Digital communications technologies give organizations scope to engage global audiences beyond the matchday experience – yet, without adequate data-capturing methods that help executives better understand who their fans are, it can prove very difficult for sporting entities to nurture – and monetize – the customer relationship irrespective of their audience reach.
As we’re all too aware, sports mean different things to different people. Nevertheless, the one common trait all fans share is the fact they engage in the sports that appeal to them. It doesn’t matter whether they are life-long fanatics or a casual spectator, it’s important to remember that fans are united by their willingness to invest time and money into the sports they enjoy.
What defines the fan is a different story. How and why a fan chooses to engage with a certain sport, team, or league is unique to the individual. The search to understand fan behavior has been accelerated by the industry’s digital transformation and is shaping the digital communications tools with which sports organizations engage fans and collect fan data.
At its heart, data analytics is changing the way sports entities market themselves to individual fans. However, in order to do this effectively, they must first understand how to segment fan data, to help personalize fan engagement.
DYNAMIC VS STATIC SEGMENTATION
Market segmentation, and in particular fan segmentation, is becoming the foundation for the sport organization’s communications approach and is helping to broaden and optimize its ever-evolving marketing efforts.
While segmentation isn’t new to the industry, the detail and rate with which digital media is able to process fan data has made it easier for organizations to adapt how, when, and to whom they send communications content.
By definition, a market segment is a collection of contacts that you are able to bring along your customer journey. Although a communications strategy might include contacts you already possess, more often than not, you’ll choose who you want to target based on fan segmentation, which can be done one of two ways.
Dynamic segments are developed using logical expressions such as “all contacts from Barcelona” or “all contacts subscribed to an over-the-top (OTT) service”. It is worth noting that membership in dynamic segments changes constantly to reflect new and removed contacts and updated contact information.
Static segments establish a static list of contacts selected on a “per-contact” basis rather than field values. For example, marketers and salespeople might create and populate a static list based on private knowledge or offline interactions with customers.
By utilizing dynamic segments, for example, the organization makes its marketing strategy more flexible to the changing consumer landscape and is able to maximize engagement by tailoring its communications approach based on the consumer’s demographic, or in the case of a client, the company’s firmographic.
By comparison, a consumer demographic applies to fields such as gender, age, profession, and income. Business firmographics consists of fields such as the industry sector your client belongs to, as well as the company’s location, size, internal structure, and performance.
TURNING FAN SEGMENTATION INTO FAN ENGAGEMENT
According to research carried out by Deloitte, fanatic fans are more likely to spend more money than casual fans on tickets (50/23 percent), merchandise (50/17 percent), and league-related TV subscriptions (20/4 percent). At first glance, what this tells us is that sports entities see a greater return on investment (ROI) among their most loyal supporter groups.
However, this also identifies an opportunity to take different approaches to engage less-committed fans, depending on the customer’s interests. With the help of big-data trends and fan segmentation, dividing fans into distinctive groups based on their behavior and demographic is proving essential for turning casual fans into fanatics.
In response, sports organizations which invest in fan-data management are coming up with innovative ways to increase fan spend through dynamic segmentation. For example:
1. In the US, the Detroit Pistons have been known to send self-updating emails to ticket holders on gameday. While email has traditionally been a static form of communications, the National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise invested in emails featuring real-time data during home games. By introducing a dynamic, second-screen experience to in-stadia fans, the Pistons generated an 18 percent increase in email click-through rates, a 45 per cent increase in engagement time, and a 49 percent increase in mobile engagement.
2. Building a communications strategy based on fan segmentation is a useful method for organizations to re-engage with fans whose engagement might have fallen away. For example, West Ham United developed a dynamic email strategy that identified more than 116,000 long-term “unengaged” subscribers via their “shop” mailing list. As a result, the Premier League football club attracted 11,577 subscribers to the campaign, helping increase their ROI and establish learnings for maintaining engagement levels among less-engaged fans for future communications.
3. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) media is connecting sports teams and leagues to millions of fans worldwide. While ticket sales used to be the primary point of contact with fans, nowadays social media and owned digital assets, including mobile apps and over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms, enable sports entities to engage subscribers in domestic and overseas markets on a much larger scale. In order to optimize their global reach, the Indiana Pacers partnered with Salesforce to engage new fans in the build-up to NBA games, boosting engagement by 20 percent through personalized communications based on user email behavior.
4. Dynamic segmentation is also used to determine how sporting entities should communicate subscriptions, promotions, and offers with their fans. For example, English professional football club Norwich City increased revenues by selling their kits via a tailored email marketing strategy. As a result, the club was able to quantify fan engagement as part of the overall campaign, which achieved a 46.76 percent open rate, and a 38.97 per cent click-through rate to the club’s online retail store. Overall, the email achieved a healthy 19 percent click rate and saw Norwich City set a record-breaking day for kit sales.
What’s N3XT?
The industry’s digital transformation is altering how fans engage with sports; most notably the way new OTT viewing experiences are enhancing the fan-engagement strategies being developed among sports organizations and media companies.
As investment in digital assets becomes more commonplace throughout the sports and entertainment sectors, owned streaming media is helping teams, leagues, and federations to establish a digital fan funnel that engages supporters at every stage of the fan journey.
In order to do this effectively, N3XT Sports is helping sports organizations segment their OTT subscriber database (see diagram below). This involves segmenting subscribers based on the frequency they consume streamed content and establishing strategies for engaging users at five stages of the fan journey.
Streaming media holds several advantages for sports entities, including its ability to establish new connections by marketing freemium content to subscribers and non-subscribers.
In return, investment in OTT offers an organization the opportunity to take ownership of its fan data at the point of subscription, and the ability thereafter to introduce subscribers to cross-platform promotions based on their demographic and behavior.
This could include the decision of when and how to offer the consumer access to paid content; whether they are likely to buy tickets and merchandise on the back of your content offering; and which fans are most likely to engage in stakeholder and partner brand activations.
To find out more about what N3XT Sports can offer your organization, please fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.