Proactive Ticket Marketing and Sales Campaigns Impact Attendance

According to the 2011 National College Football Attendance report published by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), athletic programs with a proactive outbound sales force are making the largest gain. Eight of the top thirty programs with the largest average attendance increase from the previous year have outsourced this capability to The Aspire Group. These programs include: Arizona State, Army, Buffalo, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, Maryland, and Western Michigan.

The purpose of the FRMC is to maximize ticket sales and attendance frequency by providing a superb customer experience on renewals, outbound and inbound ticket sales and service calls. The FRMC’s follow The Aspire Group’s Chairman and CEO, Bernie Mullin’s, Attendance Frequency EscalatorSM philosophy. The Attendance Frequency EscalatorSM focuses the sales and service philosophy on three main points: Retain existing fans first, Grow casual fans second, and Acquire new fans third. Sales campaigns include a post campaign analysis of lead list effectiveness, Return on Investment (ROI), average sale, average scale, interval between purchase ratio, and lifetime asset value (LAV). Aspire’s system is backed up by “Intelligent Marketing” using the “24:48:48 Approach” of capturing fan contact data within 24 hours of purchasing or using a ticket; connecting electronically within 48 hours of the information entering the database and closing within 48 hours using a personal call.

“We already knew that proactive selling is a best practice in sport marketing, as the results of this study prove with quantitative data,” said Bill Fagan, General Manager – Fan Relationship Management. “Collegiate athletics programs are starting to notice the negative effects that empty seats have on their brand and should take note from these programs that a fan centric approach is the sustainable way to combat this cancer to their brand.”  

For the full 2011 NCAA Football Attendance Statistics click here.

About The Aspire Group

The Aspire Group is a global sports and entertainment firm founded by Dr. Bernie Mullin that partners with its clients to maximize revenue, people and organizational performance. Aspire provides ongoing strategic and implementation support in executing and maintaining highly innovative sales, marketing, management, and operational systems and programs. This is best embodied in the Fan Relationship Management Center, the fastest growing arm of the company, operating in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.