7 tips for e-mail marketing in the Sports Industry
This post was originally posted on my personal blog thedigitalrookie.com on 23/02/2015.
Having a list of loyal subscribed users in your e-mail base is the best thing if you want to start structuring your e-mail Marketing Strategy. Through careful segmentation, sending relevant content and continuous analysis of the results, there’s a high chance of raising the ROI. All athletic teams have loyal fans which just wait to be informed about a wide range of services.
1. Collect the relevant data
No matter how much money you spend on advertising and other ways of communication, if you can’t convince a user to sign-up for your e-mail list, then you have a glaring error in your total Marketing Strategy. E-mail marketing is considered to be one of the top, and cheapest ways of raising ROI with your customers/fans.
In simple terms, it’s important for users to be able to easily and quickly sign-up to your newsletter, giving them in the same time a motive for doing so. A simple example could be a form mentioning that you could “Be the first to know all important news of the Team, and receive discounts in premium tickets.”
2. The first email
The first welcoming e-mail is one of the best ways to be in touch with the fans while they are still available at that moment. Ideally, you would use the “welcome email” as a cross-selling tool or as a tool for them to interact with the team. You could also use it for promoting certain products of the Team’s online shop.
3. Personalize
Remember that you are up against hundreds of other e-mails in the inbox folder of the user, which means that you have to find a way to make them pay attention to you. Before sending the next newsletter to your fans, try one of the following:
-Include the user’s name in the subject line of the newsletter.
-Don’t miss to mention their name in the body of the e-mail as well.
-Mention the most recent match which that particular fan attended.
-Try to send them a person-centric wish, signed by their favorite Team.
-Offer an exclusive discount for a court-side ticket. This discount could be a function of their purchase history.
-Remember to send them a reminder a couple of days before the next match, mentioning important details for the Team’s roster, its schedule, as well as anything else noteworthy.
-Try to send them a newsletter with dynamic content, based on the user’s behavior in the Site itself. It would be great to mention products they have chosen before but haven’t purchased (i.e. abandonment card). A good company offering such dynamic content solutions is Mojn.
The creation of user loyalty is a long- and short-term victory.
With an average open rate of 22% and an average click rate of 3% in the sports industry, every person-centric technique could raise the newsletter’s performance.
4. Design
In the sports industry, everything should be connected to the Team’s brand. Logos, colors and the text itself have to follow the same direction. Elsewise, how will you keep the fans/users “loyal”? The mobile responsiveness is rewarded when you also use alt-text in your images. The reason for that is because when opening an e-mail, most images aren’t loaded immediately, and your users might not know where to click. A smaller CTR = less Engagement.
5. Segmentation
It’s a fact that not all of your users have the same needs and preferences. For this reason, you should face each and every one of them in a different way, entering them in different user groups. A list with different segments which could be used in a sports Team’s newsletter, could be structured like this:
- Purchase history
- A user with one purchase
- A user with two purchases
- User with repeated purchases (3 to 5 purchases)
- User with a great purchase history (5 to 10 purchases)
- User with an exceptional purchase history (10+ purchases)
- Booking habits — The device through which they make most of their purchases (smartphone, tablet, desktop)
- User’s sex: male/female
- Type of purchase by user
a) Fans who bought VIP tickets (heavy spenders)
b) Fans who bought mid-range tickets
c) Fans who bought normal price tickets
All the above-mentioned segments could be used to structure an organized e-mail Marketing Strategy for a Team’s fans.
6. Automation methods perform well
In the sports industry, there are countless chances for its application: birthdays, dates when season tickets come on sale, new products, etc. The automated e-mails save time, and make sure that the customers will receive only relevant offers, which will create the impression of being payed the attention they deserve. An example of this would be sending an invitation to a simple poll after every match, asking them to rate the Players’ performance, in return of a discount coupon for the next ticket’s purchase.
7. Test, optimize and repeat
A successful e-mail would offer the user a good “taste” of what they’ll see on the page they’ll be redirected to. This optimization procedure can’t ever stop, since the user’s preferences change constantly. The only way to keep a user “loyal” is through continuous testing.
