Sports Marketing In The Age Of Social Media

By Frank Reed

In an attempt to give our readers some real world application of all this social media theory swirling about we will be occasionally speaking with some real people who do the real work. How about that? Today we look at social media and the sports world.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a sports fan. I say a bit because I am no longer playing any fantasy leagues etc so I am not a sports fanatic. I am primarily a New York area sports fan but not the usual kind (Giants, Mets, Devils. I could care less about the NBA). People in that area are pretty passionate about their sports and that’s how I learned to be a fan.

Now times have changed considerably. It is difficult for the everyday fan to afford attending actual games (especially if a family is involved). As a result the connection to sports is changing and social media is creating a whole new channel for the fans to interact and be a part of the action that they may not get at the stadium or the ballpark.

Pat Coyle of Coyle Media has been involved in the social side of sports for quite a while now. Pat has worked as the Director of Marketing for the Indianapolis Colts and helped create MyColts.net, which is an active online community for the fans of the NFL franchise. I talked to Pat about this and other social media projects he has underway.

Frank: Since most people in the social media industry came from somewhere else what is your background?

Pat: I have always had an interest in ways technology impacts human communication. I am a Chicago native came out of a direct marketing and sales career to be the Director of marketing for the Colts. I left to start a company and returned to the Colts after five years to be the Director of Digital Business for four years. Coyle Media, my consultancy to the sports industry, is now 2 years old.

Frank: So tell us about Coyle Media and what you are doing?

Pat: Coyle Media has two legs at this point. One is Sports 2.0, which has its own community at sportsmarketing20.com. The focus of my sports practice is to help teams (and other properties) make money through digital media. The main revenue sources we assist with are sponsorship, ticket sales and community building.

The other part of Coyle Media is a social media platform called SmallerIndiana.com, which is a hyper-local online community we launched 2 years ago. It has grown to 8,000 members, and is driven by a sponsorship business model.

The consulting business keeps me very busy so the communities, while growing, could use more of my time. That’s the nature of the online community business but I’m not complaining.

Frank: You started and have grown MyColts.net. Tell us about that.

Pat: The theory is simple: connect fans to each other and you connect them closer to your brand. Colts fans want to socialize with other fans. They want to be seen and recognized and they want to feel like they’re getting inside access. MyColts.net was designed to give fans all three of these things. We figured if we could engage fans through social media, it would give us another way to help sponsors engage with fans and it would give us another channel through which we can sell merchandise and tickets. So far the site has over 28,000 registered members.

Research showed as well that while there are ticket buying fans that are in the Indianapolis region the greater number of Colts fans actually reside throughout the country. This site gives them a chance to become more involved in the team without ever likely being able to attend a game.

Frank: What are your thoughts on the NFL and their attempts to limit social media interaction with the athletes and fans?

Pat: I run a little counter to the “let it be wide-open” crowd. I can see the side of ownership and the need to protect their investments. While most think that the owners are just rich guys getting richer, they are actually taking on all the risk so their desire to keep things contained to protect the brand are less about being “old school’ and more about doing good business.

I do, however, think ownership must face the fact that fans are gaining control, so their habit of controlling content may have to evolve rapidly in order to allow fans to do what they do. While it will be an interesting transition it will be best for everyone in the long run.

Frank: How will social media effect how sports are marketed and sold in the future?

Pat: There is a HUGE opportunity to tap Facebook and Twitter in combination with team social communities in order to add value to fans’ experiences, create opportunities for sponsors and make money for the team. But these things won’t happen by accident. Teams need to make them happen.

So far, most teams do not have anyone running their digital channels. I think that needs to change if teams are going to tap the full potential of digital. I hope to see teams begin to optimize their sites for sponsorship and ticket sales. In fact, that’s the focus of my Sports 2.0 service…to help teams optimize their digital channels to drive profits.

