Insights from Miguel Doménech
In the age of digital, sports properties recognize the value for building a dedicated customer database into their operations. There’s an opportunity to customize and monetize the fan experience by taking ownership of customer data. However, while this is the north star for rights holders, digital transformation remains a minefield for some who don’t know where to begin.
One of the simplest steps to digital transformation is the integration of a customer relationship management (CRM) resource into the entity’s existing infrastructure. With a centralized platform for collecting and measuring fan data, sports properties better understand how their digital assets perform, how to segment user experiences, and how to drive online revenue.
According to Grand View Research, 91 percent of companies which employ 10 or more people adopt a CRM system. A survey carried out by SoftClouds also shows that four in five (82 percent) of organizations use CRM tools for sales reporting and automating processes. Furthermore, Software Advice found that 94 percent of organizations request CRM features designed to improve their contact management capability, while 88 percent want to track user interactions.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the value of CRM technology will reach US$145.79 billion in 2029 – up from US$63.91 billion in 2022 – while Capterra research finds that 65 percent of companies which adopt a CRM do so in their first five years.
Albeit still a new concept for some federations, leagues, and clubs, there are signs that the sports industry is following suit and is placing more emphasis on their digital capabilities. This includes how software is used to engage fans, but also their ability to capture and analyze data from fan behaviors, so as to optimize customer spending.
Nevertheless, aside from sport’s elite properties, Miguel Doménech, N3XT Sports Digital Marketing Manager, says that, while the wider sports industry is still figuring out the next best step to CRM adoption, there are some federations that haven’t started capturing fan data yet and could benefit from basic techniques for managing and segmenting customer relationships.
This not only means that sports properties have the opportunity to build their own relationship with fans, but will be able to leverage fan intelligence when it comes to negotiating sponsorship and licensing agreements, putting them at an advantage to their competitors who don't yet adopt data-rich solutions.
“The amount of data you are able to collect depends on the interaction you have with the fan, and the more insights you glean from those interactions gives you more opportunity to personalize what they want,” Doménech explains. “Sponsors want to have a direct-to-consumer (D2C) relationship with the fans and adapt their offering better to them. This means that, the more a rights holder understands its fans, the more attractive they become to media and brand partners, by segmenting how they deliver sponsored content to subscribers.
“Many federations don’t have any CRM capability yet,” Doménech says. “Sports properties are starting to gather more information, but there are still many that don’t have any data about their fans. Nor do they know how fans interact with their website, who’s watching their sports online, or even in the venue.”
WHAT ARE THE FIRST STEPS TO IMPLEMENTING A CRM SOLUTION?
While some organizations are starting from scratch and have yet to collect their customers’ data, even via non-digital means, some require a massive overhaul in order to transfer tens of thousands of paper-based interactions into a digital format.
Deciding how to convert all of this data and which CRM solution to adopt will ultimately depend on the state of the property’s digital infrastructure and needs. When you start to use a new tool, you need to understand how to transfer and store this information.
Therefore, understanding how data is sourced and then flows into the business – whether that’s via the website, mobile app, or an over-the-top (OTT) streaming channel, among others – plays an important role in deciding the type of data the organization should be capturing and how it wants its data to be presented.
Only once all of this information is collated, by engaging with the workforce and understanding their data needs, the organization can then develop a scorecard for prioritizing their demands and assign the CRM solution that meets the company’s operational objectives in the best way possible.
“Usually, third-party CRM platforms have a team to help you with the integration,” Doménech explains. “After that, you need to do the IP warming, send out test emails and set up a whole strategy. After this process of collecting the data, one possibility a CRM offers to every company is to implement new digital solutions, customer personalizations, or assets for a campaign.
“This presents an opportunity to nurture the customer relationship and glean new learnings from campaigns. The more data you collect depends on the interaction you have with the fan, whereas it is the insights you glean from those interactions that will present you with more opportunity to personalize content to what they want and diversify your offering.”
HOW DO CRM PLATFORMS HELP GENERATE BUSINESS VALUE?
For sports organizations seeking to augment the customer relationship, a robust and flexible CRM provides several benefits for optimizing how and when the rights holder chooses to interact with individual fans or segmented customer groups.
Further down the line, the sports property’s ability to build campaigns based on user preferences helps an organization and its respective departments to:
- Build advocacy and loyalty among customers
- Test new marketing strategies for partner stakeholders
- Spend more time on innovative content
- Explore and expand its digital portfolio
“With greater agility around communications, the workforce has more room to collaborate and manage customer relationships. This helps to establish new and improved user experiences that generate advocacy for your brand, and strengthen customer and sponsorship revenue streams among stakeholders, brand sponsors, and media partners.”
Miguel Doménech, Digital Marketing Manager, N3XT Sports
By way of an example, the Indiana Pacers, the National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise, leveraged its partnership with Salesforce to create personal, cross-channel marketing moments for fans in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the league’s return to action behind closed doors. In doing so, the organization increased its customer response rates by 19 percent, while the use of artificial intelligence (AI) also supported its personalization efforts.
Meanwhile, the Pacers also utilized Marketing Cloud Personalization, a platform powered by Salesforce, which allows for the creation of homepage banners that remind fans when they have left an item in their online shopping cart. The franchise adopted its partnership with Ticketmaster within the “abandoned cart” campaign – and, in doing so, increased its online ticket sales by 147 percent in time for when fans returned to NBA games in 2021.
CRM vs CDP SOLUTIONS: HOW ARE SPORTS PROPERTIES USING THEM?
When it comes to generating value, fan intelligence is the vital ingredient for sports properties. However, while the implementation of a third-party CRM solution is a popular choice for organizations setting out on their digital transformation journey, some major rights holders are opting for a customer data platform (CDP) to meet their customer communications needs.
While both CRM and CDP solutions hold unique and valuable benefits to sports organizations, the CRM is used to organize and manage customer-facing interactions, whereas the CDP is equipped to collect data on customer behavior directly from the property’s products and services.
For instance, a CRM presents the centralized database with a customer’s name, location, and contact information, as well as a complete rundown of their interactions with the front office, including, for example, ticket and merchandise purchases via the property’s digital platforms. A CDP goes a step further by informing the organization exactly how a customer engages with its platforms, including via the social media campaigns that drive engagement.
As a result, by adopting a CDP, elite sports teams and federations are adding a layer of sophistication to their fan intelligence capability and is proving attractive to prospective brand partners. For example, speaking to SportBusiness, Liverpool FC’s Senior Vice President of Digital, Drew Crisp, explained how the use of a CDP helps to “curate” the journey for each of the Premier League club’s 40 million fans – “for the good of the fan, the good of the club, and the good of our partners in equal order”.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Sports properties are tailor made for building customer relationships. However, while fan engagement is high on the list of priorities for professional sports organizations, the level of digital maturity and literacy across the industry remains inconsistent and is often due to a lack of a centralized space for collecting and analyzing customer data.
In order to understand which CRM (or indeed CDP) best suits your organization’s needs, the executive board must first assess its capacity for digitalization. By understanding how data flows through your organization, and via which data sources and media, only then can you design a roadmap to transformation and find the software solutions that will drive value for the business.
N3XT Sports has brought to market a dedicated Digital Assessment Tool (DAT) which examines the digital readiness of sports organizations. By undertaking a free assessment online, this tool acts as the next step to a sports property’s digital transformation, helping executives to understand how customer data is utilized inside their organization and where improvements can be made to the management of customer relationships.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement digital strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To learn more about how digital transformation can support the growth of your sports organization, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of sports and our clients.