Fan engagement seasonal planning - Are you ready for next season?

Fan engagement seasonal planning

Whether you're already planning your fan engagement and sports marketing strategy for next season or just getting started, now is the perfect time to dive in.

In this blog post, we'll provide valuable insights to help you prepare your fan engagement strategy for the upcoming season.

Whether you're a seasoned pro looking to make minor tweaks or a newcomer unsure where to start, we've got you covered.

Quick read overview:

Fan engagement strategy - Define your goals

First, it's crucial to outline your overall goals and objectives for fan engagement in the coming season. What do you want to achieve or offer your fans?

Examples:

  • Creating exclusive fan content
  • Designing sellable campaigns and concepts for sponsors
  • Using fan engagement to increase club awareness
  • Converting social media followers into fan data by collecting first-party permissions
  • Improving direct communication with fans

Tailor your goals to your club's current needs and capacity.

Setting Clear and Achievable Goals

Depending on your club's digital maturity and available resources, set clear and achievable goals using the SMART model:

SMART model 

Example

S - Specific

We want to engage with our fans across digital platforms by the use of fan engagement campaigns, to collect more data on our fans to be able to target our tailored communication to specific user groups and extend possibilities for generating new revenues from sponsors by the use of digital sponsorship activations and concepts. 

M - Measurable 

We aim to increase our first-party fan data by 50% over the next season. This will be measured by the number of new data entries collected through the implementation of four distinct fan engagement campaigns each month. We will track the number of new data points monthly to ensure we are on target.

A - Achievable

We will achieve this by introducing a new fan engagement tool and training 2 dedicated staff members as superusers within our organisation. These superusers will oversee the deployment and optimization of the engagement campaigns, ensuring effective utilisation of the tool and facilitating continuous improvement through regular feedback and analysis.

R - Realistic

To ensure the successful implementation and management of these engagement campaigns, we will hire a dedicated Fan Engagement Manager. This role will focus solely on planning, executing, and analysing fan engagement activities, ensuring that our goals are met without overextending our current team.

T - Timely

Our goal is to achieve a 50% increase in first-party fan data from September-May. We will begin implementing the new fan engagement tool and campaigns at the start of the 24/25 season, providing a clear timeline for gradual progress and final assessment at the end of the 24/25 season.

 

Operational Planning for the Coming Season

Once your strategy is set, move into operational planning. Evaluate last season's initiatives and use those learnings to improve and build on your foundation.

How Do You Want to Engage with Your Fans?

Focus on how you want to engage with your fans. Is it through fan apps, engagement campaigns, social media, or other platforms?
 

  • What platforms do you already have?
  • Are you introducing new platforms or channels?
  • Which channels have the strongest connections with your fans?
  • Do you target only the younger fan segment or do you also catch the eye of older fans?
  • Does this align with your fans' behavior?

Know your fans' behavior and interactions on different platforms before deciding how to engage with them.

Evaluate Your Organizational Capacity

Assess your organization's capacity when planning for the coming season. Release plans and ideas that fit your resources. Consistency is key—avoid starting strong and then tapering off. For example, if you plan a seasonal "Guess the Score" campaign, ensure it's consistent throughout the season. Fans will notice if you only run it for half the games.

By following these guidelines and adapting them to your club's unique needs, you'll be well on your way to a successful fan engagement strategy for the next season.

 

Which fan engagement concepts should you introduce?

Depending on which tools or possibilities you have for fan engagement it will be relevant to consider which concepts you will like to introduce.

From our experience working with digital fan engagement in more than 10 years we will share some insights on the most used concepts based on our toolbox. 
 

Player of the match/month

Fans love to vote on their favourites. And Man of the match is therefore also an all-time favourite campaign for our clients to use, especially for our team-sport clients like football, handball, icehockey etc. 

Its an easy campaign to set up and also a smooth simple campaign for the sponsors to understand and take ownership on. Player of the match

Many of our clients run this concept as a yearly concept that sponsors can buy with revenue around 8-25.000 euro generated depending on club-size and expected number of fans participating.

