Sejong Center: Modernizing audience engagement in the cradle of Korean arts culture with SAP Emarsys
A living history of national performing arts
Since 1978, Sejong Center has been a pillar of Korean arts culture, putting on a wide variety of performances that are popular with audiences. The SAP Emarsys solution transforms how the organization connects people with the performances they’ll love, starting with personalized digital promotions.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Media, sports, and entertainment | Seoul, South Korea | 350 employees |
audience members annually.
customer touch points each week.
improvement to the marketing performance index.
Team Leader, Performance DX, Sejong Center
Ushering in an era of connected customer engagement
Sejong Center is a historic theater in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The center has evolved into a modern complex with multiple stages for performances spanning theater, orchestra, dance, and more.
In 2023, the theater established the Performance DX Team, designed to innovate the audience experience. The team’s leaders knew this was no small undertaking.
“A longtime lover of classical music is very different from a first-time visitor attending an orchestral performance of the soundtrack from their favorite movie,” explains Kim Yeo-hang, team leader for Performance DX at Sejong Center. “We needed a way to connect with very different audiences and provide personalized promotions of the performances they would want to attend.”
Sejong Center knows it needs to shift to meet changing customer demands. Previously, it opened ticket sales two months before each performance and focused on promotional marketing only for a short time. This meant that many people didn’t know about performances they would love to have seen. To boost attendance, the organization started announcing and opening ticket sales for its entire season at the beginning of the year.
To support its Performance DX Team, Sejong Center knew that it needed another pivot—this time, a customer engagement solution as agile as its dancers and as outstanding as its musical performances.
Team Leader, Performance DX, Sejong Center
Shining a spotlight on each audience’s preferences
Sejong Center chose the SAP Emarsys solution to enable dynamic personalization across more than 10 channels within a single automated campaign. This includes creating tailored omnichannel experiences that carry across social media such as KakaoTalk and even includes Sejong Center’s website, where it sells tickets and memberships.
“I was inspired by SAP Emarsys after visiting a New York museum that used the solution,” says Kim Yeo-hang. “It’s another institution that exhibits items with limited sales periods, and I was happy to receive newsletters and e-mails based on the content I was interested in. It made an incredible case for SAP Emarsys and bringing it to Sejong Center.”
Using SAP Emarsys, Sejong Center is collecting contact data including e-mail as well as behavioral data that provides insight into what areas of the organization’s site are visited and whether logged-in users complete booking. The solution also tracks some noncustomer data related to products and purchases.
SAP Emarsys is the foundation of Sejong Center’s e-mail marketing. It’s the first step of a customer lifecycle that includes discovering a performance, buying a ticket, and revisiting the performance experience. The solution encourages customers to provide feedback through a survey. This and other experience data enable Sejong Center to create more-personalized recommendations for audiences.
Team Leader, Performance DX, Sejong Center
Unlocking new insights that sell out performances
In addition to improving experiences for customers, SAP Emarsys is streamlining work for marketers. The solution is intuitive and reduces the time to create effective customer engagement. This is transformative for Sejong Center’s marketers, who are dedicated to connecting with people who have come to expect the best from their favorite arts hub.
“Audiences are very discerning,” says Kim Yeo-hang. “If we’re offering them something that’s not to their taste, they won’t respond, no matter how many times we try. That’s why SAP Emarsys is very effective in working on detailed segments.”
The solution empowered Sejong Center to take an organic approach to engagement. The center can introduce a new program by the Seoul Metropolitan Ballet to audiences who enjoy dance, or promote a package that includes a performance by the KBS Symphony Orchestra to people who love classical music. He adds that the data provided by the solution has revealed surprising insights into audience tastes.
“After analyzing the data from SAP Emarsys, we could see that audiences who like theater are more interested in traditional Korean music performances than musicals,” he says. “We can use these insights to take advantage of promotions that we wouldn’t have considered previously.”
Introducing savings for loyal fans
The strong technology foundation that Sejong Center has set with SAP Emarsys empowers the organization to innovate for audiences well into the future.
For example, engagements on the web, social media, and e-mail are encouraging more visitors to sign up for memberships. Sejong Center currently has 210,000 registered members. In addition, Sejong Center’s subscription service—among the first of its kind in the industry—offers a 40% discount to performances for the entire year.
This year, the organization will use SAP Emarsys to debut a service that sends targeted coupons for recommended performances in conjunction with the popular Korean social media platform KakaoTalk. Registered members and subscribers will be among the first to take advantage of these special offers, supporting Sejong Center’s mission of bringing more cultural experiences to more people.