Personalized, Data-Driven Sports Marketing Delivers Revenue and Engagement Growth

Personalized, Data-Driven Sports Marketing Delivers Revenue and Engagement Growth

Persado's Motivation AI technology is helping professional sports marketers to generate personalized and data-driven marketing content at scale–resources they need to connect with fans on a deeper, more meaningful level. 

The AI engine leverages extensive retail experience to generate customized email marketing campaigns. Each message is tailored to incorporate the recipient’s specific interests, and to appeal to their motivations. 

For example, a casual fan may receive a message that includes a family-friendly promotion, while a die-hard supporter gets one with an exclusive experience or limited-edition merchandise offer.

Persado’s AI continuously learns and optimizes based on fan interactions enabling rights owners using the platform to gain a deep understanding of the messaging, emotional drivers, and offers that are most effective with different segments of the fan base–and to make constant refinements to their marketing strategies, which over time, leads to ever-improving results.

The tech has aided several MLB clubs in driving increased engagement and ticket sales this season (think: single game, suite, season, and various other packages). The four teams using the platform have experienced conversion increases in their web (+3.5%), SMS (+7.5%), and email marketing (+15%) efforts.

Generalist Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are great for boosting productivity and generating diverse content. However, because they draw results from the entire internet, they often include inaccuracies and/or unfocused information. Manual editing is often required to ensure output is on-brand and effective.

These platforms also lack behavioral context, which is problematic for sports properties often without the first-party data insights needed to power machine learning algorithms.

Understanding what motivates someone to take a specific action is the next adaptation of this advanced technology.

Persado’s Motivation AI software was built on real human interactions–and transaction data from 150 million consumers across the U.S. The tech has been refined by the equivalent of 645 years of A/B testing.

The rich data set enables Motivation AI to reliably craft emotion-informed messages that both align with an organization's brand guidelines and tone, and drive the consumer to take a precise action in ways generic models cannot (think: purchase game tickets).

While Persado’s technology remains a relative novelty in sports marketing circles, it has proven useful across the retail sector. Ally Bank, Gap, Coach, Marks & Spencer, and Verizon, have all used it to optimize consumer messaging and improve click-through rates; and make a bunch of additional money in the process.

Persado’s top 30 customers collectively realized more than $1.5 billion of incremental revenue growth over the last four years.

Persado’s success across retail and with MLB clubs is likely to convince other sports organizations to try incorporating Generative AI into their own marketing processes. Annual six-figure subscription costs aside, there is little reason for them not to. 

Users do not need specialized technical expertise to take advantage of the solution (it was designed for tech novices) and its ‘portal’ integrates seamlessly with all major email service providers.

So, how does it work? The process is simple and straightforward. 

1. Content Request Submission: The organization submits a content request on the Persado Portal.

2. Language Generation: Persado generates the language.

3. Internal Approvals and Feedback: The organization facilitates approvals with internal teams and delivers feedback in the Portal.

4. Content Revision and Preview: Persado revises the content, including language and previews.

5. Embedded Codes Provision: Persado provides embedded codes for the Email Service Provider or ESP.

6. Campaign Setup and QA: The organization uses the embedded codes to set up the campaign and conduct Quality Assurance.

7. Campaign Launch: The organization launches the campaign.

8. Results Reporting: Persado gets the ESP report and uploads the results to the Portal.

While Persado's Motivation AI has shown potential to enhance fan engagement and rights owner revenues, it’s imperative to approach the data collected to date with measured consideration (i.e. it’s still limited). Rights owners should do their own diligence to see how it might influence long-term growth, and explore the tech’s potential impact on fan loyalty, along with any data privacy or security concerns that may exist, before investing in and implementing the solution.

Any integrations needed within ones’ existing marketing tech stack, and platform scalability across different market sizes, should also be considered.

And remember, as with any emerging technology, Persado's Motivation AI is only going to get better with time. Deeper integration of real-time data sources and future developments in predictive analytics and marketing personalization techniques will only enhance its efficacy. 

With that said, the sports teams willing to embrace AI-driven marketing technologies now are the ones going to find new ways to engage fans, optimize operations, and drive revenue growth first.

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