Football is one of the most followed sports in the world with Association Football taking a big chunk of the market. The European Football scene is ripe with attendances going into the 10’s of thousands week in week out, even for the mid-tier clubs. So it defies logic that a Sports CRM for Football Clubs isn’t a thing yet. You could argue that Football clubs across Europe have been a little slow at catching up with the change in tides, with top clubs like FC Barcelona, Manchester United, and Bayern Munich only recently realizing their full financial potential. Huge sponsorship deals and off-field engagements have followed, but the whole process can be exponentially optimized and improved with a Customer Relationship Management platform in place, perhaps a SugarCRM for Football Clubs?
For the sake of discussion and Page 1 results on SERP (hey, we gotta listen to the masses!), we’re going to call this an FRM, instead of a CRM. An FRM, or Fan Relationship Management (no points for guessing!) is basically a Sports CRM that can help football clubs manage their operations, organize their customers (read fans!), target their marketing efforts and so much more in a simplified manner to maximize their returns.
Let’s look at some of the ways a Sports CRM could help Football Clubs!
Detailed Customer Profiles
Customer data is of paramount importance when it comes to understanding your customers. You need to understand them to know their needs and requirements, so that you can target them with your products and offers for maximum ROI. When it comes to football, you’ve got thousands of people coming to the stadiums week in and week out, add in the millions watching at home and you can see where we’re going with this.
The SugarCRM for Football Clubs will include custom modules that organize customer details, i.e.
- Purchase History
- Seat Preferences
- Location
You can use the purchase history to categorize your customers and separate the hardcore followers from the casual followers and focus your high risk efforts on the former for maximum effect. Seat preference data will help you organize your ticketing processes to ensure everyone gets the seats they want. You can use SugarCRM reports to get a holistic view of your customer behavior, preferences and so much more!
Increase Fan Engagement
Fan engagement is at the core of football. Every person associated with a football club right down to the 7 year old attending his first game wants to be associated with the club. With SugarCRM for Football Clubs, you can devise interactive fan engagement activities and use them to give your customers something to look forward to. You can send customized victory messages on a historic win or raise anticipation and excitement leading up to a major derby or cross-city rivalry. There are limitless opportunities that clubs can explore to truly give their fans a unique experience. The detailed profiles mentioned above can be leveraged to create customized offers targeting specific customers i.e. free seats, free giveaways on milestones, and so much more. Corporate figures and sponsorship come and go, but your fans are what will serve as pillars when the tide gets tough. Investing in them with the SugarCRM for Football Clubs is a sure bet!
Optimize Sponsorship and Merchandise
But sponsorship is still pretty important. The commodification of football is in full swing and there’s not much you can do about it. In order to make sure your sponsorship is up to the mark, you need detailed data that substantiates your claim. With a Sports CRM in place, you will have that data on your customers, stadium visits, match-day attendances and more. You can use this to get better sponsorship deals. You can go two steps further with a SugarCRM Integration with any analytics software to further refine your data.
You can target new Merchandise release to your hardcore fans and categorize the merchandise based on certain variables e.g. cost. The purchase history in Detailed Customer Profiles will come in handy here, helping you get an idea of your customers’ financial standing. From here, you can see which customer is more likely to buy a particular merchandise.
SugarCRM Custom Modules
A SugarCRM for Football Clubs can be used internally as well. You can use numerous custom modules to organize your football club and its hierarchy structures. Custom modules will categorize squad, squad roles, financial expenditures, management, maintenance and more. Anyone in your organization can use this CRM platform to get a holistic view of any of these entities for a more efficient management of the club.
Our Two Bits!
We’ve covered the basics but there’s so much more that can be done with a Sports CRM. The possibilities are endless. If you think your club isn’t translating its potential in the books, get in touch with us for a FREE Business Analysis and we’ll set you up for a customized SugarCRM for Football Clubs.
