C A S E S T U D Y

In the world of sports, it’s not about winning or losing—it’s about how you play the game.

If that’s the case, Monumental Sports & Entertainment is already a champion. The metro D.C.-based company not only owns and operates a veritable catalog of sports teams and venues—among them the Washington Capitals (NHL), the Washington Wizards (NBA), the Washington Mystics (WNBA), the Washington Valor (AFL), the Baltimore Brigade (AFL), Capital One Arena, Eagle Bank Arena, and Kettler Capitals Iceplex—but it also is committed to a double-bottom-line philosophy, in which players, coaches and employees go beyond the business mindset to give back to the local community.

SSB Central Intelligence Platform Turns Customers into Monumental Fans

Monumental Sports & Entertainment needed to recalibrate marketing and sales to keep pace with an evolving fan experience—but high data volumes and disparate systems made holistic customer intelligence difficult to obtain.

With the help of SSB’s Central Intelligence platform, critical customer data from across the organization’s numerous technology systems is now centralized, cleaned, and accessible in real time.

• Simple, streamlined access to data enables unified analytics in real-time

• More targeted marketing campaigns see a marked increase in click-through rates

• Straightforward data reports make ROI easy to measure and share

PROBLEM SOLUTION RESULTS

C A S E S T U D Y

Optimizing the Fan Experience in a Changing World Succeeding throughout such a large ecosystem means Monumental must work tirelessly to build an in-depth understanding of its customer base—not only so it can market more effectively, but so it can foster the kind of optimal fan experience that keeps people engaged with both their teams and their communities.

The effort required to obtain that level of customer intelligence has increased dramatically in the last five years, according to Adam Heintz, VP of Business Intelligence for Monumental. “We’re seeing this evolving landscape of how people interact with and become fans of teams,” he explains. “A decade or two ago, fans were grown by family legacy, or from traditional media campaigns. And we would market to those fans in a very sequential process, working our way from you seeing a single game, to maybe buying a hat, to us selling you on a partial ticket plan, and ultimately—if we’re lucky—getting you to buy a season ticket package.”

That’s all changed now, says Heintz. Today, fans come to games and events from any number of entry points. “Your first interaction with the Wizards or the Capitals may be because somebody you know retweeted a great play that John Wall made. Or you might be following something via social media and see an ad for tickets pop up. So that lifecycle has changed dramatically, and I think a big part of our initial problem was determining the best way to adapt to those changes.”

Another challenge for Heintz and his team was figuring out how to capture and manage the vast quantity of valuable data attached to these evolving entry points. “All that data comes from disparate systems,” Heintz says. “We needed some way to tie it all together, to understand the holistic customer insight it was giving us, and then beyond that, transform that insight into smarter marketing and business decisions.”

Overall, says Heintz, “our goal is to be able to communicate effectively with people the way they want us to communicate with them, about the things that matter or make sense to them. That’s what makes their experience with us worthwhile. And that means we have to really know who they are.”

We needed some way to tie it all together, to understand the holistic customer insight it was giving us, and then beyond that, transform that insight into smarter marketing and business decisions.

C A S E S T U D Y

SSB Delivers Gritty Expertise and ValuePrior to Adam joining the BI team in late 2016, Monumental had attempted to engage a data ware-house partner—but the deal fizzled. “They weren’t able to make it work,” Heintz recalls. That’s when he stepped in and added more vision to what the final product, the endgame, would look like when the project concluded.

As the company explored other vendors, Heintz and his team found that most fit into one of two categories. While some “had pretty flashy front ends and could do email segmentation easily,” he says, “others were good at the blocking and tackling—the actual hard work of getting the data into one place and one format.” That’s what he wanted. “We felt like we’d be better served by a partner that could do the dirty work, and then my team could layer that segmentation and marketing approach on top of it.”

SSB seemed to fit the bill, and it helped that one of Heintz’s team members had worked successfully with the company before. The final piece, according to Heintz, was value. “Our team had a pretty good feel for what the technology should cost, especially

having gone through the process before and getting nothing out of it. SSB delivered the right pricing with the right promise of results.”

Rapid Deployment Sets the Stage for Success Implementation moved swiftly after Monumental signed a contract with SSB in February 2017. Within 12 weeks, Heintz had the first report in his hands—and it was a winner, showing a measurable relationship between ticketing revenue and new email subscriptions. Today, Heintz says his team has almost completed its data migration, with all ticketing, food and beverage data, demographics, and venue WiFi login info now stored in the warehouse.

More Complete Customer Picture Becomes Proven ROI The biggest initial result Monumental has seen since implementing the SSB platform is simply access to data. Having customer behaviors and preferences across the entire lifecycle now available in a single data repository—instead of trapped throughout disparate systems—means Heintz and his team can perform unified analytics and obtain a more complete picture of their fans.

In turn, Monumental is using that insight to launch both automated and highly personalized marketing campaigns. “Now when someone purchases tickets in a certain section,” Heintz explains, “we can better understand how to market food and beverage to him in a way that matches his location and preferences.

Our team had a pretty good feel for what the technology should cost, especially having gone through the process before and getting nothing out of it. SSB delivered the right pricing with the right promise of results.

ABOUT SSBSSB empowers sports, education, and healthcare organizations worldwide with superior technology and deep industry expertise that transforms customer and constituent data and delivers quantifiable business outcomes. With our cloud-based customer and operational data management platform, Central Intelligence, we enable our clients to make educated, actionable, and profitable decisions that take business to a new level. Learn more by visiting https://ssbinfo.com

Or we can use ticketing data and previous merchandise purchases in youth sizes to tell if a customer has a family, and then use that data to upsell better food and drink packages. We can even take it to a personal phone call from a sales rep, and incentivize a season ticket renewal by offering a special autographed jersey—because we know from a customer’s past purchasing data that will have more impact than a simple $100 discount.”

These new strategies are already achieving incredible results. “We sent one pregame email marketing a specific food stand in the arena to customers sitting in that section, and almost immediately, 30% of people were clicking to learn more about what’s near where they sit,” recounts Heintz. “This proves that more targeted campaigns can improve the fan’s experience and lead to higher incremental revenue.”

Another added advantage to working with the SSB platform is that Heintz and his team now have an easier time showing a measurable return on the project’s investment. “You know, BI is sort of a nebulous endeavor,” Heintz laughs. “Some people in the organization don’t really know what it means when I tell them we have all this data in the warehouse. So it helps a lot when I can point to a report and give fact-based specifics. I can say that we acquired 5,000 new emails through a promotion, and this is exactly how much revenue those new emails drove in the last three months. I report to the organization’s president, and now I know, from an analytics technology perspective, that my team has a seat at the table. I think makes that all the difference in the world.”

Next StepsGoing forward, Monumental plans to continue adding data to the repository to maintain the most current and complete customer insight possible. In addition, other departments within Monumental have taken note of the results Heintz and his team are generating—and they’re interested in seeing how they, too, can apply newfound insight to boost their own bottom lines.

Heintz himself has his eyes set on fine-tuning that balance between the automated or machine-learning side of marketing intelligence with the necessary personal interaction that ensures customers remain fans. “There’s so much we can do with this data now,” he says. “I’m excited to see how we can use it to play the game even better.”