It's a challenge for any sports organization to efficiently acquire, analyze and activate first-party fan data to create unforgettable experiences for their fans. For the National Hockey League's Arizona Coyotes, things are no different. However, the hockey club also faces the added task of increasing overall awareness and winning over new fans in what can only be described as a non-traditional hockey market.

At the start of the 2019/20 season, the Coyotes set themselves a goal to improve overall fan engagement, increase single-game ticket sales and encourage existing fans to attend at least one to three games per year.

Solution

The Coyotes partnered with Tradable Bits to leverage their all-in-one fan marketing platform, including its suite of customizable engagement campaigns to collect, segment and activate all of their fan data under one roof. By housing its data in one place and automating the analysis in their Fan CRM, the Coyotes were able to easily personalize their fan experiences and increase single ticket sales, revenue, and Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS).

In order to do so, the Coyotes leveraged Tradable Bits' Engagement campaigns, Fan CRM, Data Cube and Digital Ads optimization tools to drive ticket sales from a cross-section of different fan types. Throughout the season, they launched several engagement campaigns. From coupon campaigns to sweepstakes, they were able to create incentives for fans to engage with the team and its players on their digital channels.

By integrating Ticketmaster data into the Tradable Bits platform, the Coyotes were also able to determine who had purchased tickets, how much they spent, as well as historical ticket purchases to create a single fan view and complete customer profile.

Generating Leads and Growing Their Fan Database

Tradable Bits engagement campaigns helped the Coyotes gain leads and grow their overall fan database. These included Entry Forms, Coupon campaigns, and Spin to Win sweepstakes with high-value prizes from corporate partnerships like Coors Light, Sunwest Federal Credit Union, The Keg Steakhouse, and many more.

Engagement campaigns are a simple way to boost fan engagement and allowed the Coyotes to collect fan information by having fans fill out custom form fields, including names, emails, birthdates, and zip codes. This helped them gain relevant leads and grow their fan database, and to market more personalized messages to certain fan groups to promote future games.

Segmenting Their Fan Data

The Coyotes’ main goal was to sell more single-game tickets. They found the most successful way to drive single-ticket sales was by segmenting their fans into unique audiences, since this enabled them to target specific fan groups to attend certain games. They used the Tradable Bits' platform feature called Facebook Ads Planner to quickly segment and target audiences in real-time and push their ads live right in-platform. This tool allowed them to target the right fans groups, while saving time by not requiring them to export data and then upload it again to Facebook directly to build audiences and publish their ads. The Coyotes had several theme nights for their home games during the season. By building segmented fan groups, they were able to market to different people with personalized messages related to each theme night. For example, they promoted tickets to a Country Night to country music fans specifically using insight gleaned in the platform.

In addition, by integrating Ticketmaster data into the Tradable Bits platform, they were able to determine who has purchased tickets, which events they'd attended, as well as track historical ticket purchases. For example, if a fan bought a ticket to an Arizona Coyotes vs. Vegas Golden Knights game in the past, the Coyotes would include them in their target audience in their campaign to advertise their upcoming game against Vegas.

Results

During the 2019/20 NHL season, the Coyotes’ engagement campaigns and audience segmentation resulted in a record 4% increase in ticket sales, the creation of more than 82,000 fan profiles in their CRM and doubling their ROI.

The Coyotes worked closely with the Tradable Bits' team to help them accomplish their goals in building awareness and relevancy in the sports entertainment market, ultimately increasing their ticket sales.

The key with the Tradable Bits platform is its marketing attribution capabilities to determine important data. These capabilities have been crucial to our success.

-Cole Cook Senior Director, Business Strategy & Analytics, Arizona Coyotes