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Michael Cassel Group: Building a CRM for the Complexity of Global Theatre

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Michael Cassel Group: Building a CRM for the Complexity of Global Theatre
1:08
Over

1 million +

Contacts migrated
Connection to

Snowflake

Data Warehouse
Custom integrations

2x

for Outlook and Jotform

Michael Cassel Group is one of the world’s leading theatrical production companies, responsible for delivering globally acclaimed productions including Hamilton, MJ the Musical, Titanique, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. With productions spanning continents and involving thousands of stakeholders across cast, crew, agents, investors, and audiences, the organisation operates at a scale where operational precision and strong systems are essential.

As their productions and international footprint expanded, Michael Cassel Group recognised that their existing Salesforce environment could no longer support the complexity of their workflows. The system relied heavily on workarounds and manual processes, limiting flexibility and reporting while making it difficult to manage the layered relationships inherent to the theatre industry. Seeking a platform that could better reflect the realities of their business, they partnered with Engaging.io to migrate to HubSpot and design a CRM architecture capable of supporting production operations, ticketing intelligence, publicity workflows, and large-scale audience engagement.

The problem
When CRM complexity meets the reality of global theatre

Michael Cassel Group operates in an environment where productions span multiple cities, teams collaborate across departments, and relationships between stakeholders are far more nuanced than a typical CRM can support.

Their Salesforce environment had evolved over time with layers of customisations and manual workarounds, which ultimately created friction across marketing, publicity, production, and executive teams. As the business continued to grow internationally, it became clear that the existing system was limiting efficiency, visibility, and scalability.

Problem 1:

A contact model unlike any other industry: In theatre, contacts rarely fit into a single category. Individuals may simultaneously be agents, guardians, cast members, creatives, investors, or VIP guests, often representing or being associated with multiple people and productions. Salesforce struggled to model these multidimensional relationships cleanly, forcing the team to rely on complex workarounds that made contact records difficult to manage and report on.

Problem 2:

Disconnected ticketing and event data: Michael Cassel Group operates across multiple venues, cities, and ticketing platforms, with audience and sales data distributed across several systems. Opening night invitations, guest lists, and RSVP management required careful coordination, yet the existing system provided limited automation or real-time tracking for these events.

Problem 3:

Preserving critical historical production data: Years of personnel history — including cast members, crew roles, agent relationships, and past productions — represent valuable institutional knowledge for future productions and rehiring decisions. Any new CRM needed to retain this historical context while making it easier to query, report on, and incorporate into ongoing operations.

Problem 4:

Fragmented data and limited reporting visibility: Ticketing platforms, marketing activity, Opening Night data, and operational records all lived across separate systems. While Snowflake already served as a data warehouse for some of this information, the existing CRM struggled to leverage it effectively for segmentation, campaign execution, or reporting. Teams lacked a single operational view of audiences, production stakeholders, and campaign performance, making it difficult to measure marketing impact, RSVP outcomes, or ticketing engagement across productions.

The solution
A custom-built CRM for the unique world of theatre
Michael Cassel Group required far more than a standard CRM configuration. Their operations involve complex relationships between productions, talent, agents, investors, media, and audiences, all interacting across multiple cities and seasons.

