subtle ways, while making the pursuit of
long-term rewards as seamless and self-
managing as possible. We’ve heard in too
many focus groups, ‘Please don’t give me
another points card to carry around!’”
Finally, Last says he’s also a big fan of
“RFM” (recency, frequency, monetary) to
decide quantitatively which customers are
the best ones by examining how recently
a customer has purchased, how often they
purchase, and how much the customer
spends.
“So if we know that a group of custom-
ers have bought the jerseys of a particular
player, we can target them with collateral
material featuring the same player,” Last
says. “Of course, if the file is large enough,
you can also conduct multivariate tests
and see which collateral pulls better
against different segments.”
to occasionally sprinkle in some subtle
sales messages, and to also measure results
for clients.
Continued >
natural fit because they have a ready-made fan base,” Razzaque says.
The company says the typical pro
sports team has about 3,000 super fans
who share content to a total average audience of 1. 2 million people — a far more
effective and affordable way to connect
to fans compared to traditional cost-per-
Twitter With a Twist
Of course, many sports teams have
been striking out on their own, especially
when it comes to social media as a marketing tool. Take the Denver Broncos
— they claim to be the first NFL team to
announce the firing of a head coach (Josh
McDaniels in 2010) via social media.
Since then, Twitter has landed a permanent spot on the squad. In fact, the
Broncos have been tweeting for the past
five years. And when John Elway rejoined
the team in 2011 as an operations executive, he added social media to his playbook. Since joining Twitter, Elway has
reached out to fans by announcing trades,
signings and cuts with social media.
Today, more than 40 Bronco players
have joined Elway in representing the
team on Twitter and giving fans a locker-room style look into the lives of NFL
players.
And now a new company is helping
sports teams add some yardage to their
Twitter and other social media efforts.
Brian Razzaque started Social Toaster, a
social marketing firm in Baltimore, in
2010 as a way help organizations, businesses, individuals — anyone, really, who
has an audience or fan base — get their
message out via social media to strengthen relationships with useful information,
