76ers: Multi-Channel Campaign To Win Back Season Ticket Holders

Last week's case study was on Bella Pictures use of direct mail as part of their nurturing campaigns. Multi-channel campaigns give us some interesting options as they open up new angles of communication and, when well coordinated, reinforce messages we've seen in other channels.

I greatly enjoyed chatting with Mark Di Maurizio and the team running marketing for the Philadelphia 76ers as they market a product with a great emotional tie - the basketball team. They used a multi-channel campaign to enhance the emotional tie their fans had with the team and drive renewals. Here's the case study from Digital Body Language:

76ers: Multi-Channel Campaign To Win Back Season Ticket Holders


The purchase of seasons tickets for the Philadelphia 76ers is a purchase decision driven by the excitement and emotion that a basketball team brings its fans. It is also a purchase decision that involves a significant financial outlay, however, so the 76ers marketing team needed to ensure that they made the right emotional connections as they communicated with their audience.

A campaign to reconnect with past season ticket holders who had not renewed was initiated. A multi-channel campaign brought the excitement of the basketball experience to the target audience. First, a direct mail piece and a postcard were sent, inviting the recipients to a Select-A-Seat event. A follow-up email campaign shared the creative of the direct mail pieces, and both media types provided a personal URL (PURL) to each recipient that provided highly personalized content and introduced the recipient to their sales representative.

An outbound IVR-based phone campaign recorded by the 76ers president and general manager Ed Stefanski again invited recipients to the Select-A-Seat campaign. At each step, an option to jump straight to purchasing tickets was provided, and for those who showed interest by interacting with the marketing campaign, but either did not attend or did not purchase, the sales team followed up with directly.

The campaign was a great success, with numerous people rejoining the Sixers family as season ticket holders. The resulting revenue generated was more than 35 times the cost of the campaign. By using a variety of media types to bring the emotional experience of basketball into a marketing campaign, the 76ers were able to better connect with their audience.