Because we were so used to using Tessitura, we knew where the system tables were, we knew where content tabs where. We knew that we could easily enter information right there in Tessitura, and it would go straight to our site. So it wasn't learning a whole new process. 

We implemented five TNEW sites all at once. I know that can sound daunting, but it was really kinda easy. And working with all the TNEW staff has been great. 

But I love TNEW. Without it, we wouldn't have the resources to keep up with what's going on. We wouldn't have pricing, messaging rules online. So many things we weren't able to keep up with before. And TNEW just does it for us and delivers it straightaway.