Marketing | The Abbey Theatre

Purpose of this page

This page is for people hiring the theatre for events, undertaking daytime courses or the theate volunteer booking or supporting them.

It aims to outline how we can help, how you can help us do the best job possible and the timescales we like to work to.

Note: The guidance below is primarily for events, daytime courses are supported but the marketing activity there is agreed as part of the onboarding process.

Step 1 – Complete a booking form

Not martketing as such! It’s the most important first step though as until you’ve got a confirmed booking, we have nothing to market!

Step 2 – Get your tickets on sale

At the moment we offer two ways to do this:

Send us the details and we will create an event for you on the Theatre’s “Ticket Source” account.
Use your own Ticket Source account, in order to do this though we will need some specific details from you (e.g. API Key) and we will need to create and counter sign a data sharing agreement. Please contact your booking agent for more information on this.

Once this is done you will automatically appear on this websites front page and it’s “What’s On” page which is consumed and shared across the borough. It takes up to 1 calendar day for the website to refresh.

Note: Additional ticket options are always being explored. If you have ideas or feedback, please contact us.

Details needed to create a ticket event

Venue : Main Auditorium / Courtyard / Bar

Date(s) : yyyy-MM-dd

Time (s) : HH:MM

Ticket Prices : Adult £x (mandatory, but can be free) and Concession £x (optional) or other (like Group of 4, optional)

Concession Rules : e.g. under 16 or over 60. (We will assume this if not specified.)

Allocated or General Admission seating

Genre : e.g. Live Music, Drama, Comedy

Title : e.g. “An amazing night of stuff”

Blurb : e.g. “A few lines that explain what it is and anything pertinent that might make people want to come and see it. This text ends up being indexed by Google so can really help people find our stuff.”

Images and Videos

Images

(must have at least one and if only one, be aware that some info will be cropped out in some formats)

Link to or attached Portrait (long) image. A good example here is a 1080 x 1920 pixel PNG at atleast 72DPI
Link to or attached Landscape (wide) image. A good example here is a 1920 x 1080 pixel PNG at atleast 72DPI
Link to or attached Square image. A good example here is a 1080 x 1080 pixel PNG at atleast 72DPI

Note the square one is new, it’s an emerging trend (for us) in social media.

PNG is a decent standard but we can accept almost all popular formats. Ideally we’d like a Photoshop PSD file as this would allow us to move elements around if they aren’t visible at the ends for example.

We can also make moving adverts from the bar from some PSD files to make them more eye catching.

Videos

If you have a video you can supply then please do. Landscape videos (1920 x 1080) are played in the bar during intervals etc and on our front facing foyer screen (visible from outside).

Portait 720p videos can also be displayed in the outer foyer.

No more than 20 seconds for the Landscape videos and 10 seconds for the Portrait videos please.

Sound will not be played.

Step 3 – Link your socials

We will be advertising on Instagram, Facebook and on Twitter (X). Connect with us to maximise the reach of our digital marketing!

Step 4 – Send us printed material

The following are displayed around the theatre. Additionally, once a quarter, select leaflets are distributed.

A5 Leaflets. Please provide on thicker (e.g. 130gsm and up) paper as lighter materials tend to bend over after a while and lose their effectiveness.
DL Leaflets. As above, nice thick paper.
A3 Poster (for NAC sponsored or by invitation only)
A1 Poster. We display 5 show posters at the front and rear (facing the Lidl car park). These are on rotation so your poster may not appear until closer to the date if there are lots of events on.
“Pull Up” banner. We display 3 or 4 banners in the theatre foyer. As above these are on rotation so you may not see it until your turn.

Please ensure the art you supply when having these printed is of sufficient resolution, particularly on the larger forms like A1 and banner. Most suppliers suggest 300 dpi.

Note: We reserve the right not to display poor quality material.

Step 5 – Keep in touch

We love to see rehearsal videos, additional footage or images! Very often we share these on our socials as well (although we can not guarentee this in busy periods).

The more the show is out there, the more tickets you will probably sell!

Marketing Timeline

For some organisations, we already know what events are going on eighteen months to two years from now. We liked to be prepared and we like to plan so in order to be sure that your included in these plans, look at the following guide timeline:

Image and Video Support

As a general rule we only tend to create media for NACIO / Abbey Theatre sponsored events. If you are struggling though, please do reach out. It’s quite possible one of the volunteers might have more time than we budgeted for!