Being Data-Driven Even When Games Are Paused Part 3: How StellarAlgo is helping clients now

Blog

Apr 22, 2020

StellarAlgo

We understand that this last topic of our community call applies mostly to our current clients however, our hope is that everyone will be able to apply at least one of the aspects below to your own organization because using data effectively is so important right now. As we’ve mentioned, winning back fans is going to be the number one priority teams will have when games return and we believe that the teams who are using their data to do it will be at a big advantage. The new features we’re launching helps capture the insights organizations need now, on a daily basis, and allows teams to easily see changes over time but ultimately, you can do some of this in an ad hoc way on your own as well. The recap below will only highlight some of the areas an organization can capitalize on with or without our platform. To learn about ways our platform can help that likely isn’t feasible to do on your own (i.e. the machine learning capabilities) start listening to the audio recording at 48:38.

For those who would prefer to listen to the community call, get even more from the audio version with questions, answers, and more best practices:

Part 1: Approaches to processing refunds, credits, and exchanges

Part 2: How to be successful with data in the COVID period

Understand and augment your lead universe

Now is a great time to learn how your lead universe is growing, how you’re capturing fans and from where, along with additional information about them. This is where the combination of source systems (i.e. ticketing, email marketing, CRM, surveys, merchandise, etc.) and demographic appending come into play. Not only will organizations be able to see how their fan universe is growing in relation to how fans are acquired, but teams will also be able to see how fans’ demographics break out from those different source systems.

“This is a great time to understand your marketable universe: how big it is, how it’s growing, who makes up that universe. You can’t just focus on the clicks though – this is a big opportunity to build a direct relationship with your fans and it’s critical that you take the time to do this.”

Augment your demographics

Bringing in demographic data allows organizations to drill down into very specific information about different fan populations like age, gender, and income in order to personalize offers and messages. Demographic data is something that we’re now bringing in for all our partners while also adding our proprietary avidity and engagement scoring to help teams better understand their fans. As teams see how their fan demographics breakdown, it’s an opportunity to identify areas they can grow into. Particularly during this Covid period, basic income groupings for ticket purchasers will speak to a fan’s (likely) capacity to spend and how to be sensitive and better engage each fan as time progresses.

While we understand that not all teams reading this will have demographic data readily available, starting to collect some of this information via surveys or conversations with current package members are good ways to start. (tip: consider avoiding the income question if using these methods as it may not be well received in this context)

Add other revenue streams to your single customer view

It’s no secret to anyone that tickets are not being sold right now but that doesn’t mean all revenue has stopped. Merchandise sales and sponsorship retention are two ways teams can manage their revenue. One way sponsorship teams can leverage this new data source to support sponsors is by using some of that demographic and lead universe knowledge to help sponsors target fans for specific activations in order to continue to provide value. Not only do the sponsors reach their ideal customers this way but teams avoid disengaging fans with activations or messaging that isn’t relevant to them.

On the merchandise side, we recommend teams use purchase data (who’s purchasing, what they’re purchasing, and when) to help understand how they’re retaining fans or increasing purchasing behavior. Using this time to personalize merchandise offers using data will help keep some revenue coming in and will become a significant identifier of engagement when it’s time to start selling tickets again.

As part of StellarAlgo’s ongoing relationship with Minor League Baseball, we’re adding the new MiLBShop data to our teams’ platforms in order to identify new leads and uncover further engagement and propensity insights for teams to use to nurture their fans.

These ancillary revenue streams are vital in order to maximize the value of your fans, especially now. If you’re keeping track of this data yourself, make sure that your organization is collecting at least first name, last name, and email on all merchandise orders to make it actionable. As well, use the information you do know about your fans to help your sponsors engage with them in the right way.

Be diligent with how you track refunds and credits

Refunds have never happened in bulk like this before, which is why teams never had the urgency to capture this type data. A few ways StellarAlgo is working with teams and ticketing partners on this front is helping identify refund, credit, and exchange data to allow organizations to segment off those attributes. We’ll also be launching dashboards to help organizations track refunds and credits, including how this segment of fans migrates between products and how fans are utilizing their credits over time. These dashboards will allow teams to further engage with fans and understand how their win-back efforts are performing.

For teams not using the StellarAlgo platform, we suggest working with your ticketing partner to create specific tags to pull reports for refund and credits, or try to track these as best you can manually in an excel file.

Lastly, we know these are changing times so we’re updating our machine learning propensity scores (for generating lead scores and managing retention) to take into account these new demographics and refund/credit data points. As we push further into this new Covid period, our models will continue to learn and get stronger with this added data.

The Covid situation has accelerated the urgency for these solutions and we won’t pretend we have all the answers immediately. However, we will work tirelessly with our clients and partners to uncover new opportunities that data can create so we can all get through this together.

What did you think of our community call? We strive to produce helpful and relevant content and would appreciate any feedback about this call or your interest in attending a subsequent call, which would be open to everyone. Please help us by filling out this 2-min survey and reserving your spot now.

Want to get even more out of the community call with questions, answers, and more best practices from teams not included in the written recap? Listen to the audio version (top of this article)