In addition to planning the logistics of sporting events and managing players, another important aspect of college and university athletic departments is sustaining a high level of fan engagement throughout the entire year. College sports are driven and supported by their fans and need their students, alumni, faculty, donors, sponsors, and fans to achieve revenue goals.
When the stands are filled with thousands of cheering, smiling faces watching the team play the sport they love, the players will play harder and work to please them. Likewise, the fans find a sense of camaraderie in their shared passion for the sport and their love of the team. When the team scores, it’s a celebration in the entire stadium. If time is running out and the team is only behind by one score, it is a heart-pumping, edge-of-your-seat experience. And, donors love to see their hard-earned money in action. Whether that’s new jerseys for the team or a renovation in the stadium, fan support is critical to the continuation of the sport as well as the university’s athletic department in general. Let SSB help you keep all your fans happy, excited, and engaged.
With thousands of attendees across dozens of games, there are millions of data points generated that give insight into the fans and their levels of loyalty and engagement. At SSB, we understand the importance of using that data to deliver business insights to uncover how to increase ticket sales, grow donations and support everyone involved in the athletics department. We use predictive analytics and our propensity score model to help you engage with fans who are most likely to buy your tickets, make a donation, or renew a season pass.
Our proprietary propensity model uses a behavior score and a profile score applied to all customers in order to surface optimal leads from your database to target. These leads are the people who are most likely to engage with your brand based on their interests and history. Rather than calling a random group of those who may have purchased one ticket to one football game three years ago, we use data management techniques incorporated into our propensity score and give you the business insights you need to contact fans who are most likely to support your team. This article will dive deeper into the difference between a behavior score and a profile score and how you can utilize each to deliver on the business initiative you are trying to achieve.
What is a Behavior Score?
A behavior score is a determination of the likelihood of an event taking place based on all the available behavioral data points associated with a customer. The SSB proprietary propensity model bases the behavior score on previous transactional history linked to a particular person. This data management technique examines transactions such as buying tickets or season tickets, making a donation, purchasing merchandise or concessions, opening and engaging with email offers, as well as many others. Through predictive analytics, we can give you the likelihood that a fan will once again take an action based on their behavior score.
The SSB behavior score is based on a 0 to 100 scale. Zero means that there is no chance that an action or event will happen. If a person receives a 0% behavior score, you may want to go through your data to make sure it is updated and verify that an individual has previously engaged with your team. It might not be in your best interest to spend time and energy trying to contact them about supporting your athletics department. A score of 100 means that an action or event is extremely likely to happen. From the transactional data you have on this individual, a 100% score should be on the very top of your list to send a targeted email or make a phone call.
What is a Profile Score?
Don’t have any transactional data on a customer? Or, maybe you’re looking to add more customers to your email list? You can use a profile score.
A profile score looks at demographic and psychographic information to determine a propensity to engage when there is no transactional data. The profile score is implemented once data appends are applied to your customer base and can include data such as household information, whether the individual is a dog person, prefers MLB or NFL, has an interest in March Madness, or has purchased tickets to other events outside of your venue. It can also be based on things individuals like or interact with on social media. Rather than basing it off an activity done at a particular point in time, the profile score is based on the type of person a given individual is.
Other businesses use this type of demographic and psychographic information all the time in order to show you targeted ads. For example, if you like a group or page on Facebook, you might be targeted with specific deals or ads. Why not use this information to your advantage as well? You have potential fans out there who want to engage with the team and are waiting for your email or call. Don’t let the season slip by without reaching out to everyone you can!
How to Use These Scores to Increase Engagement
If you have some type of transactional history for an individual, SSB’s propensity score tool can use that information to give you business insights on the likelihood that they will make another transaction. This can be anything from buying a ticket and attending a game to opening an email. The more transactional data you have for an individual fan, the better our system can predict the likelihood of the repetition of their behavior.
As an example, we worked with the University of Washington’s athletic department to help them increase sales and streamline their data-crunching process. SSB implemented a pilot program that used data analytics to better qualify sales leads by predicting which fans were more likely to buy tickets and which types of tickets they would purchase. Alan Nguyen of PAC 12 Sales at UW said, “We had so many different leads and we just didn’t know the best way of distributing them. We heard a lot of complaints from reps that felt they didn’t have the right information and they were wasting a lot of time. They had thousands of leads, but a lot of opportunities got left behind without even touching them. We just didn’t understand our own data. We needed help identifying what leads were the most appropriate for us to target at the top and right away.”
These propensity scores led to the launch of an email campaign that netted over $40,000 worth of ticket sales just two weeks after implementing the program. After two months, that number rose to a total of $115,000!
With the behavior score, you know that a person has engaged with the athletics department and you can gauge just how enthusiastic they are to engage again. With SSB’s clean data management platform, we can also bring together all of the data collection systems utilized throughout the stadium and your department. We are experts at data management and incorporating it into a platform to give you a propensity score to increase fan engagement, ticket sales, donations, and any other action you need. Once a person parks their vehicle and enters the venue, their data is collected. SSB can bring together parking, ticketing, merchandise, and concessions for each individual fan to show you the likelihood that they will take these actions again.
But, if you are trying to figure out a person’s level of fan engagement but have little to no transactional history for them, you may be hesitant to send an email or make a phone call discussing the purchase of season tickets. However, with a profile score, you can get a percent likelihood that they will buy the tickets by comparing their demographic information to previous season ticket holders. Utilizing your fan insights can help you use your time wisely and work to engage with people who have a higher likelihood of taking the action you want them to rather than simply hoping your email or call will have an impact.
If you have a profile score and that led to a ticket sale, that’s fantastic! When that fan goes to the game, you now have transactional data leading to a behavior score. Based on the profile and behavior scores, we can now give you a more well-rounded picture of your fan base and help you decide what segment is best to target.
Contact Our Data Management Specialists
At SSB our Analytics takes the Central Intelligence Master Data Management Platform to the next level allowing you to dig deeper into your customer data. The propensity model utilizes the behavior score and profile score of every fan and potential customer to show you the percent likelihood that an individual will take the action you want them to. From buying season tickets to making a donation to your program, we can give you a list of the customers you should contact and who will respond the best to them.
If you are ready to increase fan engagement for your athletics department and better utilize the data you have been collecting, contact SSB and ask for a free demo of our software. We will use predictive analytics to show you how to make the most of your engagement efforts. Our platform discovers customer behavior patterns to supplement the behavior and profile scores to better segment and nurture new and existing leads for longer retention and higher ticket sales.
