Drive Revenue by Integrating Ticket Sales and Marketing

Imagine if you focused solely on the most valuable targets and gave them exactly what they wanted. No more wasted time and dead-end leads. You don’t need a crystal ball, it’s not magic. It’s data management and analytics combined with marketing strategy.

And it’s a lot easier than you think.

Great sports organizations use data-driven marketing campaigns to drive revenue, reach potential customers, boost ticket sales and build a broad community base. It comes down to understanding the gold mine of data you already have, extracting the most valuable fan insights, then putting it all to work through marketing and watching the results roll in.

Rich Wang, the head Coordination, Logistics, and Global Data Strategy for the Vikings said, “We all thought that 60-80% of these season ticketholders were coming to every game. But once we started pulling the digital ticketing information into the warehouse, we saw that the original ticket/barcode was being transferred one, two, even three touchpoints before the final attendee that comes into the game…There was a huge opportunity to
build new fan relationships.”

Customized marketing in modern times means that blasting emails to a database and hoping for the best is not a winning strategy. All of us get those emails every day, and we ignore them.

“There is so much data that can give your marketing strategy 20/20 vision. Taking a deeper look into who is buying your tickets, their buying habits and history, who is actually using those tickets and how committed buyers are to your organization allows you to find your MVCs – Most Valuable Customers – and give them exactly what they want. This is an unbeatable formula that always results in revenue,” explains Abbey Meitin, Director of Client Success Management at SSB.

Step One: Decode Your Customer Data

Increasing both ticket sales and overall revenue means taking a look at your customer data, even the data points you aren’t sure what to do with. Everything from ticket sales (individual game tickets, season tickets, packages, group promotions) and donations to merchandise and concessions purchases. While this may sound intimidating, it is as simple as organizing your data and allowing your system to analyze and report.

Keep in mind that your team doesn’t need to understand how to do any of this – we can integrate your resources then organize everything in a user-friendly system accessible to any team member.

Without integration, your marketing department may see one part of the data while your sales department sees another. How can your teams truly be strategic when they are navigating with one section of the map? Without targeting the right customer and following up with the best leads, sales and marketing efforts become the proverbial crapshoot. Data integration through a powerful data management software seamlessly gives everyone the big picture, complete with accurate metrics and a unified customer profile for each fan, updated in near real-time.

Step Two: Take a Close Look at Your Fans

It’s time to get up close and personal with your fans.

One of the most crucial customer data points is a past purchase history. Not only does this tell you who your customers are and how many tickets they purchased, it allows you to understand what is most important to them. Data points such as the types of tickets purchased and the opponents for those games can help you see the factors your customers care about most.

You can also discover if the ticket buyer who purchased the tickets attended the game or sold them through a third-party ticketing site. Knowing who is buying versus who is using a ticket will demonstrate how you should approach the ticket buyer for future events. This offers a deeper understanding of your customers, lighting the path to develop a targeted marketing strategy to retain and increase their engagement.

Many organizations don’t realize that some of their season ticket holders have unsubscribed from the email list and are not even getting any communication. An integrated business platform shows you where these gaps exist in order to create an updated and current email list.

Analyzing and segmenting your customers allows you to create targeted personas and lists, then craft emails that cater to each group’s specific interests. If you want to boost your season ticket sales, find the customers who have previously bought season tickets or purchased tickets to multiple games in past seasons. Don’t waste valuable time targeting a one-time purchaser for one game who is unlikely to open and respond to season ticket offers. Instead, offer this fan a coupon to purchase merchandise or to come back when your team plays the same opponent.

Customer segmentation, being smart with data, and sending the right emails at the right time is a winning strategy that attracts customers, increases engagement, and fuels revenue.