Selling Seats and Engaging Fans: Lessons for all of us!

The National Sports Forum kicks off this week in Louisville, KY. Sports marketers will gather to discuss best practices in fan engagement. This year is going to give sports marketers a lot to ponder with the need to correctly integrate social media into their brands.

I would like to offer this classic – on how to build up your fan base through some very fundamental principals. These principals apply to marketers across industry.

Once upon a time there was an email marketing manager for a regional hockey team; the team was a start-up in an area not very familiar with the sport so ticket sales were low. They managed to sell 4K of their 12K seats in season tickets, another 2K would typically sell on their own and their sales team was able to move an additional 1K through corporate sales/ event nights. This left them with 5K empty seats.

Disappointed with the empty seats, the owners tasked him with boosting ticket sales – the email manager tried everything, promoting to his email list (approximately 7K names), working closely with the advertising group for television, print and bill board ads. He tried PR initiatives and even dressed up in a sandwich board to hand out tickets. Nothing really worked.

So one afternoon, while stuffing envelopes, he decided to promote a contest. He put out an email to his entire list (7K names). Asking recipients to print out the email and bring to the game, those who did would receive a puck to chuck into the goal in between periods. From his list only 700 opened, 200 brought in the email as instructed and had their chance to chuck-a-puck. There were five winners, who received merchandise, free tickets or photos with the players.

After the contest, the announcer told everyone where to sign-up for the next game and their chance to play. By the next week he had 1,400 new subscribers, the email went out and had 3,600 opens – 2K people printed to play at the next game (he still had five winners). By the third game he had even more subscribers, an open rate above 60% and a huge conversion. Response was so overwhelming that he pressed further by giving the non-winners an opportunity to fill out an online preference survey with the chance to win box seats for the next game.

So the moral of this story is that a little interaction goes a long way. This one contest helped the manager 1) grow his list; 2) get more “cheeks in seats” and 3) actually CONNECT with customers (he collected personalized information that could be leveraged for future campaigns.)

You could do the same, think of ways to solicit interaction, it could revitalize your email campaigns, reduce direct mail cost and give you access to the personal information you need to attract advertisers… you may even unload some of those expensive “Jack Nicholson” seats.

Today, this marketer has gone totally ‘digital.’ He advertises his games on social media channels, puts out targeted offers to people via email with dynamic content, engages his fans via SMS at the game, and even Tweets before, after, and during the game.

He has learned to integrate digital media into his channels, he has also learned not to make the mistake of banking on a celebrity to promote his brand (Shaq jumpted the Phoenix Suns, and Lebron James quit the Cleveland Cavaliers). Social media is about fan engagement, and done correctly – your fans are your assets.

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