If you want to extend it with extra campaigns or if you want to decrease it to not be dependent on matchday, then player of the month is also a really good fan engagement concept. 

All campaigns can also be used for lead generating purposes to collect 3. Party permission to your sponsors and thereby give instantly value back to your sponsors with new leads they can talk business with. 
 

Guess the score
Score-prediction is also one of our favourite campaigns, it gives the fans the possibility to predict the score of a specific game or as a seasonal prediction, where they can participate in the prediction through-out the season and compete with their friends in the seasonal score prediction.

There will be leaderboards and results to follow the standings when the season kicks off. Guess the score

The campaign is good content through-out the whole season and you only have to create it once, but you will be able to promote it again and again to get even more fans to participate in all the fun. 

Offer running prizes throughout the season to keep the fans attention and interest to continue participating. This is also a nice campaign for sponsors to take ownership of as a “powered by XX” campaign. 

 

Fan engagement - Live events
Are you more into working with concepts happening on the match days then our live event fan campaigns could be something you need to plan.

By the use of our live-quiz module, fans can participate in a live quiz for example at half time or before the event will start.

They just need to scan a QR code on the big-screens and then all the magic will happen on the big screen with live-questions the fans must answer as quick as possible. A great way to keep the fans attention especially in the half-time. 

Can also be used as a sponsored campaign from your sponsors where they actually can add questions about the company to build up brand awareness. 
 

Event selfie

Another fantastic campaign for engaging fans at live events is our Event Selfie campaign. This interactive campaign invites fans to upload their fan images before the match, with the best photos displayed on the big screen.

  • Widespread Engagement: Engage fans watching from home, local bars, or those attending the pre-match fan zone at the stadium.
  • Community Building: Foster a sense of community by featuring fan photos, making them feel part of the event.
  • Interactive Experience: Enhance the match-day experience by involving fans in the pre-match festivities.

Fan Event selfie

 

Revenue campaigns - for all club sizes
 

Are you more looking into how you can be able to generate revenue to the club; then revenue campaigns can be the answer. 
If you are in a big or small club that is not a problem.

We have seen some of our smaller clients manage to generate tremendous revenue from this campaign types.

Goal club - Let the fans support the team
The goal club campaign is a simple campaign where fans and companies/sponsors can support the club based on the number of goals they score throughout the year.

Great campaign to get support from the local community who want to support the team. 

Goal club
Also some fans actually want to donate based on the goals the club scores, a fun campaign where you support your favourite team with smaller contributions.

As a fan the support is consistent and loyal, so the more the team score will be a win/win for the fan, even though it also costs some money, but could be used for improvements of the facilities or surroundings around the club etc. 
 

Auction based campaigns
Another great campaign to generate revenue is the auction campaigns, where you or your sponsors offer products in an auction that the fans can bid on.

Season auction

Could be exclusive club-products, match-worn shirts or even special products from your sponsors. 

 

Plan the seasonal fan engagement with an annual wheel

Once the season is in full swing, it can be challenging to find time for planning and brainstorming new ideas due to the multitude of other tasks. So start the planning now.
Maybe not for the entire season but at least for the first months, so that you know what to plan for. 

Start discussions with the sponsorship responsible so that you have the same vision on which fan engagement activities you should run.


In that way the sponsor managers can also start the sales process with the sponsors on which campaign types, concept or seasonal activities you can offer.
Are you planning to run Christmas campaigns then the selling process will often have to start months before.

[FREE - Fan engagement planning template ]

We have built a FREE template to plan the season with different campaigns running each month.

Use this as an overview to be shared in the organisation, so that they know what to expect.

You can add to it which campaign will be sponsored campaigns and which will be for fan engagement only. 
 

Ready, Set, Engage: Launch Your Season with Confidence

With your fan engagement strategy and campaign planning ready, it's time to kick off the season with enthusiasm and confidence.

If you need assistance with campaign planning or want to explore how fan engagement campaigns can enhance your overall strategy, don't hesitate to reach out.

Let's start planning your fan engagement journey together.

 

Get in touch


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