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Contact: Scott Loft
Executive Director, Ticket Sales and Marketing
Jacksonville Jaguars, Ltd.
(904) 633-4670
www.jaguars.com
Jay Regan
Vice President, Client Development
DME
(386) 271-3930
www.dmecorporate.com
Jon Cummins
CEO
Paramount Printing
800-448-1701 x1765
www.printparamount.com
Team: Jacksonville Jaguars
Program Title: Jaguars Mean Business
Objectives: As is the case with any professional sports team, one of the goals for the off-season is to increase ticket sales. Jacksonville is no different. In an effort to sell 10,000 club seats, the Jaguars joined forces with Paramount Printing and DME to attack the business community in the greater Jacksonville area with an improved direct mailing campaign. Through specific targeting of small to medium-sized businesses, the Jags are looking to increase club seat and corporate season ticket sales while simultaneously expanding their reach in the local business sector.
Program Description: During this off-season, the Jaguars’ sales and marketing team sat down with their partners DME and Paramount Printing to brainstorm about how to improve upon their upcoming business-to-business direct mail campaign. “We were trying to figure out a way to create a strategic, trackable, and affordable direct mail campaign,” says Jags’ Executive Director of Ticket Sales and Marketing Scott Loft, who then noted that it is difficult to track regular direct mail campaigns for there is no way to know who actually reads the material and who doesn’t, and therefore it is hard to assess the campaign's effectiveness. It was from this meeting that the idea for personalized web pages for each business was born.
The idea the three entities came up with was to send each of the 2,500 prospective businesses, who had been profiled and marked by the Jaguars’ staff in advance as those who would have the highest interest in corporate tickets, a piece of mail with a URL that would take each business to their own “Jaguars Mean Business” website.
Half of the businesses received their Personalized URL in a traditional folder. Each folder contains a packet of 8 x 11 paper, complete with cover letter and inserts—a pricey endeavor considering postage and printing. The other half received their PURLs on an oversized 6 x 9 postcard—markedly cheaper than the packets due to the smaller size and weight. Once businesses entered the PURL into an internet browser, their very own website would appear.
 Each website contains a personalized greeting, both the name of the contact and the business head the page, and a number of reasons that their business can benefit from purchasing Jaguars tickets. The site also contains flash animation, sound, video highlights, and links to a stadium seating chart and ticket purchasing among others.
The beauty of the marketing campaign is that, on top of being extremely personal, everything can be tracked and monitored. When a business views their personal website, that information is tracked, telling the Jaguars when the business viewed their site and if their PURL is from a packet or a postcard. If a business decides to purchase tickets through their site, that information is tracked, and the source of the PURL is known. There is also a phone number in conjunction with each piece of mail, a specific 800 number for the packets and a specific 800 number for the postcards, so if a business calls to purchase tickets, again, the source of their PURL can be determined. Not only will the Jaguars have numerical results for the PURLs' efficiency at the end of the campaign, they will also be able to assess the effectiveness of the expensive packets versus the cheaper post cards (there is no difference in effectiveness between the two to date).
In addition to allowing analysis of nearly every aspect of the marketing-to-sales process, the overall price of the PURLs is affordable. According to Loft, the Jaguars spent less than $10,000 on the “Jaguars Mean Business” campaign, with the PURLs making up only 30% of that (the rest of the money was spent mainly on postage and printing). The reason for the low cost is that DME didn’t make 2,500 different web pages, but instead a template that linked back to the Jaguars’ database of the 2,500 businesses. Whenever a business entered their PURL into their browser, the specific PURL led to the database, grabbed the business’ information that corresponded with that specific PURL, and dropped it into the template, creating what looks and feels like the business’s very own web page.
Media: “Jaguars Mean Business” has been featured in both the Sports Business Journal (June 11th issue) and the Jacksonville Business Journal. Local online paper Jacksonville.com is also reported to be doing an article.
Partner: DME (Direct Mail Express) was founded by Michael Pannagio in Daytona Beach, FL, in 1982. It is a vertically integrated marketing company and has set the pace for sophisticated, personalized direct marketing.
“Our philosophy at DME is that you have to be truly remarkable to have any kind of impact in marketing,” says Jay Regan, Vice President of Client Development. “We feel that with the PURLs we have achieved this.”
Loft agrees with Regan’s statement. “It is unique, something we’ve never seen done in business-to-business marketing before,” Loft said. “We love that uniqueness. DME has been terrific to work with.”
The Jaguars were not the only ones to find DME’s work unique. Regan says that DME has been contacted by the NBA and one or two NHL franchises since the PURL campaign’s inception, so there look to be more PURLs in DME’s future.
 Paramount Printing is a privately held, state-of-the-art printing company that has a strong reputation as a full-service, solutions-based commercial printer. Focusing on long-term, individual relationships with their clients rather than being an “everything to everyone” printer, Paramount Printing has been operating from Jacksonville, FL, since 1912. They have been partners with the Jaguars since the team's inception and were in charge of the printing for the direct mail campaign.
Results: Although final results won’t be available until the start of the season in August, there have been some promising figures thus far. Since the campaign’s launch in early June, 8-10% of the 2,500 businesses have visited their personal websites as compared to the expected rate of 1% for direct mail. Additionally, Loft reports that there has been a 5:1 web to call ratio in regard to the purchase of tickets, re-enforcing the notion that online ticket sales is the wave of the future, if not the present.
Also from the Jaguars camp comes the information that they have already recovered their investments, the first step in reaching their 5:1 return on investment goal that is the Jags’ policy for all endeavors. Regan is not surprised by the success that the Jaguars are achieving: “It has been a pleasure for DME to work with the Jaguars because they understand marketing is only part of the sales process. We try to increase the probability of a successful sales call as much as we can on our end, but the Jags have to take it from there—they have to make and close the deals. They realized this and have done so. It has been a true collaboration.”
Looking Ahead: Since the final numbers can’t be evaluated until August, the Jaguars aren’t able to say whether or not they will implement the program next off-season. Jay Regan says that DME would love to team up with the Jaguars again if they are interested. Based on results to date, it seems likely that “Jaguars Mean Business” will be deemed a success, so a second round of the campaign is possible.
We believe strongly in doing things based on good ideas,” says Loft, “and we think ‘Jaguars Mean Business’ is one of those. In the end, we have to let the consumers determine the program’s effectiveness because plenty of 'good ideas' have not always turned out to be profitable.”
And though that may be true, don’t be surprised if come August the Jaguars have determined PURLs to be one good idea that consumers are sinking their teeth into.
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