Last December, the University of Colorado captured the college football world's attention by hiring Deion Sanders as the school's next head football coach. To capitalize on the excitement, the Buffs' marketing team maximized the power of Eloqua throughout the first few months of the Coach Prime Era to garner unprecedented lead and revenue generation.
Leveraging email blasts, a custom landing page, ticket interest forms, and personalized communication from the sales team, Colorado successfully orchestrated a sales and marketing strategy that left fans buzzing with anticipation, resulting in sold-out season tickets for the 2023 season.
Their email strategy started with an announcement from AD Rick George to a large but strategic portion of their database, specifically targeting fans with relevant ticket and donation history, subscriptions and interests, and/or letter-winner status. They followed up with additional automated communications about renewals, new season deposits, and NIL to more targeted segments, ensuring the right message reached the right fans at the right time.
In addition, the Buffs have driven a ton of traffic to their Time for Coach Prime landing page, which features information on season tickets, a video of Coach, donation information, and this season's schedule. Thanks to Eloqua's native tracking capabilities, they can retarget fans who visit the landing page with additional football information and offers.
Our partners at Paciolan really helped us meet the moment in large part due to the functionality available to us in Eloqua. Between our marketing automation campaigns and our integration with Salesforce, we have been able to prioritize and track customer relationships throughout the last six months since we hired Coach Prime. We have broken records in almost every way, from interest forms to open rates and now to football ticket presale revenue. Eloqua has really helped us prioritize our most loyal customers and communicate with them effectively and efficiently.
Lindsay Lew, Assistant AD, Digital and Database Marketing
The ticket interest form embedded on the Eloqua landing page was vital for lead generation. With Season Tickets currently sold out, anyone who submits the form with Football Interest checked will be added to a Shared List for future targeted sales messaging about Single Game On Sales. Additionally, submissions automatically get sent to Salesforce for the sales team to track and utilize as hot leads heading into the season.
With the influx of potential buyers, Colorado also utilized Eloqua's signature tool functionality to send out customized communication from the sales team. They delivered personalized one-to-one emails from each rep to all interested fans through one easy campaign, saving them the time to send each email manually. Additionally, it assures interested purchasers know who their direct point of contact in the sales office is to streamline communication heading into the season.
Coach Prime may not be hard to find, but Colorado football tickets will be thanks to these sales and marketing strategies. Not only have season tickets sold out in record time, but lead generation is at an all-time high with over 7,500 landing page views, more than 22,500 interest form submissions, and email open rates nearly double the industry average.
Co-authors
Allison New, Marketing Automation Strategist, Paciolan
Gabe Myers, Marketing Automation Strategist, Paciolan
