College Sports and Alumni Marketing

Towards the end of 2009 we completed campaigns for LSU Men’s and Women’s basketball programs. These campaigns are a great example of how schools can get more mileage out of their marketing budgets by pooling their campaigns.

By printing and sending both the men’s and women’s direct marketing campaigns at the same time, LSU was able to save quite a bit of money on the per piece cost. As you know, the higher the quantity, the lower the cost is per piece. LSU actually used this savings to expand their reach and send to more buckets of people…people who had bought tickets previously but maybe not season tickets, people who were previously ticket holders but for whatever reason did not buy last year, and people who because of their proximity to campus might be interested in buying tickets.

To realize this cost savings, the only thing that had to be the same were the size/format of the piece. The print date also had to be the same, which did provide a small challenge in making sure all necessary copy and assets were delivered to us by their respective deadlines. Through constant communications with LSU we were able to make this happen.

Besides segmenting the overall campaign into two segments (Mens and Womens), we also segmented the Men’s campaign by location. Residents in Baton Rouge received a piece that was different than all other recipients. Both the messaging and the enclosed insert were different from what the other recipients (those residing outside of BR) received.

If this sounds like a lot of work to accomplish, its not really. These types of campaigns are our bread and butter. All thats required is good data, which LSU was able to provide to us.

The overall components of the campaign were email, direct mail, personalized videos and personalized web pages to track response and act as a jumping off point to reinforce the campaign message and direct fans to purchase tickets. As you can see, even though these campaigns ran simultaneously, they are unique unto themselves, allowing the proper branding and messaging to come through for their respective teams.

Fell free to check out the campaign websites for each. To get the full experience you’ll need to enter your name and email address:

Mens: http://CommitToLSUHoops.com

Womens: http://MyLadyTigers.com

LSU Mens Mail Piece - Outside

LSU Men's Mail Piece - Inside

Mens personalized webpage and video

LSU Women's Mail Piece - Outside

LSU Women's Mail Piece - Inside

Womens personalized webpage and video

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