Hello and welcome to "Sports CDP Crash Course," the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies and insights that can help sports organisations thrive by propelling them to the centre of fans’ hearts and actions so they can become a core part of their fans’ lives. 'm your host, Lorraine Moalosi, and today we’re talking about how to sell more season memberships during the summer.

1. Gamification

First up is gamification. People love games and challenges, and a CDP can help you tap into this enthusiasm by creating engaging gamified experiences. You can encourage first time membership signs up by using gamification to draw in new fans. Use score prediction games and wheel of fortune to entice them into not wanting to miss out on the action.

You can design loyalty programs where fans earn points for attending games, purchasing merchandise, or engaging with your content on social media. These points can then be redeemed for rewards, such as discounts on season memberships or exclusive merchandise.

Imagine a fan competing to reach the top of the leaderboard by attending the most games or sharing the most content. This not only drives engagement but also fosters a sense of community and competition among fans, making them more likely to commit to a season membership to continue participating.

2. Having a Preference Centre

Next, let’s talk about having a preference centre. A CDP allows you to create a centralised hub where fans can manage their preferences. This means they can choose what type of content they want to receive and how they want to be contacted.

For example, some fans might prefer email updates, while others might want push notifications or SMS messages. By respecting these preferences and delivering content in their preferred format, you increase the chances of your messages being read and acted upon. This personalised approach can significantly boost the effectiveness of your membership campaigns.

3. Teasing Exclusive Offers

Our third use case is teasing exclusive offers. A CDP can help you identify your most engaged fans and offer them exclusive early-bird deals or sneak peeks at upcoming promotions. By segmenting your audience, you can create a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

Imagine sending a special offer to your top 10% of fans, giving them first access to new season memberships or exclusive events. This not only makes them feel valued but also encourages them to act quickly to secure their spot, driving early sales and creating buzz around your memberships.

Join host Lorraine Moalosi in an insightful conversation with Thomas Rypens, Direct-to-Consumer Director at Club Brugge. Discover how Thomas oversees fan engagement through ticketing, merchandising, and digital strategies, while leading Club Brugge's Customer Experience team.

Gain valuable insights into fan behaviour and the pivotal role of innovation in shaping the future of sports. Tune in for an engaging discussion that explores the evolving landscape of sports industry dynamics.

Hello and welcome to "Sports CDP Crash Course," the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies and insights that can help sports organisations thrive by propelling them to the centre of fans’ hearts and actions so they can become a core part of their fans’ lives. 'm your host, Lorraine Moalosi, and today we’re talking about a crucial topic for ticketing managers and marketing managers: how to sell more season tickets during the summer. Whether you're part of a federation, a league, or a club, these five concrete examples will help you boost your season ticket sales and ensure packed stands when the new season kicks off. Btw we have also created a cheat sheet that sports organisations can use to sell out tickets no matter where they find themselves in the sports’ annual cycle. If you would like to receive this, make sure you contact me and I will send it over to you.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the first strategy for selling out season tickets this summer:

1. Personalised Email Campaigns

First up, personalised email campaigns. For this, it is important that all your data is collected from your various sources and merged in one place, to give a comprehensive and complete understanding of each fan and their consumption and purchase behaviour, amongst other things. This means you can send highly targeted emails based on individual preferences, past purchases, and engagement history.

Imagine being able to segment your audience and tailor your messages. You could send a special offer to a fan who hasn't renewed their season ticket yet, highlighting the games they are most likely to be interested in based on their past attendance. Or, you could send a ‘thank you’ message to loyal season ticket holders, perhaps offering them an exclusive discount for referring a friend. The personal touch not only improves open rates but also drives conversion.

You don’t have to stop it emails though, you can do this via SMS, Viber and WhatsApp too.

2. Dynamic Pricing Strategies

Next, let’s talk about dynamic pricing strategies. You can analyse purchasing behaviour and demand patterns to adjust your pricing strategy in real time. For example, if you notice a surge in interest for certain matches or seat locations, you can dynamically adjust prices to maximise revenue.

Additionally, you can identify which segments of your audience are more price-sensitive and might be incentivised by early bird specials or bundle deals. This kind of flexibility ensures that you’re not leaving money on the table while also keeping your fans engaged and happy.

