No matter what type of event you are marketing there are extremely valid lessons you can learn from the way that professional sports teams leverage the power of mobile promotion. With half of all Americans in the critical 18 to 35 year old age group following at least one sports team, and over a third of all active in social media commenting about their team, mobile devices and sports events have forged a marriage made in marketing heaven. Some of the most innovative and powerful mobile marketing strategies are being developed by sports organizations and the basic tenets which they harness are applicable to just about any event.

Facilitate community interactions

One of the primary strategies utilized by sports teams is the establishment of a custom-branded mobile app which functions as a social engagement platform in order to reach out to the fans and connect them more profoundly to both the team and the individual athletes. A number of these apps work as interactive dashboard functions which allow the user to continuously monitor the live stats of the team as well as each individual player, integrate the primary social media feeds, and facilitate community interactions so that the continual conversation knows no bounds.

Attendance is highly rewarded

However, the sports marketer does not stop at simply facilitating the interaction of the fans with the team and with each other as they combine an active strategy of providing ample rewards for shares as well as a variety of other activities, with attendance being the most highly rewarded activity of them all. Opt-in processes are widely applied in sports marketing as we have all seen the various ways that these marketing masters are able to integrate into every imaginable aspect of their campaigns from brochures to bus side ads to billboards to TV commercials the encouragement to “Text TEAMFAN to 080808 to enter into the VIP playoff ticket draw!” The fan response acts as an opt-in that allows the marketer to provide future offers and information about the team.

The subsequent permission step is rarely an obstacle

There is a somewhat linear response mechanism where the more of these special event and ticket offers these sports teams launch, the faster their marketing list burgeons. Of course there is always the legal requirement to obtain formal and conventional permission prior to entering any name into an email subscription list, but once the attendee has participated to the extent of sending a text or similar action, the subsequent permission step rarely presents much of an obstacle. Sports team marketers never forget that the bottom line is to get the attendee to the event and that is a business element which is shared by all event marketers, whether you’re promoting a concert, a trade show, a quilt expo, or a World Series game.

Single click ticketing is critical

The merchandising aspect of the mobile sports marketing strategy is one of the best developed of all the various factors as the apps of major teams invariably provide a wealth of apps developed in-house as well as third party customizable variants which provide the team extremely lucrative access to audience data which can be utilized to get that box office ringing. One of the most important provisions in these types of box office driven event strategies is the creation of a mobile environment where the user is at ease with the various functions as they are streamlined to the ultimate degree. You will rarely find a team app which requires more than a single click to engage in the ticketing process as wise sports team marketers are well aware that the more actions you require your audience to perform in order to convert to a sale, the fewer tickets you will sell.

Sport team mobile marketers are experts in keeping their fans informed on the latest schedules, details, and announcements about their events in a fully interactive manner. Their ability to keep this bilateral communication system active at a high degree of efficiency allows them to build a widespread audience which translates into a powerful revenue stream for their events, as it can for yours!