How top brands are using a new technology to transform their sports sponsorships

For years, sports sponsorships have been a great channel for Brands to support top-of-funnel marketing objectives like growing awareness or building brand affinity. Sports Properties, both teams and leagues, consistently prove that when it comes to engagement, nobody on earth has more passionate customers – and sponsorships are a great way to get in front of them.

Limited opportunities to drive bottom-funnel impact 

But sponsorships also come with their share of limitations. For one, getting an accurate reporting of sponsorship performance can be challenging. Teams and leagues provide their Brand Partners with great measurement metrics – like reach, impressions, and media equivalency – but without visibility into how a fan’s journey progresses into the brands’ ecosystem, both parties can only guess at how everything connects. As such, Properties are rarely able to show how an investment is driving the impactful results Brand Partners care about most – like new customers acquired, orders placed, or loyalty points redeemed.

According to Forbes, “60% of CMOs are under increased pressure from the CEO to communicate, measure, and grow the financial impact of their long-term sponsorship portfolio investments on shareholder value and financial performance.”

Secondly, teams and leagues tend to have an underwhelming menu of options to activate partnership rights beyond traditional assets like stadium signage and in-game experiences. Why? They lack the first-party data required to deliver a targeted campaign on the Brand Partners’ behalf.

For example, serving a first-time order promo code from a Food Delivery Partner is next to impossible when teams and leagues don’t know who within their fanbase is already a customer of the Food Delivery Partner. The result? “Spray and pray” campaigns offering one-size-fits-all promotions and experiences to the entire fan base, that provide poor fan experience and a missed opportunity for the Brand Partner to realize the true potential of their partnership spend.

But times have changed and some leading brands have found a way to use a new breakthrough technology to solve these pain points, improve activation performance, and track and measure sponsorship results that were previously unattainable. 

Forward-thinking brands are turning to data collaboration

Data collaboration, or Data Clean Room technology, has been used historically by digital media advertisers and publishers to help target and attribute marketing campaigns. The technology enables two or more parties to securely compare datasets to drive targeting and insights without revealing any data to the other party or compromising on data privacy and security commitments.

Today, brands are applying Data Clean Room technology to their sponsorships. With this kind of data collaboration, Brand Partners can:

• Better target activations based on a fan’s existing relationship with their brand
• More accurately measure activation performance by gaining visibility into how audiences engage across both ecosystems
• Better track overall sponsorship impact by tracking shared customer interactions over time

Armed with this added intelligence and visibility, Properties have the data required to efficiently build and execute personalized campaigns that drive bottom-funnel impact, all while providing a better fan and customer experience. Rewarding customer loyalty, converting fans into customers, and accurately attributing resulting revenue all is unlocked with data collaboration.

Power your data-driven partnership strategy with StellarAlgo

StellarActivate, a new partnerships-focused platform from StellarAlgo, is the fastest, easiest, and most secure way to make data collaboration part of your sports partnership strategy. StellarActivate leverages best-in-class Data Clean Room technology and an ISO certified privacy-by-design architecture to offer Brand Partners:

• Audience Overlap Dashboard: An always-on view of shared customer interaction with your Sports Property partners
• Activation Builder: Capabilities to create detailed audiences and push segments directly into marketing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and more
• Configurable Cross-Partner Activation Reporting: Live reporting of customer engagement from both the Sports Property and Brand Partner ecosystems to finally get a clear picture of sponsorship impact.
  
  

“You’re missing the mark if you’re not using data collaboration in your sponsorships today. StellarAlgo is setting the new standard for the future.”
– Jennifer Van Dijk, President, Dapper Labs America

StellarAlgo has helped brands like Toyota, SkipTheDishes, BC Lottery Corp, and others unlock more value from their brand partnerships. Ready to take the next step in driving untapped value from your sports partnership portfolio? Click here to contact us or click below to dive deeper into our Data Clean Room-enabled platform.

More fans.

Better Engagement.

Stellar Results.

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