When you think of the hottest events happening in Los Angeles, some of the first things that come to mind are LA Lakers games, big movie premieres and a certain well-known mansion near Beverly Hills. Yet even though the SoCal climate is too warm for natural ice, the NHL’s LA Kings have added their name to the list of popular attractions, against all odds.
The team—which has been around since 1967—won its first Stanley Cup in 2012, helping to boost attendance in recent years. But their success in another arena has played a big part as well—that of digital marketing. Getting Los Angeles to give hockey games the same respect as a red carpet event had been a struggle in the past. As a result, the team’s marketing department addressed head on the challenge of cultivating a loyal fan base interested in season tickets.
With the goal of long-term support, the Kings started their offseason with a cross-channel marketing campaign focused on securing season-ticket renewals. The marketing department began by sending out targeted emails that linked to custom microsites with exclusive savings for each ticket holder. According to Adobe, the tactic helped lead to a 10-percent lift in online season-ticket renewals.
Once existing fans were taken care of, the focus progressed to finding new customers and getting them interested in purchasing tickets. The distinction here is that the Kings weren’t exactly trying to recruit new fans. Rather, they concentrated more on identifying people who were already fans, but were off the marketing team’s radar. The Kings sent Direct Messages to their Twitter followers with details about a contest—anyone interested could enter for free as long as they filled out a form with their names, emails and Twitter handles. Per Adobe’s Customer Story, the contest had close to a 7 percent response rate and led to hundreds of new leads.
The Kings’ model proved to be an efficient strategy because it was developed with specific goals in mind and targeted the right consumers each step of the way. It even incorporated real-time email, which 80 percent of marketers find highly important, despite the fact that email is a channel often overlooked compared to some of the big-time social networks.
Aaron LeValley, VP Digital Strategy and Analytics at AEG Sports, elaborates on their process in the AEG Sports/LA Kings Success Story video.
Cross-channel marketing is often assessed in a macro view. Big brands want to reach millions of people with splashy commercials that funnel consumers to their social platforms and ultimately into their stores. Those blockbuster campaigns have plenty of value, but getting more people to talk about a particular company on Twitter doesn’t always connect to the bottom line.
The end game can be abstract for some of these huge campaigns, but it doesn’t have to be for sports franchises. Filling the stands is about more than just winning—although that certainly helps. It goes back to developing a culture, and the best way to do that is through smart marketing.
The key to the Kings’ cross-channel strategy is incentive. Sometimes companies can produce good work that underperforms because a campaign turns out to be too passive—a brand puts out the content and waits for the audience to engage. Every part of the process needs to connect. And in this case, the Kings took an active approach without overwhelming their fans. The team may not rule its city just yet, but with savvy digital marketing, this successful reign won’t end anytime soon.
