Modern-day digital marketing helps build the sports organization’s profile on multiple fronts. In the age of direct-to-consumer (D2C) technology, sports properties are presented with a wealth of options to connect with new and existing fans worldwide. A clear and direct social media strategy, for example, is key to galvanizing support for your organization globally.
While a collection of dedicated, multilingual social channels allows sports entities to discern content by market and reach different audience demographics, when it comes to monetizing engagement, your email strategy plays a vitally important role in establishing fan loyalty further along the fan journey, and specifically in turning your core fan base into paying customers.
Just as a social media marketing strategy helps attract new fans, a well-constructed email campaign presents your organization with a platform to market its products and services directly to the fan and based on their demographic.
However, your email strategy shouldn’t only be used to turn leads into ticket and merchandise sales but can also be positioned as a vehicle to help your marketing and communications team better understand what motivates the individual fan when they engage with your organization and the types of content that they are most likely to engage with.
Furthermore, email campaigns also offer your team a space to test marketing techniques. For example, a thoughtful email marketing campaign will help the organization analyze the different ways their fans engage with content, which can help the organization adapt and segment the fan journey, and therefore understand how iterations in their email strategy delivery impact fan engagement at a granular level.
BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL EMAIL CAMPAIGN
The successful conversion of fan engagement into revenue relies on building a customer relationship management (CRM) toolkit that supports all areas of the organization. As your fan base evolves, it’s important that every department understands what’s driving that change and in what ways they can maximize fan-engagement levels and help grow your core fan base.
Any effective marketing strategy begins with a deep understanding of your audience, including the reasons why they invest time and money in your products, services, and content. In order to convert fans into customers, deciding which forms of communications will be most effective to different types of fan groups is reliant on the insights you can glean from how each of your fans interact differently with the organization and via which communications channels.
According to Statista, for every dollar invested in email marketing, the sports and entertainment industry saw a return of US$36 in 2020, demonstrating the value of implementing carefully crafted email campaigns into your broader communications strategy. However, while email is a universal method of communication, simply setting up a mailing list isn’t going to maximize fan engagement alone. 
Whether you are targeting an improved click-through rate or trying to increase sales by driving fans to the organization’s ecommerce and paid platforms, there are several techniques you can apply to your email marketing strategy that have proven to convert fans into customers.
They include:
1. A data-informed segmentation of the organization’s CRM, including the creation of separate market segments based on the individual fan’s socio-demographic data and digital behavior.
CLICK HERE to find more insights on the importance of fan segmentation and how to turn fan data into fan engagement.
2. Identify warm IP addresses to establish which fans are engaged with your organization. If an IP address isn’t generating traffic, consider utilizing up to three email campaigns over a four-week period designed to re-engage with a fan who’s no longer viewing or clicking through to your content.
3. A single call to action (CTA) is known to increase click-rates by 371 percent and sales by 1,617 percent, according to Ellie Mirman, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Mulberry, formerly of HubSpot, Toast, and Crayon. For maximum results, ensure that you have clear KPIs for your email campaigns and you know what action you want your fans to take.
4. Carry out A/B testing to establish how different versions of your content and its delivery are received by your target audience. Consumers are more likely to react to authentic content, so changes to the subject line and the content layout will help grab their attention.
Meanwhile, testing different senders and variations in the time of day or day of the week email campaigns land in your fan’s inbox, based on their demographic, will also help your organization differentiate the types of content you send via email and when you should share them in the future.
WHY FAN SEGMENTATION MATTERS
There is increasing evidence that sports properties which deliver email campaigns to segmented groups of fans are able to convert more consumers into customers. While fan data is the oil with which a successful communications strategy operates smoothly, fan segmentation establishes the pillars for building a robust CRM capability.
Ahead of the 2019/20 season, by way of example, Everton exceeded their season-ticket renewal target by personalizing emails sent to the top-flight English football club’s existing season-ticket members.
As part of a longstanding partnership, the Premier League club adopted the Marketing Cloud digital marketing automation and analytics software, delivered by Salesforce, to make it easier for fans to “auto-renew” their season tickets – helping Everton deliver a 96.7 percent season-ticket retention rate from 31,330 season-ticket holders.
The estimated value of email conversions on the back of the email campaign surpassed £1.6 million – reaching almost a third more season-ticket purchases at the club compared to the previous season. As the club’s digital transformation continues to support its global audience growth, sometimes it is the simplest solutions that seed the most substantial return on investment (ROI).
N3XT STEPS
It is one thing to know when and how an email campaign is going to generate optimal engagement. However, it’s another entirely to measure its impact on the organization and to truly understand how your strategy is contributing to customer spend and revenue growth.
In order to achieve successful results, clear roles and responsibilities need to be established across the entire organization, including links between each employee’s primary function and those carried out by other members of the team.
A team must include members dedicated to: (a) setting campaign strategies; (b) setting objectives; (c) the segmentation of audience data; (d) the creation of content; (e) the creation of campaigns on the CRM tool; (f) the execution of campaigns and reporting; (g) the monitoring of campaign data and insights gleaned from them.
One of our main objectives at N3XT Sports is to help increase the monetization and conversion of our clients’ digital products. This includes all stages of the digital transformation. For example, while working with Club Nacional de Football on its digital transformation journey, we proposed setting up monthly email marketing campaigns using Microsoft Dynamics 365, with the aim to increase the Uruguayan Primera División club’s over-the-top (OTT) subscriber base by 10 percent during a period of six months.
This involves following a few simple rules that we recommend to organizations hoping to maximize their email strategy. Firstly, we insist that email campaigns should be ongoing and not only activated when your organization has a new product or service to promote. This will not only keep your subscribers engaged for longer, but also help keep your fan database updated.
In a similar vein, it’s imperative that you don’t wear out your audience. While momentum is key to a successful campaign, content needs to be relevant and valuable to the fan base, which is why segmentation is important to sustaining engagement among fans.
As your strategy adapts, maintaining audience engagement during the off-season will help establish loyalty among your core fans when live competition finally returns, making it easier for you to market tickets, merchandise, and other premium products to your fan base during an upcoming product launch.
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.