3. Enhanced Social Media Targeting

Our third use case is enhanced social media targeting. Did you know that you can integrate the Data Talks Sports CDP with social media platforms such as Meta and Google Ads to sharpen your targeting precision? By integrating your CDP with social media platforms, you can create lookalike audiences based on your most loyal season ticket holders. This means you can run highly effective ad campaigns that reach potential new fans who share characteristics with your current ones.

Imagine being able to target ads specifically to fans who follow similar sports, live in the same area, or have shown interest in similar events. This precise targeting can significantly increase the likelihood of converting these new prospects into season ticket holders.

4. In-App Personalisation

Fourth on the list is in-app personalisation. If your organisation has a mobile app, integrating it with your CDP can take fan engagement to the next level. You can provide personalised content and offers based on the user’s behaviour and preferences.

For example, if a fan frequently checks scores or watches highlights of certain teams or players, your app can suggest purchasing season tickets for those specific games. Push notifications can also be tailored to remind fans of upcoming games they might be interested in, driving higher engagement and sales.

If you don’t have an app, worry not. You can look at website and form tracking instead. You can identify who has been looking at the season tickets on your website but is yet to make a purchase and target them with something relevant to them. By using website tracking in conjunction with looking at the fans’ purchase behaviour, you can target them with relevant messages such as “Remember to purchase your season ticket before they sell out” for fans who usually buy season tickets every year. For those who are thinking about doing it for the first time, you can send something along the lines of “Interested in a season ticket but can’t make up your mind. Here’s a 5% discount to get you started”. Let your data inform your messaging.

5. Predictive Analytics for Renewal Campaigns

With the power of a CDP, you can leverage predictive analytics to identify which season ticket holders are most likely to renew and which ones are at risk of not coming back. Additionally, the Data Talks Sports CDP has an RFM model - a recency, frequency and monetary model, that shows the lifetime value of each supporter.

By analysing data such as attendance patterns, engagement levels, and purchase history, you can score each fan’s likelihood of renewal. This allows you to prioritise your outreach efforts. For fans likely to renew, you can offer a seamless, one-click renewal process. For those at risk, you can create targeted retention campaigns that address their specific concerns or offer incentives, such as exclusive experiences or discounts, to encourage them to stay. This proactive approach ensures you’re not only retaining your loyal fans but also converting at-risk customers, leading to a more stable and growing season ticket holder base.

And there you have it—five powerful ways that a CDP can help sports organisations sell more season tickets during the summer. From personalised email campaigns and dynamic pricing to enhanced social media targeting, in-app personalisation, and predictive analytics for renewal campaigns, these strategies can significantly boost your sales and fan engagement.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of "Sports CDP Crash Course." I hope you found these insights valuable and are ready to take your season ticket sales to new heights. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the show. I'm Lorraine Moalosi, and I'll catch you in the next episode!

In this episode, we dive into the fascinating world of sports, business, and gender equality with Fanny Almersson, a passionate researcher and PhD student at the Stockholm School of Economics. Fanny shares her personal journey—from playing football as a young athlete to her current role studying the inner workings of successful women’s clubs in the Nordics.

Discover how sports shaped Fanny’s character, teaching her teamwork, resilience, and the value of hard work. Hear about her inspiring mission to create more opportunities for girls in sports and ensure they benefit from the same transformative experiences she did. Join us for an enlightening conversation celebrating the power of sports, research, and equality. Whether you’re a sports enthusiast, a business aficionado, or simply curious about the impact of gender inclusivity, this episode is a must-listen!

Hello and welcome to yet another exciting episode of the “Sports CDP Crash Course”, I’m your host, Lorraine Moalosi, thank you for joining me. Whenever I interview people I usually start off with an ice-breaker so I thought that this time I would start with a joke since I am riding solo. Here goes nothing and everything, Did you hear about the football team that couldn't get a stadium Wi-Fi signal? Turns out, they needed better "reception"!

