Stellar Play: Fan Acquisition Tracking

What you need

Data and Integrations

Pulls from all fan acquisition sources. These can include, but are not limited to:

• Ticketing Pull
• Email Service Provider Pull
• Merchandise Service Provider Pull

For added value, include:

• Paid Demographic Data Appends

StellarAlgo Tools

• Fan Universe Dashboard
• Segment Builder
• Segment Analyzer

When to run this Play

The Fan Acquisition Tracking Play can be run in parallel to your new fan acquisition efforts throughout the season.

Late season is where quick wins can be found – you can use historical performance to inform your fan acquisition strategies for the next season.

Scope and effort required

This Play is highly flexible as it can apply to the entire fan universe or key fan segments of interest. The Fan Acquisition Tracking Play can be executed as a one-off analysis, or as an ongoing effort that runs through your entire season in parallel with your other fan acquisition efforts.

A single analysis typically takes less than one week.

Strategy Sequence

1. Opportunity Identification

The Opportunity Identification step for the Fan Acquisition Tracking Play involves understanding the value of tracking and analyzing your newly acquired fans.

By focusing on understanding the effectiveness of your fan acquisition strategies, your organization can become more strategic and effective when actioning against people who are not yet fans in your fan universe. The ability to take this analysis a layer deeper and understand and optimize this at the fan persona level means that you can grow your fan universe in strategic areas, thereby fostering coordination across your marketing, ticketing, sales and service, and corporate partnerships teams at a level not yet seen before.

The effectiveness of this Play is dependent on your data capture rates. If you’re interested in tracking the acquisition of specific fan personas, you need to determine if your current acquisition channels support the tracking of the persona, or if a data append strategy needs to be developed.

2. Baseline

Capture a baseline to compare season-to-season. This will also help you to answer the question “How did we do?” after running the Play. The baseline for this Play consists of establishing the season of interest and a historical total fan universe growth rate.

Select 3-5 historical seasons and determine the overall fan universe growth rate for each of the historical seasons.

3. Plan

Part of planning consists of establishing goals for subsequent seasons based on the results of the baseline measurements and analysis. The intention is to set tangible fan acquisition goals for upcoming season(s). Often a range of targets rooted in historical performance is a good starting place for goal definition. Fan acquisition targets can be set based on average historical performance, industry comparables, or based on other factors you determine.

Develop your fan acquisition strategy. If focused on specific fan personas, this will often benefit from regular paid data appends. Identify key milestone dates based on fan acquisition campaigns and efforts led by your marketing team.

The complete, unlocked Play provides StellarAlgo partners with a checklist of activities mapped to each part of the season to help you plan ahead and execute successfully.

4. Execute

Execute your fan acquisition efforts according to your plan. Use your StellarAlgo Platform to track progress; depending on your marketing plan, this could range from a monthly, quarterly, or yearly cadence.

The value of regularly tracking and measuring progress, especially after the execution of fan acquisition campaigns, is that the most effective strategies can quickly be identified and strategies that do not yield a high ROI can be deprioritized or discontinued. Throughout a season, your marketing team can refine and optimize their fan acquisition efforts.

The complete, unlocked Play provides StellarAlgo partners with Platform-specific details to empower you to execute successfully.

5. Measure

Growth rates season-to-date can be calculated in the same manner as your baseline growth rate. When comparing against baseline years, it’s important to compare season-to-date measurements to get a true understanding of comparative performance.

Results at the end of the season are measured in the same manner as historical baselines: calculate your year-over-year fan universe growth rate and compare to your baseline and industry trends.

The complete, unlocked Play provides StellarAlgo partners with step-by-step directions to calculate your fan acquisition rate, as well as many other valuable measurments.

6. Results Capture

• Identify which strategies or tactics were most effective at acquiring new fans.
• If focused on growing your fan universe in specific fan personas, compare the acquisition rates of fans matching that persona vs. the overall fan universe fan acquisition rate.
• Compare current season fan acquisition rates with baseline rates.

The complete, unlocked Play provides StellarAlgo partners with additional data and strategies to help you achieve desired results.