Permission marketing at work in minor league sports

Retention versus acquisition…

I like to think I’m pretty well grounded in the realities of both. When it comes to breaking up my workday however, I’d have to say I spend the majority of hours developing strategies around acquisition – on trial through advertising, web, promotions, etc.

This season I’m challenging myself to put forth more of an effort in the realm of retention, on boosting involvement for existing customers and strategizing ways to use existing fans to get new ones.

I’m calling it a FANS FIRST INITIATIVE… partly inspired by a pair of great reads: The Referral Engine by John Jantsch, and Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe.

The first opportunity to implement this new mantra came a couple weeks back when the Idaho Steelheads hired its next head coach, Hardy Sauter. Our staff recognized this as an opportunity to boost fan involvement… to engage!

The challenge: In the sports business, there’s a precedent – a tried and true formula for making these types of grand announcements. The protocol goes something like this: call a press conference, schedule it for the middle of the day, invited the local media (in our case a handful of peeps), and introduce the new bench boss to the fans through the ten o’clock news, the daily paper, or the local radio sports talk show. Traditionally a MEDIA FIRST event.

How we flipped the funnel: We moved the announcement to the evening, set up a social environment with free food and drinks, then called and personally invited all our season ticket holders and corporate partners to be the first to welcome Idaho’s new head coach to Boise. After an hour of personal introductions, hand shakes and well wishes, we formally introduced Hardy Sauter to the crowd of Steelheads hockey faithful. Yes, we also extended invitations to the local media, but we made this a FANS FIRST event.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010: Hardy Sauter introduced as Idaho's new head coach

Not surprising at all – we still garnered the same (maybe even more) media attention through the big three with coverage on local television, radio and print. More importantly, we included over 200 of our core customers in the announcement. On multiple occasions – our staff heard comments like, “thank you for including us.”

That’s a solid start imho!

There’s more to come on our FANS FIRST INITIATIVE. I’ll be posting additional entries as the offseason progresses and our plans and strategies start coming to life. Look for them sorted under the FANS FIRST category.