So the UEFA women’s Euros attendance proved once and for all that women’s sports are in demand. Records after records, especially for attendance and streaming, have been broken in this last year alone. Naturally, women’s clubs should capitalize on this. They should turn this hunger for more into more revenue, fan engagement and find ways to boost their sponsorship value too. The sports CDP provides unique opportunities, especially for women in sports. That’s why in today’s post we are detailing CDP use cases women’s clubs should leverage immediately.
Before we dive right in...
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Leveling the playing field
If you are a regular reader of our blog, you know that women’s sports receive less media coverage than men’s. Although, this is indeed improving. However, this limited media coverage affects women’s earning ability. On average women’s sports receive about 7% of all media coverage globally.
Nevertheless, a lot of positive changes have been happening. For example, for the first time ever, the EA sports Fifa 23 videogame features a woman on its cover. Women’s football is seeing record game day attendance. The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup had a record attendance of 86,174 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia. Here are a few stats from the Official ICC cricket website on that game:
- Most watched women’s cricket event ever – 1.1 billion video views across ICC digital channels and 5.4 billion viewing minutes in India
- Highest attendance for a women’s cricket event globally and highest attendance for a women’s sporting event in Australia – 136,549 total
- The final – most watched women’s cricket match ever on TV in Australia – 1.2 million viewers
- The final – record attendance for a women’s sport match in Australia and second highest attendance for a women’s sport match globally – 86,174
From the above examples, we can see that, firstly, the appetite for women’s sports goes beyond just football. But secondly, that real money can be made in women’s football. Based on these engagement metrics, and naturally the number of tickets sold, we know that the business of women’s sports is lucrative. So, although it is important to acknowledge the challenges, it is even more important to acknowledge the opportunities for growth.
Now, it’s a matter of exploring those opportunities. And to do that in a foolproof way, we recommend using a sports CDP right from the beginning. All sports organizations need a CDP to grow and thrive. Women’s sports organizatons are no exception.
How to use this blog post
We will give you 6 CDP use cases women’s clubs should be leveraging, as a starting point. However, this list will be far from exhaustive or extensive. So use this as a guide on how to get started. Nevertheless, just because we are saying that this is a starting point does not mean that the list has a date of obsoletion. You can use just this list over and over again and still get compounded effects, time after time. We will provide links to more in-depth resources for each use case. This will help you get all the information you need to hit the ground running. So, bookmark this and share it with your team for the best results.
What are CDP use cases?
A CDP, a Customer Data Platform, has many uses. So, when we say CDP use cases, we mean all the different ways you can use a CDP to meet your organizational goals. If you are thinking, wait a minute, but what is a CDP? That’s okay too. While we won’t go into the details about its functionality in this post, we have written plenty on this very subject. Here’s a courtesy reading list to get you up to speed.
- What is a CDP
- Benefits of a Customer Data Platform
- Why sports organizations need a CDP
- Data Collection: why a CDP is your best choice
- Masterclass: CDP Fundamentals
Even so, in a nutshell, a sports CDP allows you to collect (and unify), analyze and act on your data. This, in order to, use those insights to increase your fan engagement, ticket and merchandise sales and boost your sponsorship, among other things. A CDP is what sports organizations who mean business use to take their dreams from paper to reality. So, don’t give up hope on your dreams because with a CDP, all things are possible. Even record sales and income. Don’t believe us? Have a look at the customer success story below.
6 Powerful CDP use cases women’s clubs can start implementing today
We will look at the 6 CDP use cases under two categories; increasing revenue and fan engagement. In other words, all the use cases below can either help you, primarily, do the former or the latter. Bear in mind that both these metrics are dependent on one another. Meaning, an increase in fan engagement has a positive correlation with an increase in revenue. And vice versa. So, it’s not one or the other. But rather, both.
Fan engagement
Like we mentioned before, the appetite for women’s sports is certainly high. So how can women’s sports clubs ride this wave to increase their own fan engagement? We start with this category because if you have a good fan engagement strategy, increasing revenue becomes a natural consequence. So, a good fan engagement strategy by default, helps you increase your revenue. For example, if you create a good campaign to mobilize enough supporters to buy season tickets for your next season, you inevitably increase your revenue. So how can you drive fan engagement?
Data collection and unification
One of the most important CDP use cases women’s clubs should be leveraging is data collection and unification. You have probably heard by now about the importance of working data-driven. It helps you be more intentional in your quest for success. Furthermore, you can monitor, measure and replicate this success better when working data-driven. However many women’s sports organizations have struggled in this area because:
- They have all their data stored in separate sources. This makes the data incoherent and it tells many different stories that are not unified. Therefore, it will be a lot harder and cumbersome to extract any value from this data.
- Not only that, but this data is most often uploaded manually and therefore can become outdated quickly.
- They cannot easily share the data they store with other people and other departments, making data-transparency (the ability to easily share your data) near impossible.
