Sports marketers recognize the importance of engaging fans both on and off the court (or field, diamond, stadium, track, course… you get it). Achieving a connection and strengthening relationships with fans leads to higher fan lifetime value, which in turn drives ticket and merchandise sales.
NBA team The Minnesota Timberwolves is no stranger to this idea of fan engagement. The team looked to directly connect and communicate with their fans in real-time conversations by bringing social media into the arena during games.
ONLINE-OFFLINE CONVERGENCE FOR INCREASED LIFETIME VALUE
With Shoutlet, The Timberwolves initiated a ten-day campaign around a single hashtag: #WolvesMadness. Timberwolves fans followed the hashtag for opportunities to unlock incentives, including giveaways, foundation donations, and player meet-and-greets. Random winners were selected throughout the duration of the campaign to receive prizes available exclusively through social media. The campaign ended with Social Media Night: an interactive, live-streamed pregame show hosted by the Timberwolves’ web and social teams.
In addition to social, the Timberwolves brought the campaign to live games. In-arena promotions included: “Tweet #WolvesMadness” displayed on the scoreboard; social contests encouraging fans to submit votes using Twitter; and audience members holding #WolvesMadness letters during the third quarter. The campaign also received promotion on Fox Sports North during Timberwolves telecasts.
The marriage of online and offline was a huge success for the Timberwolves. In addition to driving over 320,000 people to the Timberwolves’ website during the duration of the promotion, the team gathered over 12,000 new Shoutlet fan profiles, whom they can target with future sales and marketing campaigns.
To learn more, including additional results and how Shoutlet helped, download our case study.