Engaging.io approached the implementation with a focus on deep customisation within HubSpot, designing a flexible architecture that could accurately represent theatre operations while enabling automation, reporting, and scalable campaign management.
The Strategic Plan
The Implementation
The process
  1. Migrated Michael Cassel Group’s Salesforce environment into HubSpot while preserving complex data relationships across contacts, campaign members, opportunities, productions, and roles.
  2. Built a detailed migration map to retain legacy Salesforce fields and historical associations critical to casting and production records.
  3. Ensured historical engagement, personnel, and production data remained intact and accessible for future reporting and rehiring decisions.
Salesforce to HubSpot migration with full historical continuity
The process
  1. Migrated Michael Cassel Group’s Salesforce environment into HubSpot while preserving complex data relationships across contacts, campaign members, opportunities, productions, and roles.
  2. Built a detailed migration map to retain legacy Salesforce fields and historical associations critical to casting and production records.
  3. Ensured historical engagement, personnel, and production data remained intact and accessible for future reporting and rehiring decisions.
Custom CRM architecture for theatre operations
The process
  1. Designed a flexible CRM structure using custom objects including Productions, Shows, Roles, and Guests to mirror the operational structure of theatre productions.
  2. Created flexible contact types to properly represent the different stakeholders involved in productions.
  3. Used HubSpot object associations and custom properties to map complex relationships between productions, people, companies, and talent representation.
Intelligent RSVP and event invitation workflows
The process
  1. Built personalised RSVP workflows for opening nights and industry events using custom forms and embedded invitation links.
  2. Implemented validation logic to enforce guest ticket limits and manage invitation allocations across VIPs, media, and industry guests.
  3. Developed dynamic email templates tailored to guest types while ensuring RSVP responses automatically updated reporting and campaign properties.
Snowflake data integration for audience intelligence
The process
  1. Implemented a one-way Snowflake to HubSpot data sync to bring ticketing and audience intelligence into the CRM without overloading operational records.
  2. Enabled advanced segmentation using ticketing behaviour, audience data, and production engagement signals.
  3. Allowed marketing teams to activate enriched audience data directly within HubSpot campaigns and reporting.
Cast and crew onboarding integration
The process
  1. Reconnected and optimised Jotform onboarding workflows used to collect cast and crew personnel data.
  2. Built structured mapping between Jotform submissions and HubSpot records to ensure accurate creation of contacts and role associations.
  3. Enabled production teams to manage talent and personnel data in a structured, reportable CRM environment.
Cross-team reporting and operational dashboards
The process
  1. Built tailored dashboards for marketing, publicity, ticketing, production, and executive teams.
  2. Delivered reporting on RSVP responses, campaign performance, and event attendance across productions.
  3. Replaced legacy Salesforce reporting tools with real-time HubSpot dashboards designed for operational visibility.
The Implementation


Delivering the solution required careful coordination across multiple teams, systems, and data sources. Engaging.io approached the implementation in stages, beginning with a detailed discovery and data architecture phase to fully understand Michael Cassel Group’s operational structure. This ensured the HubSpot environment would accurately reflect the relationships between productions, talent, agents, investors, and audiences before any migration or automation work began.

The migration from Salesforce to HubSpot was executed with a strong focus on preserving historical context and complex associations. Contacts, campaign members, opportunities, productions, and role data were mapped and migrated using a structured data migration plan that retained legacy relationships while aligning them with HubSpot’s architecture. At the same time, the team designed custom objects and contact structures to model productions, roles, and stakeholder relationships in a way that mirrored real-world theatre operations.

Parallel to the CRM build, integrations were implemented to ensure the broader technology ecosystem continued to function seamlessly. Snowflake remained the central data warehouse for ticketing and audience intelligence, with a one-way sync established to enrich HubSpot records without introducing operational risk. Existing Jotform processes used for cast and crew onboarding were also rebuilt and mapped into HubSpot, allowing production teams to continue collecting personnel data while ensuring it flowed into a structured CRM environment.

Once the core architecture and integrations were in place, Engaging.io focused on operational readiness. RSVP workflows for opening night events were designed and tested, dashboards were configured for multiple teams, and reporting structures were validated against real production scenarios. The implementation concluded with structured training sessions across marketing, publicity, production, and executive teams, ensuring the platform was adopted confidently from day one and supported the organisation’s ongoing production schedule.

The Impact and Results
A CRM built for the scale and precision of world-class theatre

 

The implementation delivered an immediate operational uplift for Michael Cassel Group. By replacing a heavily customised Salesforce environment with a purpose-built HubSpot architecture, teams across marketing, publicity, production, and executive leadership gained a unified platform designed around the realities of live theatre. Opening night invitation management, RSVP tracking, and campaign coordination, which were previously dependent on manual processes and fragmented systems, are now streamlined through automated workflows and centralised reporting.

Beyond these immediate efficiencies, the new CRM architecture provides Michael Cassel Group with a far more accurate and flexible representation of their business. Complex relationships between cast members, agents, guardians, investors, and VIP guests are now structured and reportable within HubSpot, allowing teams to understand and manage their networks with far greater clarity. Historical production data and personnel records - critical for future casting and rehiring decisions, have been preserved and organised into a system that can now be queried, segmented, and activated across marketing and operational workflows.

Perhaps most importantly, the platform establishes a scalable foundation for the company’s continued international growth. With ticketing intelligence flowing through Snowflake and enriched within HubSpot, marketing teams can execute more targeted campaigns while leadership gains clearer visibility into audience engagement and event performance. The result is a CRM ecosystem that reflects the sophistication of Michael Cassel Group’s productions themselves - powerful, flexible, and ready to support the next generation of world-class theatre.

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