Collaboration and communication are key aspects to enticing fans and driving ticket sales for the Indiana Pacers basketball franchise. The strategy is the focus of a keynote talk at the upcoming ICX Summit in June.
Enticing fans, engaging with fans and connecting with fans are the prime drivers in a digital lead generation strategy that the Indiana Pacers organization undertook that focused on integrating customer forms and optimizing automation processes.
The basketball franchise is focused on improving processes to drive ticket sales and increase revenue and found success with a solution developed by its internal customer engagement department.
The strategy is the focus of a keynote, “How the Indiana Pacers Scored Big with Automation and Data-driven Decision-making,” at the upcoming Interactive Customer Experience Summit, hosted by Networld Media Group, being held June 1-3 at the Hilton Columbus at Easton in Ohio.
The annual event, hosted by Networld Media Group’s Interactive Customer Experience Association, is a three-day conference that provides a forum for B2C executives to share success stories and how they are utilizing interactive technologies to enhance the customer experience. The association’s mission is to connect the brands, suppliers, agencies and more who are working to create transcendent customer experiences.
The Pacers’ keynote presenters are Sydney Lesko, marketing cloud manager, and Taylor Bloom, associate director of customer engagement, for Pacers Sports & Entertainment.
Lesko has been with Pacers Sports and Entertainment for almost three years and strives to connect and build automations between the CRM and marketing cloud to optimize solutions for PS&E and gain insights for internal stakeholders. Her top projects include automated and multi-step journeys, Interaction Studio data capture use cases, and optimizing a newly-launched SMS program, a messaging system that allows fans to opt-in to receive information about Pacers Sports and Entertainment.
Bloom has five-plus years of experience in the sports industry and is a Salesforce Pathfinder alumna. She is leading the customer engagement space as the associate director of Salesforce products at Pacers Sports and Entertainment.
RetailCustomerExperience reached out to Lesko and Bloom in an email interview for an early preview of their keynote presentation.
Q. The strategy involved modernizing Key Performance Indicators. What prompted that effort? What was the issue and how did you go about internally assessing the best way to find a solution?
A. As we know COVID impacted more businesses than not. For Pacers Sports and Entertainment, it altered who wanted to come back to the field house and when. While we adjusted our approach to many things, we were able to review how we measured success. We needed to be able to establish a connection with those interested in attending events in a timely manner. We were able to review parts of our lead generation process and asses what parts we could affect. This meant integration and automation, which decreased our time to first touch KPI by 40%.
Q. Was a technology partner or services partner brought in or was it all internal and if internal did it require a collaboration between various divisions? And when did it start and complete or is it a strategy that is constantly in process?
A. The digital lead generation solution was built in house by our customer engagement department along with our web development team. We utilized a custom solution we created in Salesforce in conjunction with Formstack, a local data capture company, to modernize and optimize our lead generation process. We conducted an internal audit during the summer of 2021 to determine which processes could be improved within our department to generate more ticket sales and increase revenue.
We found our current ticket interest forms located on our website to be clunky, difficult to find, and they required manual entry into our CRM platform. We decided to build custom integrated forms for all possible ticket packages (full season, suites, group tickets, premium, etc.). This is an ongoing process we now use for all ticket interest forms on the Pacers property side. This solution has enabled us to decrease time to first touch and fully take advantage of “hot leads.” We also created a visual dashboard for the sales directors to see how many new leads arrive each week, how many leads each rep is assigned, and the revenue generated from the new ticket interest forms.
Q. Any lessons learned or tips you can share with other companies that may take the same path?
A. Collaboration and communication are key! Some of the most advanced and effective automations we have completed were created to resolve an issue another department brought to our attention. We constantly stress that our roles should make the day-to-day easier including automations, insightful analytics and custom solutions. This lead generation automation was built after hearing from the sales department how tedious the process was for their team to import new leads, assign them to a sales representative and track sales progress. We pride ourselves on our ability to build custom solutions and never say something is impossible.
It’s not too late to register for the Summit as registration is open through May 27.
About Networld Media Group
Founded in 2000, Networld Media Group is a leading business-to-business (B2B) media communications company specializing in digital media, associations and events in the tech, banking, retail and food service industries. Online properties include ATMmarketplace.com, DigitalSignageToday.com, FastCasual.com, KioskMarketplace.com, FoodTruckOperator.com, QSRweb.com, PizzaMarketplace.com, RetailCustomerExperience.com, VendingTimes.com and BiblicalLeadership.com. Annual events include the Fast Casual Executive Summit, the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit, the Bank Customer Experience Summit (BCX), the Interactive Customer Experience Summit (ICX) and the Self-Service Innovation Summit.
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