Data collection and analysis is one of the most crucial CDP use cases, if not the most crucial. With a CDP you can fulfill the above criteria and more. You can:
- Store your data in one place in its most unified and coherent form. Meaning that you get a single source of truth to power all your organizational decision making. Additionally, you get a 360-degree view of your supporters. Which makes all the difference, as you will begin to notice before the end of this blog.
- Both automatically and manually upload your data. Which means your data will always be as rich as possible and uptodate. Meaning, you can actually breathe a sigh of relief and trust your data.
- Share your data with relevant people and departments. Making data-transparency a part of your data-driven organizational culture.
- Not only do you get all these benefits, but you can also analyze and act on your data.
Which leads us to …
Data Analysis and Segmentation
With the demand for more women’s sports, some clubs have struggled in their communications. How do you communicate effectively with supporters when you have so many of them? Or maybe you might think, well I don’t have that many. But even if you had five fans, no two fans are the same. So how do you communicate effectively with them? The answer is through segmentation. And this is one of the most ground-breaking CDP use cases women’s clubs should be using. But before that, let’s briefly touch on data analysis.
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Data analysis
Data analysis is the practice of working with data to extract useful information, which can then be used to make informed decisions (Coursera). The purpose of data analysis is to firstly, get useful information about your supporters so that you can, secondly, make informed decisions. In order for you to, in the first place get this useful information, you need to work with a simple and easy to understand data analytics framework. Meaning, you should be able to easily understand things like:
- How many supporters have bought season tickets versus one-off tickets
- Who these supporters are (their profiles)
- How many supporters have bought your merchandise
- Where they bought this merchandise, online or offline
- The supporter lifetime value of your supporters at an aggregate level and an individual level
Now this is only the beginning. The important thing to bear in mind is that, you should be able to analyze your data easily.
Now back to segmentation.
Segmentation is the process of dividing your target market into groups of potential supporters with similar needs and behaviors. Doing so helps you sell to each supporter group using distinct strategies tailored to their needs.
What does this look like practically?
- When you have your transactional, demographic, and behavioral data in the CDP you decide what attributes you want to segment. For each attribute, you decide which conditions to apply.
- You can choose from a range of attributes like total revenue, purchase frequency, favorite product, and location. The Data Talks Sports CDP is completely flexible, you just need to bring the data.
- By applying these conditions you get a specific group of supporters (your target audience) that all share the same traits/behavior/preferences.
Women’s sports organizations need to hone in on this powerful use case to ensure that they have a full understanding of their supporters. Which will in turn help them reach them better. Now, after all the attendance records that have been broken across different women’s sports, we know that the question has shifted. It has shifted from “do people even like women’s sports” to “how can we reach all our fans who are hungry for more from us”. So make sure to implement segmentation because it is one of the most effective CDP use cases women’s clubs can use.
Act on your data
The key to leveling the playing field for women and indeed capitalizing on the appetite for women’s sports is action. So, all that meticulous data collection would be all for nothing if you can’t act on it. Numbers don’t speak for themselves. They need to be analyzed for them to be useable. And then you need to act on them. But most tools that store data struggle to analyze the data. That’s not the case with a CDP. A CDP empowers you to act on your supporter insights making this one of the most powerful CDP use cases women’s clubs can leverage today.
How you can act on your supporter insights
Another way you can act on your supporter insights obtained from a CDP is through strategic marketing. Meaning, you can have a clear understanding of the timing and messaging of your marketing communications with your supporters during specific campaigns you might run in the future through:
- Personalized email campaigns
- Targeted SMS send-outs
- Timed in-app push messages
- A classic mail to through the postbox
- Exclusive updates on your OTT-platform
- VIP members-only in membership platforms
- Automatically triggered campaigns
A sports CDP allows women’s clubs to really walk the talk. No more hoping and wishing. It’s time women’s clubs used technology to help them get ahead. So this is one of the most crucial CDP uses cases women’s clubs need to use.
Personalization
Another one of the most powerful and effective CDP use cases women’s clubs can run with today, is personalization. This process is what we call, “getting the right message, to the right supporter, at the right time and through the right channel”.
Why is personalization one of the most important CDP use cases for women’s clubs?
In a nutshell, you can use a CDP to:
- Firstly, figure out who you are trying to send your message to. That is, your audience. A CDP empowers you to really understand who your supporters at both the micro and macro levels. For the former, you will understand your individual supporters via their web and purchase behaviour for example. And for the latter, you can have a broad overview of how your supporters behave in general. For example, you will know that X amount of supporters tend to buy season tickets while Y amount tend to buy single tickets.
- Secondly, you can get an understanding of what the message is based on the above information. For example, if someone has bought season tickets before, your messaging will not be an offer for a discount for first time season ticket buyers. No. That message will be appropriate for supporters who have never purchased a season ticket before.
