From Raw Data to Winning Strategies: Unlocking the Power of Actionable Insights in Sports Clubs

From data gathering to actionable insight

We all know that ‘Data’ is a hot topic and is a crucial part of any Customer Relationship Management or Fan Engagement strategy in sport. The collection of customer data has become a strategic imperative for many customer focused organisations.

Data is believed to enable your business to develop a much greater understanding of fans and customers, improve loyalty and the customer experience, whilst enhancing the value of the products you market.

So, should collecting large amounts of data be a key objective for your business? The answer is yes and no.

The answer is ‘yes’, if it’s about having relevant, good quality data which helps provide actionable insight about your fans and customers and if you have the resources and systems infrastructure to manage it. The answer is ‘no’, if the collection of data is an end in itself and there is no understanding of how it can be used or resources to make use of it.

Essentially, data is only truly valuable if it can be translated into insight which drives strategic decision making. One of the greatest challenges for businesses is not having the ability to manage, maintain and make sense of multiple sources of data and often under estimate the resources required to generate meaningful, actionable insight.

Creating a personalised and customised customer journey

As mentioned, it is vital to use the insight generated from data to drive actions, rather than to simply focus on data collection. Insight supports the transformation of customer data in your various systems into precise measurable objectives, enabling marketing campaigns to be targeted and personalised to a segmented audience. Segmentation based on a fan or a customers’ characteristics such as purchase behaviour, demographic data, or even their membership type, are all powerful assets that create a competitive advantage and value.

But the amount of data around us is ever increasing creating a panic in many organisations who seek to collect it without a plan or strategy to manage it properly. For example, fans and customers are increasingly engaging around the clock in new innovative ways using smart phones, tablets and social media creating new data sources. There is a greater understanding of the need for data from in-depth analysis of marketing campaigns.

Four step strategic approach to data analysis

Before undertaking a data & insight project, we always emphasise to our clients the importance of the up front planning. This is essential in saving time, overcoming challenges early and reducing your headache from potential future data overload!

The key outcomes form the initial planning stage are:

1. Develop a set of objectives for the Data & Insight programme! It always starts with specifically defining what is to be achieved. This is crucial to avoid data for data’s sake. I.e. the objective should not be ‘collect more data’.

2. Have a clear understanding of the business issues which need to be identified, answered and actioned from the data. This supports he creation of objectives and considers the areas of the business where having more insight will make a real difference to delivering them.

3. Identify the appropriate data sources to be analysed to meet the objectives. Do we utilise the data we have already? Or do we need to capture more data sources? Make sure you answer the question ‘what will we do with that data source’ when each one is considered. For example we often hear sports clients ask to collect specific transactional data form the concourses (e.g. refreshments) without any clear reason as to why and before they have started to use basic ticket purchase data.

4. Ensure that the systems in place are able to manage the capture, maintenance, hosting, analysis and insight creation functions required. If not, find new technology to fill the gaps. For example, many traditional data/CRM systems will host the data and deliver some basic segmentation. However, there are many different types of systems now available such as Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and Customer Engagement Platforms (CEP) which need research and investigation before making a decision on the best combination.

5. Allocate resources to each of the key elements of data management. For example, who will be responsible for maintaining the data? Who will analyse? Ensure that this is not under-estimated. Data is complex and requires dedicated skills. If headcount is an issue, then consider using specialist agencies.

6. Review and Measure – if data and insight is important to you, then spend time discussing and reviewing it. Make sure that the objectives identified at the start of the project are measured and ensure that any data related goals are included as part of any senior management reporting pack. If these aren’t required or if no-one reviews these then there is a strong argument that the whole project should be stopped or a cultural change project is required.

In terms of the process of collecting data, we generally urge a step by step approach. Initially we recommend the focus is on contact data, this allows us to communicate with the customer and add some general personalisation.

Following that we then move onto using transaction data, i.e. what has the customer bought and what does that mean. From this we have typically built statistical models for clients using traditional RFM modelling or Predictive Modelling to find new Season Ticket holders for our sports clients.

Once this is in place then other data can be supplement such as social economic data such as MOSAIC, ACORN or Personicx. Attitudinal data can also be utilised by adding survey results into the mix.

Ultimately the data collected should always be used to create insight and if it is not possible to do so, then don’t collect it in the first place.

Simply collecting data for data’s sake will risk creating poor quality insight, low morale amongst staff and people focused on non-value added activity. Not to mention the risk of creating a culture that shuns future potential valuable data projects.

Data is a key element of a successful business but is only of high value when insight is generated from it. To do this takes patience and a plan but the rewards can be worth it in the end.

Get in touch

We have a team of experienced data analysts on hand and a proven track record of discovering actionable insights from complex data sets – don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team and find out how we can help you achieve more from your data.

To find out more about our data analysis and insight service please contact garry@geemasports.co.uk