Owning the Digital Customer Journey During Social Distancing

How can sports and entertainment venues engage with fans despite social distancing, AND achieve desirable outcomes for your venue and advertisers? Join our live conversation with Carson Goodale, CEO of FanFood and Michael Schreck, CEO of Collegiate Sports Management Group (CSMG) on the topic. They will offer actionable ideas on how to own the entire digital customer journey after re-opening. Mark your calendar 👉 Thursday, June 11th at 1 pm CST | 2pm EST. We will send you a confirmation email closer to the date. (If you can’t make it, you can still sign up to get the recording afterwards.) It’s more important than ever to understand, and take control of the customer journey at sports and entertainment events. While the country is gradually re-opening in phases, it’s unlikely that stadiums and arenas can operate at full capacity any time soon. That means operators and owners must shift to other channels where they can reach their customers — specifically, digital channels.

1. Provide the ultimate customer experience through digital means.

Based on a recent survey that FanFood conducted among close to 1,000 sports fans, over 81% surveyed indicated “likely” or “very likely” to order food on mobile devices to avoid dealing with the cashier or waiting in lines. With the heightened caution around being in close proximity of crowds, in-person interactions are gradually being phased out, and mobile devices have taken over to be the provider of a faster, easier and safer customer experience. Interestingly, 10.3% of those surveyed suggested that ordering food before the event will make them feel safer, since they don’t have to navigate through the crowd or lines in the foodservice area. In-venue ordering apps like FanFood allow fans to place their orders for scheduled pickup or delivery even days before the event. Not only will this bring a peace of mind to your customers, but also help the kitchen with predicting inventory and prepping beforehand.

The “Order Ahead” function in the FanFood app.

2. Access integrated data insights across digital channels.

The rise of digital fan engagement has been a recent phenomenon even before COVID-19. The industry has been waking up to the invaluable untapped benefits of owning the entire customer journey through digital means. One of the most important being data insights. Everyone now knows the importance of data, but feel understand how to systematically collect, integrate, analyze and act on it. What we know if that a single source of data is never enough – that’s why so many teams are using data warehouses, data lakes, and more recently transitioning to customer data platforms. But it really takes multiple data gathering channels to get the full picture of a user’s journey:

Data checklist for successful customer journey mapping:

Ticketing data
Website pixels and cookies
Mobile Apps
- Team app
- Ordering app
Fan interest data such as social and surveys
E-commerce (team store etc.)
Community event attendance

In the webinar, Carson and Mike will talk about how exactly you can gather data from customers and how you can act on the data insights after the event.

3. Generate higher ROI for your advertisers using digital assets.

We have written a pretty comprehensive blog on why digital asset inventory is essential today for game day sponsorship activations. Traditional assets such as billboards and banner ads are quickly losing favor due to the smaller turnout post COVID-19 (combined with the fact that one can’t track how many impressions they actually receive). In today’s climate, mobile brand engagement is the key In one of our latest podcast episodes, Scott San Emeterio, CEO & Founder of Ball Street Trading said:“I don’t believe that something as simple as just slapping on a banner ad, as we have seen with traditional advertising, is the way to do things…you are just throwing $25,000 down the tubes that have no engagement whatsoever.” And we couldn’t agree more. We have managed to prove that customers using FanFood to order concessions during an event has an average brand exposure of 4 minutes when the sponsor’s logo is featured in the app. That’s something you can’t measure with a signboard inside a stadium.

Examples of sponsor logo feature in the FanFood app.

To learn more about the topics discussed in this blog, please sign up for our free webinar on Thursday, June 11th at 1 pm CST | 2pm EST. If you can’t make it, you can still sign up to get the recording afterwards.