- Thirdly, you will get a greater appreciation of when the message recipient would most likely appreciate receiving your message and thus engage with it. For example, while some supporters don’t tend to buy tickets straight away, it would be unwise to send them a prompt to buy a ticket, a day after they received the first notification. With a sports CDP, you can keep track of when you have reached out to your supporters and the next time you should reach out to them.
- Last but not least, you will also know the best channel to engage with each individual supporter. Do your supporters prefer email or SMS communications? Or would they prefer a QR code on social media? You can find this all out when you have a sports CDP in use.
Bear this in mind
All four components are necessary in order for any kind of communication to be considered personalized. So, if you can do one or the other, it’s not enough. Women’s sports organizations need this especially to ensure that all communication are relavent and thus effective. This is one of the most important CDP use cases women’s clubs should be implementing. Women’s clubs can therefore not afford to not implement this one. But thankfully with the CDP, it’s all easy and straight forward.
How to increase your revenue through the sports CDP
This is probably one of the most pressing CDP use cases women’s clubs grapple with today. But worry not. We have you covered. We will give you two more CDP use cases to help you increase your revenue. Bear in mind, however, that we said that fan engagement is a big contributor to high revenue. So all the above CDP use cases are still very relevant. But here are two more:
Boost your sponsorship value
Do you know what Euros and all other sports with record-breaking attendances have done for women’s sports organizations? They have increased their negotiating power. Since record attendances show that there is a huge market, sponsors are eager to invest. Just read the quote below:
The Lionesses are poised to increase their sponsorship value tenfold after their win on Sunday, PR experts have predicted, with individual players likely to secure lucrative brand deals and endorsements worth millions of pounds
– Aamna Mohdin | Community Affairs Correspondent for the Guardian
How would this work?
Let’s give you two alternatives. You can leverage your supporter data to negotiate higher sponsorship deals. You can also use the same segmentation process that we discussed above to find yourself the right sponsors. Your CDP will help you with:
- Identifying potential sponsors
- Finding your supporters brand affinity to your potential sponsors
- Forecasting and proving a return-on-investment
- Implementing your sponsorship campaigns so you get results
- Monitoring and adjusting your campaign communications to keep reaping results
Isn’t this just fantastic news for women’s sports? This is definitely one of the most game changing CDP use cases women should take advantage of.
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Leverage new sources of revenue
Have you listened to our episode with Arianna Criscione, director of women’s sports at N3XT sports on our Sports CDP crash course podcast yet? In the episode she talks about how OTT platforms have been a game changer for women’s sports. With the rapid introduction of new technologies that we experience thanks to the hyper-digitalized world that we live in, finding new sources of revenue has become increasingly easier. In the past sports organizations relied heavily on game day ticket sales and merchandise sales. But nowadays you have more options. These include:
- Over-the-top streaming services (OTT) such as YouTube (seriously, listen to the Arianna Criscione episode)
- Broadcasting rights
- Ad revenue from your website, OTT platforms and own applications, to name a few
- Social media post sponsorships
- Partnerships
- Monetization of athlete and organization stories (athletes as ambassadors)
- Omni-channel services such as allowing your supporters to purchase food and beverages online while attending games in person.
How this can work
The sky is the limit on this. And with a sports CDP, you can identify all these opportunities through analyzing your data. For example, if it’s evident that a large proportion of your supporters prefer online interactions such as watching your games online, you can cater to their need. You would therefore have double the revenue. That is, revenue from your in-stadium game and revenue from your OTT platform. And if you are broadcasting on television, that’s a triple killing. But you need a sports CDP in order to identify these opportunities and leverage them fully.
Additionally women’s sports fans are unique in that they are highly tech savvy and most of them are what we call fluid fans. They are:
- Open to Change – more willing than ever to change their minds
- Empowered to Choose – presented with more choices than ever before
- Continuously Evolving – continuously discovering new content to love
But with a CDP women’s clubs can fully understand their supporters’ behavior. And go one step further – secure higher sponsorships with that data and understanding. Making this one of the most crucial CDP use cases women’s clubs should be implementing.
CONCLUSION
The Euros have proven to us that the metaphorical harvest is ready for the reaping when it comes to women’s sports. The next few years are very crucial for women’s clubs. The Euros are now behind us but the Fifa World Cup is around the corner. What practical steps are you going to take to put your sports club in the best possible standing?
The CDP is effective for all sports clubs. But today we wanted to direct it specifically to women so that they can see how they could also benefit from the sports CDP. We call the CDP the great equalizer because it is a powerful tool to use to level the playing field between small clubs and big clubs for example. And of course, between men and women’s clubs. The odds have never been so much on the favour of women’s sports like they are now. So it would be a shame to not ride the waves into unprecedented success.
So in sum,
You should use a sports CDP to power your journey to high fan engagement and high revenue. In sum, you can do this through:
- Data collection and unification
- Data analysis and segmentation
- Acting on your data collected in the CDP
- Personalization
- Boosting your sponsorship value
- Finding new revenue sources
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