Sports teams thrive off understanding their fans. You can try to guess what fans want or go off demographic clues (e.g., you have lots of millenials in your audience, so you should anticipate short attention spans). Or you go to the best data source around: the fans themselves.
Surveys have been a mainstay of marketing and advertising for years now. You’re probably running some of your own surveys already, but are they fully integrated into your marketing strategy? Like contest entries, ticket purchases and social, surveys are a source of data that can give you greater insight into your fans. With a strategic approach to the questions you ask—and solid data analysis—surveys can directly impact revenue for you and your partners.
Contact Opt-Ins/Opt-Outs
Probably the most straightforward question you can and should be asking your audience is “Do you want us to reach out?” When someone does a personality quiz or enters a contest, instead of subscribing them into every one of your newsletters, ask them if they would like to receive one that’s relevant to what they’re filling out. Teams like the Indiana Pacers and the Dallas Stars also use contests as an opportunity to ask a basic qualifier for high-value tickets: “Do you want us to reach out about season ticket packages?”
How to impact revenue: Again, straightforward. Reach out to people who want to be contacted, and don’t to people who don’t. Teams like the Stars and Pacers use data management solutions like Umbel to then create targeted lists for premium sales outreach.
Leveraging Feedback Surveys
We encounter feedback surveys every day: as you’re leaving a website, a popup asks you to rate your experience; when you open an app, another popup asks you to leave a review; when you’re leaving a bathroom, you can even push a button to rate your satisfaction.
Live sporting events are now way more than just about the game—it’s about the whole experience. You can’t do much about the outcome of a game, but you can do a lot about the experience, which is why you should get feedback on anything that’s a part of it.
You can deploy surveys with a notification in an in-venue app, questions about the experience during a contest, or email a survey to ticket purchasers after the event.
How to impact revenue: A feedback survey will help improve the event experience with some concrete action items (e.g., the lines were too long, sodas are flat), but can also help create targetable segments in your database.
You can first group “Satisfied” attendees and “Dissatisfied” attendees and create different offers (whether via email, custom audiences on Facebook, etc.). Dissatisfied attendees might get a discount several months after the event to show off improvements, while satisfied ones get a premium ticket offer shortly after the event.
With lookalike modeling, combine data points you’ve collected (for example, when they socially authenticate, collecting brand affinities and interests in the form of Likes) and create a model of a satisfied attendee, seeking out people in and out of your database who are more likely to be satisfied going to an event, even if you didn’t ask them, even if they’ve never been to one of your events.
Questions for Sponsors Present and Future
Proof of ROI and ROO have become more and more inescapable in partnership agreements. In addition to tracking links from your app or site to a sponsors to track traffic and purchases, you can ask pointed questions before, during, and after your event via the channels mentioned above:
- Are you more likely to buy ___________ after attending today’s event?
- Did you know that _________ sponsored today’s event?
- What 3 sponsors do you remember from today’s event?
How to impact revenue: To drive revenue through surveying, you’ll want to ask more pointed questions for sponsors like “Are you in the market for a new car?” and “How often do you fly annually?” Umbel customer, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, asks these on behalf of sponsors like JetBlue or local car dealers, typically as part of an activation that involves contest entry.
The property can take several approaches with the data. The most direct is they deliver targeted lead lists of people interested in the sponsors’ brand (see below) or in the market for their products. Next, like with feedback surveys, they and the sponsor can use lookalike modeling to uncover more potential buyers of the sponsors’ products.
Learning More and More about Fans
Finally, don’t be afraid to get creative and go beyond the tried-and-true market research inventory. Whether it’s quick questions in your app or a question to finalize a contest entry, ask things like:
- Do you typically stay for the whole event?
- What led you to buying your most recent ticket?
- Who’s your favorite player?
- What was your favorite theme night last year?
- Do you wear pajamas to bed?
How to impact revenue: Sky’s the limit. You can segment offers based on the questions you asked (like a signed jersey from a favorite player), create contests that last the game to keep fans at the game and spending on food and merch, investing more in sources that brought high-value buyers, etc. Umbel has seen customers use personality quizzes to help learn about their fans, tailoring messaging and offers based on their personality type (for example, are they a “Trivia Nut” or a “Rowdy Fan”?)
Going outside of the norm can reveal trends you might not have expected or even looked for with traditional survey questions. Asking more questions has another effect: the more questions you ask, the better you’ll understand your audience, and the better you can deploy your surveys to get more people to fill them out as time goes on. Surveys aren’t just effective—they can and should be a fun source of data for your organization, helping enhance the fan experience as they enhance your programming and marketing.
Learn more at Umbel.com or download Umbel + SportTechie’s report on how data creates the Ultimate Fan Experience.
