Dance Umbrella, London’s festival for bold and exciting contemporary dance, needed a smarter way to manage audience and supporter data – particularly for their online festival experience, the Digital Pass.
Their existing systems no longer met their needs for tracking engagement, managing communications, and ensuring data accuracy.
HdK stepped in to help integrate a new CRM – one that would streamline processes and provide clearer audience insights.
The challenge
Without a centralised system, managing audience data was inefficient and time-consuming. Dance Umbrella faced several key challenges:
- Data was scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to keep records clean, up to date, and GDPR compliant.
- Manual processes were needed to move data between systems, increasing the risk of duplication and errors.
- There was no way to track how audiences engaged across events, donations, and communications.
- Targeted marketing was limited, as there was no system for segmenting audience groups effectively.
They needed a CRM that would integrate seamlessly with their existing tech stack, automate processes, and provide the tools to deepen audience engagement and boost revenue.
The solution
HdK guided Dance Umbrella through integration planning, mapping, and development of their new chosen CRM system, BeaconCRM. Our role included:
- Leading the technical integration of Beacon with Dance Umbrella’s website, ensuring audience data was captured automatically.
- Establishing a direct communication channel with Beacon’s project manager to streamline the process and solve technical challenges.
- Finding a way to bypass the need for a costly Zapier integration, instead using a Stripe webhook – a permanent, cost-free solution.
- Fully integrating Digital Pass sales with Beacon, so that every purchase and video view was tracked in real time.
- Customising donation, event registration, and Digital Pass forms to encourage newsletter sign-ups and increase donations.
- Creating a custom integration with Stripe so that users could seamlessly sign up for digital passes.
The results
Beacon has transformed how Dance Umbrella manages its audience data, leading to impressive results:
- A major boost in donations: From 2021–2023, only 5% of Digital Pass users made a donation alongside their purchase. In 2024, with the new Beacon forms, this jumped to 35% – a significant increase.
- A fully integrated Digital Pass system, allowing Dance Umbrella to track which videos audiences engage with.
- Customisable forms embedded on the website, ensuring all new audience data is captured instantly.
- Smarter audience segmentation, allowing for more tailored and effective email campaigns.
- A streamlined box office system, managing guest lists, ticketing, and communications with ease.
- Personalised data dashboards, giving the team real-time insights into donations, ticket sales, and audience engagement.
- A more efficient workflow, with all data centralised in one system instead of scattered across multiple platforms.
Client feedback
“The new CRM has been hugely transformative for Dance Umbrella. In previous years we found it really difficult to see how our digital audiences interacted with us across different platforms, such as whether our newsletter subscribers were also donating to us.
The CRM has given us a way to not only understand that, but also to make the whole user experience more fluid, streamlined and friendly so that anyone feels able to donate and subscribe with little added commitment.
HdK really understood our needs with the CRM and advised us on which was the best fit. They couldn’t have been more thorough when it came to carrying out the integration of the CRM with our website, striving to find us the best possible solutions. Throughout the experience, their project management and communication were excellent.”
– Isabella Hubbard, Digital Content Manager