November 16, 2011 | Volume 10, Issue 13

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Dear Faithful Readers,

By far, the most debated and misunderstood topic in our industry has to be on how to effectively generate revenue through social media. Most successful social media campaigns we see build awareness, gain market intelligence, and increase web presence. While these are good initiatives for our sports franchises to undertake, I know much success is gauged by how much added revenue is created. No doubt, we all see the revenue opportunity in social media, but where do we start? Most importantly, how do we monetize? This is what drew me to analyze the success the University of Michigan has experienced through their Facebook page. They partnered with Paciolan and took a simplistic approach to Facebook, which has lead to some incredible, revenue-generated results. If you are feeling the pressure to monetize your organization’s social mediums, this is a feature you don’t want to miss!

Enjoy the Feature,

Joe Shapero
[email protected]

P.S. Can’t get enough social media? Love what Paciolan is doing on Facebook and Twitter? You’re in luck because the Forum has partnered with Paciolan on a 3-part Webinar Series! The next webinar is scheduled for November 29th at 1pm EST and titled “Energize and Monetize Your Social Media Strategy”. Tune in to hear about the new features being rolled out by Facebook as well as social media case studies from the Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils. Click Here for more details and to register. We’d love to have you join us!

Michigan Monetizes Social Media Users

The University of Michigan uses Paciolan's Social Media Platform to leverage their large Facebook following.

CONTACT

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Jordan Maleh
Director, Digital Marketing
University of Michigan
Phone: (734) 764-1399
Email: [email protected]

ORGANIZATION

University of Michigan

PROGRAM TITLE

"University of Michigan's Football - Facebook Only - Pre-sale"

OBJECTIVES

Unless you have been living under a rock on Easter Island you're probably fully aware of the impact social media has had on our society. With 500 million active users logging in each day, it has completely altered our means of communication. This leaves us sports marketers seeking best practices, new tips and constantly trying to combat the many ideologies that are being passed around. Yes, we see the opportunity that exists with Facebook, but doesn't it seem like social media is increasing complexity for the marketer without necessarily increasing revenue? Jordan Maleh, Director of Digital Marketing at the University of Michigan begs to differ, "Everyone says Facebook and Twitter fans aren't spending money, but they are." To prove this, the University of Michigan wanted to find a way to successfully leverage their large Facebook following of 700,000 users to show that Facebook fans are actively purchasing tickets.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

To see what type of response they could generate from their Facebook users, the team partnered with Paciolan's strategic marketing services team to develop a single ticket presale, available exclusively for Michigan football Facebook fans. While measuring actively participating Facebook users was beneficial to Michigan, they also sought to enhance the promotion by driving ticket sales and creating added value for Michigan football Facebook users.

To activate the single ticket pre-sale, Michigan used the Pac Social Media Platform powered by Buddy Media. The platform is a content system that allows users to build apps and tabs for their Facebook pages through a series of application templates. As subscribers to the platform, Michigan can use it to customize their Facebook page with sweepstakes, contests, polls and games. The applications can be used for fan-acquisition, building a database, offering discounts, or measuring fan attitudes and perceptions. Matt Kautz, Director of Social Media and Consumer Marketing at Paciolan said, "Michigan is already an innovative user with social media. Having this platform allows them to super charge their fan experience."

For Michigan's promotion they used the platform's "Fan-gating" application. "Fan-gating" is the practice of requiring a fan to "like" a Facebook page in order to unlock content. Fans landing on their Facebook page that hadn't "liked" it yet were greeted with an image inviting them to "like" the page, and offering exclusive access to presale tickets. Once the "like" button was clicked, the page refreshed to reveal an image outlining the offer, that when clicked, brought fans directly to the presale promotion where tickets were being sold at full price ($75 to $85).

The outlined offer for the "University of Michigan's Football - Facebook only - Pre-Sale"

MEDIA

The Facebook only pre-sale tickets were advertised through Michigan's football Facebook wall, twitter account and direct emails and text messages sent through the team's database.

PARTNERS

The University of Michigan partnered with Paciolan to create the "University of Michigan's Football - Facebook Only - Pre-sale" but did not bring on any sponsors for this particular promotion.

RESULTS

Within one day of launching the fan-gated pre-sale, Michigan tracked over $74k in single ticket sales from their Facebook page using Google Analytics tracking. They also had the added benefit of earning almost 7,000 new fan page "likes" that same week. While the $74k in tracked revenue is surely more valuable today, Michigan's expert use of their Facebook database could make those 7,000 new fans just as valuable over time.

Beyond the one day pre-sale, the University of Michigan has reaped additional benefits from the many capabilities of the Pac Social Media Platform. Pac Social's database building property allowed Michigan to become the biggest mobile database in the NCAA. "By using the Pac Social platform to ask fans to opt-in during contest giveaways we have been able to skyrocket to a mobile database of 27,000 numbers," says Maleh.

Click here to view the Pac Social Media capabilities on Michigan's football Facebook page.

LOOKING AHEAD

Due to the tremendous success the University of Michigan has experienced with the Pac Social Media Platform, they will continue to partner with Paciolan and intend to expand the platform to include their hockey and basketball Facebook pages in the near future.

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