Creating Value with the Unknown Fan

Now that Super Bowl LII is behind us, teams across the NFL have started their official break. When they return, free agency and the draft will capture the hot stove. At the same time, the marketing departments of these teams will also begin outlining their strategies for the next season. Resources will be allocated across multiple marketing channels ranging from cable TV, radio and online advertising. The websites will go through a transition to highlight the promise of the coming season with updates on how the team is shaping up.

Digital marketing is playing an increasingly key role in reaching and engaging as many fans. The teams' websites and online display advertising play a prominent role in promoting the tickets and also drumming up the interest of the faithful. However, most of the time teams have no idea who the fans are that visit the site or engage with a particular team.

Unlike television, radio or direct mail, responding to the fans' digital engagement doesn’t have to be a one-way proposition.

FREE Digital Engagement:

Semcasting has been active with professional sports franchises, including multiple NBA teams, Major League Baseball teams and even with college and NFL football. The key to success in promoting these teams online is identifying the unknown fan – people who periodically (or repeatedly) go to the site, buy merchandise and go to games but aren’t season ticket holders.

A professional sports team engaged with Semcasting to identify their “unknown fans.” The goal was to initiate a conversation with the right fans at the right time in order to promote ticket sales in the upcoming season. Engagement would be realized by the fan’s visit to the website or in response to display advertising. Using Semcasting’s UDX-Leads, a simple pixel tag was placed on team website home page as well as on other relevant pages – such as ticketing and memorabilia.

Utilizing the FREE UDX-Leads service, site visits, impressions and click-throughs were registered and reported back to the team in a daily email. Using Semcasting’s patented onboarding process, those visits were converted into locations. The households and businesses at those locations became a mailing list. That list is proprietary to the team.

Unlike retargeting, each engagement by an unknown fan was also fully evaluated for its potential: affluence of the visitor, proximity to the stadium, etc., then scored for intent based on the site pages of interest and timing of the visit. With these scored “leads,” the marketing department gained great insight on who they were reaching with each marketing action and where there was opportunity to turn visits into appropriate campaign follow-up actions such as email, direct mail, personalized content, and offers. Site visits were also compared to season ticket holders, creating an even larger base of prospective “unknown fan” ticket buyers.

UDX (Universal Data Exchange) is the core technology Semcasting uses to link site visitors to locations, demographic profiles and emails.

The Semcasting Unknown Fan package includes lead generation based on website visits and advertising impressions. It is FREE to any qualified team.
 
Semcasting only benefits if the team elects to run display advertising and attribution studies based on audiences and qualified segments produced by UDX-Leads.
 
For more information and/or to set up a demo, contact us.