TargetPoint Consulting recently had the pleasure of working with Mike DuHaime and the New Jersey Devils to help them identify new fans and reach out to them with customized promotions. The Wall Street Journal covered our efforts in the article, “Selling Tickets the New Jersey Way.”
Using the same MicroTargeting techniques we pioneered for political campaigns, we’re helping to revolutionize the world of sports marketing as well:
After studying people who had bought Devils tickets over the past 10 years, Mr. DuHaime and his team created 11 profiles of typical team fans, ranging from “active families” to “upper income dads” to young professionals still living at home.
Then they analyzed residents of central and northern New Jersey—about 2.8 million people—to identify who else shared those characteristics. The result was a master list of about 500,000 names—people across New Jersey who look, act, and seem to enjoy the same activities as Devils fans but had yet to buy tickets.
And it’s working:
The team has since followed up with almost 100,000 names from the list of half a million potential fans, sending customized pitches for partial-ticket plans.
Through Nov. 4, the Devils said their partial-plan ticket revenue had increased 85% over last year—to nearly $1.3 million; revenue from the ’09-10 season was just over $700,000.
In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, with so many things competing for customers’ attention, it takes innovative methods like MicroTargeting to break through the clutter. Highly targeted, narrowly customized appeals, crafted with the aid of sophisticated data analysis are just the tool that marketers need to get results in this tough advertising environment. Jeff Vanderbeek, the owner of the Devils summed it up best: “To think that you could just sit here and employ the same methods that you used to 10, 15 years ago, you have to have an edge.”
