Had lunch the other day with my friend, Daren Tomey, who works for ExactTarget. ExactTarget is an Indianapolis based E mail company that made the Inc 500 this year. We use ExactTarget’s E mail system to send all of our E mails.
As we were chatting, Daren shared with me some surprising news. Many sports teams he said, have trouble justifying an investment in E mail because they don’t know how to make money from E mail.
So I thought I’d try to help. Here’s how we do it.
We send different types of E mail
1. Newsletters - We send out two football newsletters each week, one pre-game and one post-game. Our fans “opt in” to receive these E mails. We also send a season ticket newsletter (more personal from our service staff) a suite newsletter to suite holders before every game.
2. Surveys. When we want to gather information, or opinions from our fans, E mail surveys work great. That last one I did was for our Colts Fan network. We sent out 500 surveys. 65% got opened, and of those opened, 65% were completed. Great source of marketing info - very efficient - and we can turn that info into money by imporving our sales and service offerings.
3. Product offerings. These are transactional E mails. Most recently we send out an E mail promoting our “brick” campaign which offers Colts fans a chance to purchase a personalized brick on the “walk of fame” at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Here are the direct reveue opportunities we get from E mail:
1. Sell display ads - just like on our Web site, banner ads are the primary revenue driver of E mail revenue. We base our pricing on the number of subscribers we have to our newsletters.
2. Sell “editorial” mentions - we also sell “text mentions and links” within E mail newsletters to sponsors
3. Data collection / sponsor opt in lists - sponsors want to build their own lists or at least have Colts fans answer questions. We use ExactTarget’s survey tool to do this. Sponsors also want to market directly to our fans. We use E mail to give fans opportunities to “opt in” to receive these offers directly from sponsors. Be careful. Make sure you follow strict privacy procedures before sharing anyone’s personal info or E mails!!
4. Subscriptions - we haven’t done this yet, but in theory, we could charge for newsletter subs.
Here’s a copy of our most recent “football” newsletter. You can see three banner positions (2 horizontal and one vertical)
Indirect revenues
1. Colts Surveys - as mentioned above, the intelligence we gain from surveys is turned into money later on as we apply our knowledge to our selling and service efforts. E mail is such and efficient mode of communication, and these surveys are so easy to do, they are very valuable.
2. Site traffic - Let’s not forget that every link inside the E mails drives traffic back to Colts.com. Since we sell our banner ads on the Website on a CPM basis, we make more money every time someone visits and views a page. So the newsletter generates money every time it’s read.
3. Confirmation E mails - This isn’t really “indirect” but keep in mind that anytime someone completes a transaction or fills out a form on your Website, you have an opportunity to send a “confirmation” E mail. This confirmation E mail is a benefit to to the customer. It reassures them that they accomplished their mission, and the confirmation E mail itself can carry ads, cross sell or upsell messages as well. The confirmation E mail can be “triggered” automatically based on customer behavior on your site. Very cool.
We are barely scratching the surface in terms of our use of E mail. As we have time, we want to develop more exclusive E mail content and more customized E mail products (targeted at niches of fan).
We chose ExactTarget primarily because it has the capability to serve dynamic content based on what we know about a particular E mail recipient. In other words, we can change editorial content and / or ads displayed inside each E mail “dynamically”. We don’t have to set up hundred of different versions. The versions are created on the fly based on database calls. This is critical. The more personalized and relevant the E mail, the better your results will be, and we don’t have time to monkey around with creative.
This year ExactTarget is integrating with Microsoft CRM. This integraton will make personalizing E mails even easier (we hope). We’re working right now to set this up on our servers so that we can really go to town. If you want to know more about ExactTarget, I would recommend you contact Daren. Drop me a line and I’ll give you his contact info.
Hope this helps!
I would consider branding another indirect source of revenue. For properties this is a highly undervalued element of their business. It is too often neglected or even ignored. Let me explain why:
The Colts are a business just like any other. One big difference is their company size/brand ratio. Think about how many people know the Indianapolis Colts (logo, name, color, etc.) and what it stands for (success, innovation, etc.) and then consider how few people actually work at the Colts. Of course, the same is true for every other pro sorts team. The effect one person within the organization can have on the overall brand is tremendous. Think about how the Mavericks, Falcons and Heat brands have changed over the past five years or so. It’s amazing! (That’s why I like working with properties, btw).
So, newsletters are another platform to enhance a team’s (brand) relationship with its fans. Granted it’s one of many, but it can be an important one for the team to continue talking to its customers especially during the off-season or down periods during the season.
Teams shouldn’t just send out newsletters just because everybody else does, but they should have a clear purpose for them and execute accordingly.