#109 How top flight clubs used the 4 fundmentals to sell more tickets

Sports CDP Crash Course - Data Talks

Two weeks ago, we briefly touched on the 4 Fundamentals - a groundbreaking process innovation and transformative approach that empowers sports organizations of all sizes, across seasons and regions, to harness the power of their data. This process allows sports organisations to integrate all supporter data into one place, to increase sustained revenue streams while placing fans and supporters at the heart and centre of every initiative. In this episode we weill discuss the 4 fundamentals in greater detail and discuss how you can use them to take your organisation to the next level when it comes to ticket sales.

1. Grow your supporter base, continuously - Your supporter contact database is the foundation of all campaigns and any other interaction a sports organisation might have with its supporters, that is why this is the first fundamental.
2. Collect supporter data with contact information and merge it with your other data - By collecting your supporter data with contact information and merging it with your other data, you create a holistic view of each fan and gain a deeper understanding of each fan’s specific characteristics, preferences, and behaviors
3. Find out which supporter segments you should target with your campaigns - finding the right audience to target with your campaigns allows your sports organization to create more effective, efficient, and personalized marketing campaigns. This helps build stronger connections with the supporters, driving engagement, and ultimately achieving the organization's goals.
4. Send relevant offers to those segments in a way that your supporters will appreciate - do your supporters want to receive emails or SMS, do they want to receive season tickets offers or single tickets or even family tickets? It’s not enough to only collect and merge support data so that you can understand your supporters. It is not enough to find out which supporter segments you should target with your campaigns either. You have to make sure that after all doing all of that and the first fundamental, which is to grow your supporter base continuously, you send out relevant offers to your supporters in a way that they can really appreciate.

By using the 4 fundamentals of selling tickets, many sports organizations across the world have managed to take their ticket sales to the next level. For example:

1. A club playing in the Swedish Hockey League, the highest hockey league in the country, saw a 12% increase in ticket sales, amounting in 2.5 million swedish crowns revenue in the space of only two weeks, after using the 4 fundamentals.
2. They started by creating different campaigns for different home games for that month
3. They sent 20 email and 4 sms campaigns to various segments (differing from 330 to 10220 recipients)
4. All of these campaigns and sendouts were done by only one person, proving how applicable and robust the 4 fundamentals are for sports organisations of all sizes
5. Another club, this time a football club playing in the highest division in Greece, manage to more than double their average ticketing order revenue from €19 to €42 in less than a year.
6. They created specific segmentation on returning supporters and ran a campaign for the upcoming match
7. The campaign ran approx. 5-7 days before kick-off, during that time, the club sent out reminders to everybody who had opened the campaign but not made a purchase
8. Supporters were given the opportunity to upgrade their seats and the rest as they say is history
9. A professional rugby union club in the UK sent an email campaign to a target group of 250 people that generated a revenue of £5,000.
10. They achieved such remarkable results after merging membership and ticketing data for their last 4 games
11. They then identified segments that should be targeted based on tickets the club wanted to sell.
12. Finally, they sent those supporter segments two different versions of email copy, tailored to their needs and preferences leading to the £5 000 revenue generated from only this one campaign

The 4 fundamentals are not only effective for selling tickets but rather can be used to sell more merchandise and negotiate sponsorship agreements of higher value. So, join me next week as we explore other cases for which the 4 fundamentals can be harnessed to achieved remarkable results.