Speaking of better reception - today we are discussing how to convert social media followers into known contacts. This is the most effective way of making sure that stadiums are always filled out at every game so that the team playing on the field can have the best reception ever while the team off the pitch continues to create sustainable revenue for the sports organisation in question. Whether you're part of a league, club, or federation, turning those likes and follows into tangible data can significantly enhance your marketing efforts and fan engagement. So, let's get started.

Our first strategy is to offer exclusive content. Fans crave unique, behind-the-scenes access to their favourite teams and athletes. By providing exclusive content like training sessions, player interviews, or early announcements, you can encourage fans to register with their email addresses to gain access. Promote these offers across your social media channels to capture the interest of your followers. One of our customers has been capitalising on their OTT platform to ensure that fans who cannot attend games for any reason can still be part of the action by purchasing a season pass or a single match ticket.

Next, consider running contests and giveaways. These are incredibly effective at drawing in fans who love the thrill of potentially winning something. You might offer signed merchandise, free match tickets, or VIP experiences. To enter, fans simply need to sign up with their contact details. Promoting these contests on social media ensures you reach a broad audience and turn that excitement into valuable data. Another one of our customers used an advent calendar to introduce its fans to club sponsors and allow fans to win something or receive something at a very exciting and crucial time - Christmas.

Now, let’s talk about gamification, one of the most engaging methods to convert followers. By incorporating game-like elements into fan interactions, you can significantly boost engagement. For example, you might create a fantasy league where fans can build their own teams, predict match outcomes, or participate in weekly challenges. To join, fans need to register with their contact details. This approach not only gathers data but also keeps fans deeply engaged and coming back for more. It’s very important to highlight the fact that converting social media followers into known contacts is not something to be done as a one-off thing but rather this should be done continuously. Gamification is one of the most exciting ways to do this without exhausting your supporters. We talk about this in-depth in our course for C-level executives, “The 4  Fundamentals of Selling Tickets and Merchandise”. Make sure to enroll to learn more. In the course, we give an example of a club who managed to get just under 12 000 followers to convert to known contacts through gamification in one single campaign. This is not something to miss so make sure you enroll.

Similarly, you can use quizzes and polls. These are great for sparking interaction while collecting contact information. Create quizzes on sports trivia, player stats, or upcoming fixtures, and require fans to submit their answers via a form. Polls on social media about favourite players, match predictions, or fan experiences can also help in gathering valuable insights and contact details. Another effective strategy is offering personalised experiences. Fans love to feel special, and providing opportunities for personalised interactions can be a strong motivator. This might include personalised video messages from players, customisable merchandise, or virtual meet-and-greet sessions. To access these experiences, fans would need to sign up with their details.

Lastly, don’t overlook the power of loyalty programmes. By creating a loyalty programme where fans earn points for attending games, purchasing merchandise, or engaging on social media, you can encourage them to register their details. These points can be redeemed for rewards, fostering a deeper connection with your organisation and continuously adding contacts to your database.

In conclusion, converting social media followers into known contacts isn’t just about having the right strategies; it’s about offering real value to your fans. Whether it’s through exclusive content, engaging contests, innovative gamification, personalised experiences, or rewarding loyalty programmes, these methods can help sports organisations grow their databases and enhance fan engagement.

That’s all for today’s episode of “Sports CDP Crash Course.” I hope you found these strategies insightful and are ready to put them into action. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform. And if you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover, feel free to reach out on our social media channels. Until next time, I’m Lorraine Moalosi, and this has been “Sports CDP Crash Course.” Thanks for listening!

In this episode, we explore sponsorship, a fundamental way to fund your sport at any level. Whether you're an elite athlete or part of a grassroots team, securing sponsorship can seem daunting. We’ll address common doubts, such as not having a sponsorship package ready, feeling not good enough, and not knowing where to start.

Join Karen Ramirez as she shares practical advice on creating a compelling sponsorship package, identifying potential sponsors, and marketing your proposal effectively. She also discusses setting clear expectations with sponsors and delivering on your promises to build lasting partnerships.

Whether you're in a local rugby team, an ultimate frisbee squad, or a solo athlete like a gymnast or sprinter, this episode will provide actionable insights to help you secure the funding you need.