The biggest idea in my brain right now is a way to help teams sell tickets through the social graph. I am working on this one and will let you know more when it’s ready. I am really excited about the prospects for sports teams as a result and I think the future of sports marketing will be heavily concentrated here.

Frank: Thanks for your time. We look forward to seeing how the sports industry embraces social media and how you will help shape the way we interact with sports teams in the future.

You can see more of Pat’s thoughts on these subjects at patcoyle.net

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Email Marketing Industry Needs Standardization

More than 95 percent of email marketers measure their campaigns but many do use the results to support their budgeting goals, according to EmailStatCenter.com’s “State of Email Metrics,” sponsored by Campaigner.

When asked how often they measure results, 57 percent said they measure results 24-48 hours after deployment. Only 18 percent said they measured results on an annual basis.

“One thing that I find noticeable is the lack of revisiting campaigns and their metrics on a more frequent basis,”Luc Vezina, vice president of marketing at Campaigner, said.

“In order to truly use email metrics for the betterment of your campaigns and gather key learnings from them, marketers must continually evaluate and benchmark their campaigns, in addition to looking at them immediately after the send.”

Email campaigns were usually measured for success, but just half of email marketers said they used metrics for budgeting or forecasting.

Respondents had a range of email marketing budgets, but the largest number of markets (31%) budgeted less than $50,000 annually.

Simms Jenkins, founder of EmailStatCenter.com said,” It is clear from these responses that there is a strong need for metric definition and standardization across the email marketing industry and that metrics are a very valuable tool in measuring and maintaining success.”

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10 More Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email

By Janine Popick

The Wall Street Journal Recently published the story, Why Email No Longer Rules. The writer, Jessica E. Vascellaro, talks a lot about the increasing number of people jumping on the social media bandwagon, and how that could have a negative effect on the way people use email today. Are people jumping on the social media bandwagon? You betcha! And why not? It’s free, easy to use, and you can communicate to the masses. But are they using email less? Nielsen doesn’t seem to think so in some recent research they’ve done.

So I started thinking about how this is the antithesis of what we’ve been seeing in our own customers businesses, and I really wanted to write about it. However, ME writing about it seems somewhat self-serving, since well, I run an email marketing company.

Then I got an EMAIL forwarded to me that Chris Crum at WebProNews had come to the rescue and already wrote about all of the things I’ve been thinking about relating to how consumers are using email and social media.

So here is Chris’s story “10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email.”

I decided to add my own .02 about how marketers feel about this article: 10 More Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email.

11. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that’s what they are, companies. Even though email is host to 279 million users vs. 301 million users of social media according to Nielsen, email isn’t going anywhere soon with many companies offering it as a service. Twitter and Facebook are just two companies that likely make up most of the social media users.

12. Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes. They’ll not likely let their boss know that they’ve finished the spreadsheet and are ready for the meeting now by posting to Twitter. If they don’t use their business email address they probably also have a personal email account that they like to receive your email-only specials.

13. You can’t easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing in Twitter & Facebook for the optimal response.

14. You can’t tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets so that you can follow up with them again because they might be interested in your content.

15. That said, you can’t tell who didn’t click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message trying to get them to take action.

16. You cannot personalize your Facebook updates. This has been proven to boost response in any marketing campaign you do.

17. You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook. You can’t use them at all in Twitter. Graphics help tell a story.

18. You can’t track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook unless you use a third party URL shortener [Ed's note: This feature appears to be on the way though].

19. You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter leaving it impossible to put multiple messages in one Tweet.

20. You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life. Some customers might not care about that vacation you took where you…let’s just say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Am I against the use of social media as a marketing tool? Hell no! I love it. I’ve written about how Twitter & email marketing work together, and I’ve written how to use Facebook to grow your email lists. I’ve also written about how to post your email marketing campaign to your Twitter and Facebook pages to get more readers of your newsletters because I feel that these are two mediums that complement each other very nicely. Why? Because no one is going away from email anytime soon, and people are using social media as well. What are you seeing?

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