The CDP has been revolutionalizing many industries for some time now. So it’s great that there’s finally an excellent CDP vendor for sports.
In today’s blog post, I will be discussing why sports organizations need to choose a sports specific CDP vendor instead of a generic one. Furthermore, we will look at a few examples of what happens when a sports organization chooses a sports specfic CDP. That is, the results you can also get when you choose a sports specific CDP vendor.
Before we dive right in...
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How the CDP has been revolutionizing industries
A few years ago, the below scenarios were nothing but unattainable dreams:
- being able to collect, clean and unify data in one source
- having one single reliable data source with uptodate data to inform all marketing decision making in an organization
- being able to share that data easily across different teams and departments
- being able to integrate all systems and technologies to make data sharing and acting on that data easy, through out the orgnanization
- having a 360-degree of each and every consumer
But with a CDP all of this and more became possible.
The benefits of using a CDP
Many industries e.g. retail, ecommerce and sports, have reaped many benefits from this new found ability to do all of the above with one solution, a CDP. These include:
- Increased revenue
- Increased consumer engagement through personalized communications
- Better and more precise decision making
- Understanding their consumer base better
- Finding new revenue opportunities through data analysis
- Marketing budget spend optimization
- Better targeting and segmentation leading to better results on goals set
And this is only the beginning. The benefits of a CDP are countless.
The unique context of the sports industry
So how does the CDP apply specifically to the sports industry. And why is it important for sports organizations to get in bed with a sports specific vendor. I will get to that in a second. Before we can get there, we need to understand that the sports industry is unique. Therefore, having unique needs. What makes the sports industry unique, you might ask? Well,
- Firstly, the sports industry is built on centuries of tradition. E.g. supporters who are loyal to a sports clubs no matter their performance because their grandfather and great-grandfather supported that team.
- Secondly, sports fans identify with sports clubs to the point. So feelings of belonging are very important here.
- Thirdly, sports organizations get a huge chunk of their revenue from extraneous sources such as tv rights, sponsorship, merchandise.
- Fourthly, the sports industry is based around events of which the outcomes cannot be guaranteed.
- Last but not least, sports organizations have uniques structures such as financial and organizational. For example, competitions are regulated by a governing body – federations. With each and every sport have their own governing body. For example, in football, FIFA represents the governing of the sport globally. Additionally, each country also has its own governing body which subsequently reports to FIFA. When it comes to the financial, sports clubs for example would get their share of say broadcasting rights earnings from the relevant league. And all sports organizations are dependent on some kind of sponsorship deal.
There are many other differences. However, all these differences combine to make the sports industry unique from say, retail. So what is the significance of this?
What is the significance of the sports industry being unique
Knowing the significance of the sports industry being unique will help you understand why it’s exciting that there’s an excellent CDP vendor for sports available. Because the industry is so unique it means:
- it becomes even more crucial that your choice of CDP vendor understands the ins and outs of the industry so they can help you with your goals better
- a CDP vendor has to understand how to innovate within this unique industry holding everything in a delicate balance, for example, helping you understand how you can make more revenue without compromising on your relationship with your supports
So, a CDP vendor for sports in a nutshell is your best option because:
- A sports specific CDP vendor has intimate knowledge about how a sports organization operates on a day to day basis. They therefore understand the pain points that you experience within your orgnization and the best way to resolve them.
- Due to unique insights gained from the experience of working extensively with sports organizations across different markets and countries the sports CDP vendor is able to give you best practices and use cases of the CDP in a way that produces results.
- A sports specific CDP vendor understands the seasonal ‘fluctuations’ in the operation of a sports organization, especially around tournaments and championships therefore they are better able to customize and hyper-personalize the CDP functionality to your organization providing a more efficient work method.
- You need to partner with a sports specific vendor because they will understand this in a practical manner. And as a result, they will help you use this technology to catch up with the digital wave that we live in while also retaining the authenticity and the love of the game that makes sports so powerful. If you partner with a non-sports CDP vendor, you stand the chance of losing the tradition of the game all in the name of catching up to the industry.
How a CDP vendor for sports can help you achieve results beyond your wildest expectations
I, personally, think that Data Talks is the best sports CDP vendor on the market. Sure, you might think that I am biased because I work here but let’s let the results of what the Data Talks CDP has been able to do for the sports industry before you come to that conclusion. Deal?
We will look at a few real life examples under different unique contexts.