Join host Lorraine Moalosi on the Sports CDP Crash Course Podcast as she talks with Philip Nordfeldt, Senior Vice President of Sales at Data Talks. With over 25 years of experience in ticket sales, Philip shares his expertise on putting fans at the center of sales strategies and optimizing ticket sales for sports events. He discusses the unique challenges of the sports industry, strategies for maximizing matchday revenue, and balancing innovation with profitability.

Philip also discusses navigating GDPR while embracing new technologies and shares his vision for the sports industry's future. Tune in for valuable insights on enhancing fan engagement and achieving commercial success in sports.

Social media is a very valuable tool for brands and sports organisations are not an exception. Sports organisations in general have been very good at leveraging social media with some of the most followed social media accounts being that of sports organisations such as clubs like Real Madrid with 138 million followers and leagues like the NBA with 88 million followers on Instagram. This incredible feat does not just stop at the organisation level but is even stronger at the individual level with Cristiano Ronaldo being the most followed person on Instagram with 580 million followers.

Apart from followers, social media has helped increase viewership of sports content with 51% of fans getting sports content on Facebook, 46% on YouTube, 31% on Instagram, and 25% on X formerly Twitter. Social media is incredible and many sports organsations are doing their best to leverage it. However, there is one mistake that is common to all sports organisations, despite size, region, or sports. This mistake is not prioritising turning social media followers into known contacts in the sports organization’s contact database instead.

When a user creates a social media account, they usually use either their email address or their phone number to do so. This information stays in the platform and does not get transferred to the sports organisation for numerous reasons, data protection being one of them. While sports organisations can benefit from fans' engagement with their content, they lose out on one important thing - the ability to communicate with their fans directly and one-on-one. Even in Whatsapp groups that fans willingly join, sports organisations can only communicate with their fans en masse and never individually. This poses several challenges such as: 

1. Lack of personalisation: Communicating with a large group en masse lacks the personal touch of individual interactions. Tailoring messages to suit each recipient's preferences, interests, and needs is impossible when communicating to a large audience.
2. Low engagement: Holding the attention of a diverse audience can be difficult. Maintaining engagement becomes challenging without the ability to interact directly with each person. 
3. With the messages being generic and meant to appeal to most people, there can be a lack of relevancy or even depth. This means that conversion rates may be even smaller.

Although personalisation has become a bit of a buzzword, it is an essential part of marketing today. There is simply no personalisation when it comes to social media. Even the advertising platforms on social media are limited to basic segmentation attributes such as age, geography, and sex, However when sports organisations convert social media followers into known contacts in their database, they can begin to merge their fans’ contact information with their other data such as ticketing, merchandise, OTT, app and website usage, etc. This will increase their ability to segment further with attributes such as preferences, purchase, viewership, and attendance behaviour. 

So if you are a marketer working in the sports industry today, make sure that you check out our Data Talks Sports Platform demo so you can see firsthand how you can do all of this. Not only will you be able to convert social media followers into known contacts in your database through tactics such as gamification and of course merging all this data with your other data but you will also be able to find out which supporter segments you should target with your campaigns and the best way to send out relevant offers to those segments in a way that supporters will appreciate.

From being a tennis player and captain of her tennis team at her university in the United States to managing brave new sports at Infront Sports & Media, our next guest is a highly motivated businesswoman who wants to inspire people and make a difference by being goal-driven and willing to go the extra mile to reach new heights. Having been the team captain in a very diverse environment throughout he college career in the US, Anja Luethi is eager to use her acquired knowledge and skills to advance diversity and inclusion within the sports industry.

Welcome to part two of “Turning Your Fan Database into Revenue”! In this episode, we dive into a real-life case study featuring Mark Scanlon, the director of the League of Ireland, part of the Football Association of Ireland, who has been utilizing Data Talks’ sports customer data platform to great effect.

Mark joined Stefan Lavén, CEO and founder of Data Talks, at Sports Pro Live, where he shared League of Ireland’s remarkable journey of growing its supporter base, leveraging fan data to boost revenue, and enhancing the overall fan experience. Discover how they used data insights to better understand their audience, increase engagement, and ultimately drive commercial success.

Tune in to gain valuable insights from this partnership and learn how harnessing fan data can transform your sports organization’s strategy.