The Portland Timbers Increase Ticket Sales by 20% with Segmentation

The Portland Timbers used a CDP to rapidly segment email lists from disparate data sources and generate $250,000 in new sales from just one email campaign.

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Win Fans Back with Game-Changing Experiences

Filling a stadium is challenging in ordinary times. But during a pandemic? It’s a tall order.

The Portland Timbers beat the odds by first making a run all the way to the MLS cup finals in 2021, where the game was hosted on their home turf. Then, they had one of the best crowds for an MLS cup final in recent major league soccer history and broke a couple of records in playoff sales.

Chris Thompson is the Director of Business and Data Strategy for both the Portland Timbers and the Portland Thorns soccer clubs. Despite the pandemic, Chris helped his sports brands come out ahead by using a tool he had up his sleeve…Skypoint Cloud’s customer data platform (CDP).

In 2020, the Timbers started using Skypoint Cloud’s CDP—in fact, they were one of our first customers. Over the past two years, Skypoint Cloud supported the Timbers with 360-degree customer profiles, data visualization capabilities, AI-powered predictive analytics, and workflow automation.

The Timbers team didn’t just successfully bring their soccer fans back into the stadium…they enhanced the fan experience inside and outside the stadium to drive continuous fan engagement and loyalty.

“It’s been a wild ride since 2020 when both clubs were operating at limited stadium capacity. We used Skypoint Cloud to really capitalize on segmentation to provide better results through our marketing initiatives. We saw a big ROI increase from marketing emails and a 20% jump in ticket sales.”

Using a CDP to Increase Revenue Streams

The Timbers didn’t always have the right technologies to leverage data from different sources to inform its marketing efforts. Chris and his team had to cobble information together and wrangle with Excel to segment their email lists. They needed a more efficient and effective way of processing and analyzing fan data to generate more sales.

One of the key Skypoint Cloud features that Chris valued right away was the ability to build audience segments on the fly. Skypoint Cloud makes it easy for anyone without technical skills to step in, connect data sources, and create audience segmentations that best align with marketing needs. The team can respond to changing market conditions, then deliver relevant and personalized messages.

With their improved data-driven marketing capabilities, the Timbers were able to capitalize on customer segments more effectively and grow various revenue streams. And, do it all in less time and with fewer resources.

2 Hours to Build a Segmented Email List from Disparate Data Sources

With Skypoint Cloud, Chris and his team built 360-degree customer profiles to quickly and easily access different audience segments from disparate data sources, without a data engineer in sight. It used to take Chris an entire day to compile an email list using Excel. Now he finds the exact audience he’s looking for in a couple of hours.

$250,000 From One Email Campaign

The Timbers team ran a lead generation campaign for their annual membership program. Using Skypoint Cloud, they rapidly analyzed customer data and created a segmented list based on customer interactions and purchasing histories. This precise targeting and outreach enabled the Timbers to generate $250,000 in new sales just from a single email campaign.

20% Increase in Ticket Sales

The Timbers saw a substantial increase in their email marketing ROI—a 20% jump in ticket sales after connecting their CDP and customer profiles to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This success continues through 2022 so that the Timbers are achieving steady revenue growth.

92% of fans would spend more on online subscriptions after a positive tech-enabled experience.

– Capgemini

“We chose Skypoint Cloud because they're the best fit compared to others in the marketplace…and they showed a lot of flexibility. The platform works with a ton of software products, including niche-specific technologies like SeatGeek, which other CDP providers we spoke to hadn’t even heard of.”

The Power of Data-Driven Sports Brands

As the director of business and data strategy, Chris was relieved that Skypoint Cloud was able to meet their unique data needs to seamlessly integrate their tech stack without having to make additional purchases.

Skypoint Cloud offers plenty of flexibility with over 200+ native integrations. The platform works with different software products, including niche-specific technologies like the Timbers’ ticketing software, SeatGeek.

Skypoint Cloud’s CDP allows Chris and his team to segment data and push it into different marketing tools—and also upload this data into their CRM for sales teams. The Timbers are migrating to Microsoft Dynamics, which will make it even easier to move data back and forth within the Microsoft environment.

Skypoint Cloud is helping their team track the entire customer journey from when a fan enters the stadium to the different ways they interact—whether it’s marketing content, CRM, website, social media, and more—all the way to sales and the continued relationships afterward.

The Timbers team is able to automate marketing communications and send email campaigns to specific audience segments. With the customer lifetime value (CLV) model, Chris and his team can leverage Skypoint Cloud’s predictive insights to identify loyal fans and focus their marketing efforts to provide exclusive offers for those that bleed green and gold.

Next up, Chris plans to explore micro-targeting with Skypoint Cloud’s CDP capabilities while conducting extensive A/B testing and using AI-driven analytics to predict what works best for different types of audiences.

Skypoint Cloud will continue to support Chris and his team in experimenting and fine-tuning digital revenue efforts (i.e. cashless stadiums, merch delivery), driving sales through non-revenue channels, and augmenting the fan experience through data analytics to capitalize on their best-known asset…the matchday experience.

The Timbers also plan to layer in new data sources—concessions, merchandising, householding—and visualize commonalities among customers to gain an in-depth view of their true fan base. The B2B capabilities of Skypoint Cloud will help the Timbers better manage corporate sponsorships.

Additionally, Skypoint’s Professional Services will help the Timbers implement Microsoft Power BI to promote self-service analytics throughout their business. Skypoint will help train data analysts and drive the adoption of citizen BI developers toto augment their data strategy.

Thanks to all of these new capabilities, the Timbers are at the forefront of data-driven marketing in the sports industry. The ability to truly own and activate fan data will allow them to discover revenue streams that the industry hasn’t been able to capitalize on until now.

“I love working with the Skypoint team—they help us out any way they can and continue to make improvements based on our needs. Now the sky's the limit with the addition of their new consulting arm, and we're excited to get even more value from our data analytics.”

The Portland Timbers Increase Ticket Sales by 20% with Segmentation

Products

Results

Integrations

Win Fans Back with Game-Changing Experiences

Using a CDP to Increase Revenue Streams

2 Hours to Build a Segmented Email List from Disparate Data Sources

$250,000 From One Email Campaign

20% Increase in Ticket Sales

The Power of Data-Driven Sports Brands

It’s time for your sports brand to win over all of your fans with game-changing experiences.

Schedule a demo today.

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