Mailchimp Helps Serpentine Galleries Gather 300% More Visitor Surveys

London wakes up to a new building inside Hyde Park every summer, and by the fall, it vanishes. 

This temporary structure, along with exhibitions, education, and live events make up Serpentine Galleries’ collection of free contemporary art in the UK. The organization has been serving the arts community since 1970, when it was opened inside an old tea house on the lawn near Kensington Palace

Since then, they’ve welcomed more than 1 million visitors annually to their rotating exhibitions, including the annual Pavilion display, in which an internationally renowned architect is invited to create their first built structure in England. 

Serpentine needed an email service provider that could help them better serve and communicate with this large number of visitors while developing a closer-knit art community that’s eager to engage.

“We’ve been doing a lot more around customer data and audience experience,” said Freya Doggett, Marketing Manager at Serpentine, “and really trying to make everything as accessible and welcoming to as many people as possible.”

With Intuit Mailchimp at their side, the small marketing team at Serpentine is able to segment a diverse audience, streamline their operations, and fulfill their mission of making art accessible to all.

The challenge: Critical communications that drive customer response

Serpentine is a charity and takes pride in providing free art, but from a marketing perspective, it makes segmenting “tricky,” Freya said, as data collection is a taller task than a gallery that requires online ticket purchasing. 

A portion of Serpentine’s ’ funding comes from Arts Council England, which requires organizations it funds to gather diversity data from visitors to ensure the gallery is representative of Londoners. Serpentine needed a way to get creative and motivate customers to fill out surveys about their experiences.

This customer data is critical for their operation.

The tools: Automations, integrations, and audience segmentation

While walk-ups are always welcome at Serpentine, visitors are encouraged to reserve their spot at exhibitions by booking a free ticket online. Those who do provide valuable data for Serpentine. 

Serpentine uses the Mailchimp API integration that connects with their ticketing platform managed by Salesforce. This communication between the two systems eliminates the need of manual digging to connect the dots of their datasets, saving 15 staff hours per month and providing a user-friendly view of what would otherwise be a complicated process.

Serpentine used to send generic outreach emails, but then set up an automation that powers their outreach. It allows them to easily follow up with those visitors they’ve collected email addresses from,  send reminders about their bookings 24 hours ahead of the event, and personalize the survey after their visit. 

Freya is able to manage these tasks using Mailchimp’s user-friendly analytics dashboard, where she focuses heavily on monitoring open rates and click rates, optimizing Serpentine’s ' email send times to maximize each.

The results: A 300% increase in survey responses

 Serpentine was receiving an average of 230 completed surveys per exhibit prior to using Mailchimp. The special touch added by personalizing Mailchimp’s automations for post-event communications has helped them now receive an average of nearly 700 survey completions.

They’ve also garnered an email click-through rate more than 6 times better than the standard for Mailchimp nonprofit customers.

“That’s been very transformational in terms of data collection for us,” Freya said. “We set up an automation so that when people book a ticket, they get a reminder about coming, but they also get a follow-up survey. That dramatically increased how many visitor surveys we got, which is really great.”

Freya said they’re also planning on integrating Shopify with Mailchimp to add more automations for users who abandon their shopping carts.

While the success of collecting surveys has helped Serpentine meet a funding requirement, it’s also allowed them to better understand their visitors and shape future engagements. With clearer insights and fewer manual tasks, Freya’s team can spend more time making London’s most accessible contemporary gallery even more welcoming.

“Mailchimp is intuitive as a platform, so for someone who’s new to these kinds of email segmentation tools or building newsletters online, it’s a very user-friendly way to do it,” Freya said. “It makes our lives easier.”

Image Credits: Serpentine Pavilion 2025 A Capsule in Time, designed by Marina Tabassum, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). © Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). Photo: Iwan Baan. Courtesy Serpentine.