Imagine you're at a college sports game. Whether it's baseball, football, basketball, or any other sport — the crowd goes wild for each touchdown, homerun, or goal. The thing is that the crowd is limited by seats in the stands, the location of the game, and the date/time. Only a fraction of your fans get to be in the seats for a game. Students may be in class, alumni are all over the world, and some fans just can't make it to the game. When you're working within the realm of collegiate sports, you need to keep all your fans in mind — not just those in the stands.
Think of your collegiate sports marketing; what does it consist of? You likely have posters advertising the games, announcements around campus, and a website hosting the games live stats so fans can see the score in real time. All of these are great to promote your team, but there are collegiate sports marketing strategies that really take your fan engagement to the next level.
Let's start with the live stats on your website. There are services out there that allow you to have your website populate with the current score of the game, which is a great first step in offering your fans the opportunity to stay in the loop! But, what is we could take this engagement opportunity one step further?
This is your opportunity to add collegiate sports marketing to your live stats. Imagine if you were able to send all fans a text the second your team scores a goal, send a recap at the end of the game with the top highlights, or share half time events. With the right SMS marketing platform, you can accomplish all this and really complement your existing live stats and marketing practices.
Here are the top three things the right SMS marketing platform can do for your team to boost fan engagement and improve existing marketing practices.
Boost engagement with your team during games.
We touched on this briefly above when speaking of live stats. Having live stats on your website is great for people who are able to monitor a screen for the duration of the game. But, what about those who are at work or on the go and can't make use of your website's live stats?
Give them the option to stay in the loop by connecting your live stats to an automated SMS campaign that sends subscribers a text whenever a goal is scored, a penalty is called, or any other important thing happens in the game.
SMS is the perfect channel for these alerts because of the immediacy with which text messages are opened – typically in less than three minutes!
Promote easy sign-ups.
Perhaps the biggest struggle when cultivating a fan base is getting the information you need to interact with them. With SMS marketing, you can leverage shortcode signups so all contacts have to do to get updates is text you. That's it!
You can promote your shortcode on your existing marketing materials by including it on your posters, sending it out in emails, or including it in announcements. This gives interested fans an easy way to stay connected even when they're not at a game.
Host in-game contests.
While the main appeal of including SMS marketing may be to engage fans who cannot attend by complementing your live stats and automatically sending messages when goals are scored, there is also the capability for SMS marketing to increase engagement with fans in the stands.
Use your SMS marketing platform to host an in-game contest. For example, at halftime, you could have attendees text in the answer to a trivia question about a player. If they get it right, they are automatically entered into a draw and the winner is picked at the end of the game!1
Adding SMS to your collegiate sports marketing allows you to increase engagement, boost attendance, and easily gather fan information for further communications. SMS marketing also allows you to complement your existing marketing practices and website live stats. Imagine being able to trigger automatic SMS messages to fans based on events that happen during a game.
If you'd like to learn more about how SMS marketing can work for you, sign up for a free 14-day trial.
