A $1 million campaign to sell season tickets has pulled response rates as high as 80% for the NBA's New York Knickerbockers.
For 15 years, the Big Apple's pro basketball team didn't have to worry about filling the best seats at Madison Square Garden. But last season the team — referred to in the local press as “under-talented” — missed its bid for the playoffs. And in a down economy, season tickets, which range in price from $8,000 to $16,000, don't seem like that sweet a deal.
“In the past, the Knicks never had to sell themselves or revitalize their brand, that's why they never needed an agency before,” said Jennifer Basso, account director at direct marketing agency Rapp Collins Worldwide in New York, which won the account over the Interpublic Group of Cos.' Deutsch.
Rapp got to work in July with the season due to start on Oct. 30, a mere three months off.
The team had gotten the reputation of being somewhat corporate and inaccessible. “They realized that their fan base needed to be addressed,” said Doug Klein, senior vice president and co-creative director at Rapp.
And they had to woo newcomers. Using the slogan “One Team, One New York,” Rapp created an integrated campaign involving mail, e-mail and direct response television.
The first task: Activate the current season ticket holders.
Since only 80% of these 5,500 ticket holders had renewed (the Knicks' typical renewal is 95%), the team mailed an urgent last-chance-to-renew letter to that group in midsummer.
To bolster that, on July 22, Rapp sent an e-mail to the 1,100 season ticket holders the team had e-mail addresses for. Beneath a shot of the players in action at the Garden, a hotlink to renew was included. The open rate was 71.2%.
Next, Knicks' corporate partners Ticketmaster and Cablevision, which provided customer lists to the Knicks in exchange for tickets, were contacted. “Almost everything the Knicks do is barter or trade,” Basso said. “They use their tickets as money.”
Rapp dropped 250,000 self-mailers, followed by 3,900 e-mails to those two lists and AmEx Small Business customers in mid-September. Nearly 40% of the e-mail recipients clicked through.
The waiting list for season tickets performed the best. The Knicks renewal mailing to 8,000 people who had long been on a waiting list for tickets delivered a 74% conversion rate. Some 11% of 3,700 who clicked through on a follow-up e-mail bought tickets. The mail/e-mail combo achieved an 80% response.
Meanwhile, two DRTV spots began running at the end of September. The media time is free for the 30-second spots on Fox Sports New York and MSG because they are stations affiliated with Knicks' partner Cablevision.
The direct response number on the spots can't be tracked because it's the general National Basketball Association order number that many channels use.
But the gritty, in-your-face ads, cutting quickly from New York hot spots to the Garden and team members playing aggressively, have surely spurred excitement and awareness, Klein said.
“Anybody could look at those ads and say, ‘Hey, it would be fun to go to a Knicks game.’”
