Customer Relationship Management

A Market Under Pressure

Most professional sports organisations are operating in an intensely pressured marketplace where every possible source of income must be maximised. Quite simply, professional sports clubs need to increase their revenues. The larger clubs are seeing shrinking incomes from media deals, sponsors and transfer fees, yet their cost base and expectations of success remain sky high, whilst the smaller clubs constantly strive for the greater means to compete at a higher level.

How do you increase revenues?

Every club must exploit the assets available to it from maximizing ticket sales to using the stadium for non-match day events. The key to achieving this is through focusing on managing a more personal relationship with the individual supporter. Fans share a common attribute in their affinity for their club but the "fan" base as whole is a much more sophisticated audience with a wide socio-economic spread, a huge range of corporate associations, hobbies, and other interests. In potential marketing terms, the spending power is dramatically higher than the revenues currently generated from this source and it can be unlocked by knowing more about each fan.

The barriers to achieving this

Sports clubs face the same difficulties as many commercial organizations. Customer data is often distributed across the business from merchandising, ticketing and access control systems, to databases holding information about season ticket holders, members, shareholders, junior supporters and corporate hospitality sales. Rarely does this data form part of a central customer database preventing the club from building a complete and detailed profile of the fan base. Without this, they cannot hope to tap into it's potential fully.

The integrated approach from CIBER

CIBER has been an author and implementor of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions since 1996. Our integrated CRM and e-Marketing software allows clubs to manage their customer information from a single source by integrating with existing data from the other systems operating within the club. We are able to do this because Ascent CRM uses the latest Microsoft technologies, enabling it to link easily to these other data systems. Close working relationships with the providers of these systems, such as the ticketing vendor, Synchro Systems, Merchandising software vendor Medoc, and AptSkidata, for Access Control, amongst others, ensures that we not only integrate with their data but we understand how it can be used for targeting and segmentation purposes. It then becomes easy to profile a target audience for any campaign that the club or its associates wish to undertake, irrespective of the original source of the data while also ensuring that there is no duplication of customer data. The powerful profiling tools in Ascent then enable the club to segment and use this information to deliver much more personalised communications with each customer.

Improving the interaction with the support base

Maintaining a complete picture of your customers is only half of the story. Ideally you want to create a harmonious environment where the information is used to enhance the relationship with supporters through continuous, interactive communication between fan and club. Fans are committed members of the club. They want to belong and crave any personal communication from the club. As long as the club takes the time to understand their needs, the supporters will be willing recipients of any relevant propositions the club makes to them. The problem the club faces is in managing this two way communication. How do you create a situation where the supporter can participate in an ongoing dialogue with the club, reflecting his opinions and needs?

The answer is Ascent Marketing Communications, an e-mail based communications medium that utilises the profile held against the supporter to manage a personalised, relevant dialogue. By combining customized "micro-web sites" with traditional e-mail marketing capability, the supporter can become involved in the club's community. Fans can communicate back to the club with up-to-date contact details, areas of interest and opinions on anything from their favourite player to the quality of catering in the main stand. The essential element of the solution is that all of the supporter's movements around the web site and all of his responses are recorded back in the Ascent CRM database. This means everything from immediate purchasing decisions on tickets or merchandise to questionnaire responses is maintained against the supporter's profile. Not only does this close the loop on the original campaign, but it also gives us an invaluable insight into the supporter's areas of interest and thus creates more specific audiences for future campaigns.

Introducing CRM technology

Implementing a successful customer information management and interaction strategy is not just about the technology. Clubs need to be clear about their objectives; what is their business strategy? what are they trying to achieve with their support base? how are they are going to manage and make use of their customer data? how is the system going to help them? who is going to manage the system and run it on a daily basis? CIBER can bring a depth of experience to help with this but we also work closely with business advisers such as Sports Alliance Limited. They can help sports organizations develop customer focus strategies to maximize revenues and help them understand some of the cultural and change management issues they may face together with the impact of introducing new technology into an organization.

Making investment in IT affordable

This type of technology is aimed at helping to increase revenues, so it should be easy to demonstrate a return on investment. However, smaller clubs may not have access to large budgets, and some clubs' current finances may be under such pressure, that a significant capital investment may be daunting and difficult to fund. Ascent recognizes this and offers a package of software, consultancy and training services through a rental model. This enables the club to get up and running for a much more manageable monthly fee. Southend United, a third division club with very keen aspirations to grow its support base, and the revenues that go with it, is one of a number of clubs who have found this "low risk" model very attractive.

The value of CRM data to a club into the future

By building an informed and interactive dialogue based on good quality information, the club can increase loyalty and promote its products more effectively to supporters. This symbiotic relationship then becomes of immense interest to sponsors and suppliers of affinity products. Suppliers of consumer products and services would kill for the information that clubs can generate from their supporters and it is time for the clubs to capitalize on this. Any club that can gets it right, can offer its potential partners the attraction of associating themselves with a brand that has significant "pulling power", and a ready made ability to communicate with the fan as well, providing a direct route to the fan in his own home. Loyalty schemes can be incorporated in order to tie the supporter to products offered through the club. As long as the offerings reflect the supporter's specific requirements as he has defined them in his dialogue with the club, the potential increase in revenues is huge and sustainable.

Ascent for Sport

Ascent Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Communications is aimed at helping sports organisations manage and interact with all of their audiences more effectively. By developing an integrated approach to the management of your customer information, you can gain the ability to unite information from multiple sources, provide the ability to target and interact with fans on a much more personal basis and promote the club's products and facilities more effectively to supporters and corporate customers.

It will enable you to manage your customer information from a single source, and integrate with other existing data and systems across your club such as ticketing, merchandising, access control, and accounts.

Powerful profiling tools will then allow you to use this information effectively, combining with the simplicity of email, web communication and sophisticated response tracking to deliver an advanced permission based marketing tool that can help you personalise and enhance your communication with customers.

Increasing revenues from your support base could be easier than you think as Ascent helps you maximise revenue opportunities through your brand, customer loyalty, affinity products and services through its multi-channel Customer Information Management approach.