As marketing tools become more sophisticated, consumers expect more personalization in interactions. No one likes to feel like they’re being sold something. It’s uncomfortable and sometimes even invasive, especially if you’re not looking to make a purchase at that very moment. This is even more prevalent in sports, where there is a desire to create a relationship of complicity and authenticity between the organization and the fans.

What is marketing automation and lead scoring?

Marketing automation is the automation of repetitive marketing actions through the use of software. Tasks are automated in response to predefined trigger conditions, which generally correspond to actions that your users perform on your site or in your e-mails.

In addition, marketing automation is often combined with lead scoring models. This system consists of assigning an engagement score to each member of the fan base according to their behavior towards the club in order to segment the fan base into different fan categories.

Many sports organizations need to build trust to attract new fans and move them to buying actions. That’s why it’s critical to track prospects/fans as they move toward conversion based on the organization’s various products, adjusting marketing tactics and messaging along the way to optimize ticket, subscription or merchandising sales, for example.

Lead scoring works particularly well with e-mail marketing. Within The Swiss Peak Sports, we have developed fan scoring models linked to email and web activities to better understand the behavior of an organization’s fans.

Case study with the Hockey Club La Chaux-de-Fonds

In the case of Hockey Club La Chaux-de-Fonds, we have implemented a fan evaluation model. This helps us identify who has shown the most interest in the organization. We have created a point scale based on 5 categories of fans.

To do this, you must first create a “SCORE” contact attribute that will be used to record the contact’s score. Once you have created your “SCORE” contact attribute, you need to identify the key actions your contacts will need to take before they become qualified fans, typically email and web activities.

Next, we need to create the different workflows that allow us to create an engagement opportunity with the fan in order to measure it. For example, we create basic workflows such as the birthday message or the newsletter welcome message that allow us to check if the person is taking advantage of the engagement offer.

Finally, we also need to create automations to move fans from one segmentation list to another based on their scoring which then allows us to create personalized offers based on fan qualification.

These processes create benefits for a sports organization based on the following elements:

• Simplification of marketing processes within the organization;
• Improvement of the relationship with the database;
• Personalize your communication with your fans;
• Improved knowledge of its fan database;
• Creation of commercial and personalized opportunities to increase the LTV (life time value) of a fan.

If you are interested in developing this kind of model within your organization, The Swiss Peak Sports team will be happy to accompany you and create a unique bond with your fans. For more information on fan scoring, contactez-nous !