This is why all sports organizations should really be excited that there’s now an excellent CDP vendor for sports in the market:
Leveraging matchday success
A few months ago, I wrote a post on how PAOK FC, one of our customers, are winning on and off the field. This is the best example of how a sports CDP can help you be a bit more responsive to workings of the sports industry. Our customer, PAOK FC, was experiencing the best season in the modern history of their club. In one of their games, only a few seconds before the referee blew the last whistle, Jasmin Kurtić, one of PAOK’s best players scores. Everyone goes crazy.
Although PAOK could have simply relied on their success on the field to continue boosting their merchandise sales, they didn’t. So what they decide to do? They decide to leverage their success on the field to gain more success off the field. How?
They created a campaign that offers fans the opportunity to purchase t-shirts starring the legendary Kurtić. And what were the results?
Their e-store sales rocketed by 66% on the 15th of February 2022 compared to the best day of the year so far (11th of January)
They gave their fans and supporters something “extra” to be excited about which boosted engagement across their social media channels as well.
- Their e-store sales rocketed by 66% on the 15th of February 2022 compared to their previous best performing campaign
- They increased their sales by 91% compared to the day before the match
- They gave their fans and supporters something “extra” to be excited about which boosted engagement across their social media channels as well.
To see how this would look in action, explore the Data Talks CDP demo >>
Understanding different fan segments
You know we spoke about loyal fans in sports. How some of them support the same team for generations. Although this is true to the sports industry, this has been slowly changing. So sports organizations can no longer solely rely on this. They have to understand their fans and make the necessary efforts to meet their needs. That’s why it becomes important to understand the different fan segments an organization has. And this something a CDP vendor for sports can help you understand.
This is exactly what our customer, AIK, benefited from.
Every strategy begins with a goal so what was AIK’s goal? To get as many of their supporters as possible to buy a season ticket. What did they do?
- They prioritised having a 360-degree view of each of their supporters by using a sports CDP.
- And then they divided their supporters into three segments and began to send personalized emails to each supporter segment.
And what were the results? More than 100 000 Euros were generated from a campaign targeting only about 2% of their entire supporter database. And all of this was created in the space of 2 weeks.
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Going from traditional to modern
Keeping on that same theme of tradition, the sports industry is deeply rooted in tradition. We prefer to conduct business in person. We prefer to meet the fans at the stadium. But changes in the industry have made these strategies alone ineffective. So we need to go digital. This is a unique scenario to the sports industry in that other industries were forced to become digitally savvy years ago with the advent of online shopping in the retail industry for example.
But it wasn’t until the covid-19 pandemic that the sports industry were forced to face the importance of having a diverse way of doing sports. E.g before, it was almost enough (not quite though) to depend solely on in-stadium as one of the main sources of income for a league and/or club. But during the pandemic, it was evident that OTT streaming needed to be monetized in a way that would ensure that clubs got enough income during unprecedented times such as pandemics. .
For the average sports organization, the journey to digital has only begun. This is something that a CDP vendor for sports will have the patience to understand. And this is indeed something that the Data Talks CDP helped Västerås IK with.
Västerås IK were able to:
- Successfully integrate their ticketing and merchandise providers to get a 360-degree view of their supporters
- Put themselves in a better position to hyper-pesonalize their messages to supporters via email and SMS
- Identify new opportunities they can leverage such as building a bar to become a star attraction and promoting ticket sales by sending hyper-personalized SMS messages on matchday
Conclusion
If there was only thing I wanted you to take away from this post what would it be? Simply that, sports organizations have an opportunity to be at the centre of innovation. Tradition is what made sports a beloved part of our lives. And we don’t want to change that. However, we do want to still stay relevant. And we can only do this if we allow this generation to create new traditions. They seem to be doing this through digital. A pessimistic organization might think let’s keep things the same to preserve the game. But an innovative organization will recognize this as an opportunity to do something new.
Innovations such as a sports CDP put sports organizations in a better position to:
increase revenue
increase fan engagement
boost sponsorship value
This delicate balance between tradition and innovation however needs to be maintained. That’s where the CDP vendor for sports comes in. A generic CDP vendor does not have the indepth understanding of the history of the sports industry as the CDP vendor for sports does. So if you are a sports organization, choose wisely. Choose a sports specifc CDP vendor to help you meet your goals without compromising on everything your organization is built on.