LSU Using Fan Data For Revenue Rebound in 2021

Due to the effects of COVID-19, colleges have had to make massive pivots in order to accommodate fans. As a new year begins, there are additional adjustments that still need to be made in order for college athletics to bounce back.

FanThreeSixty intelligence and data enrichment capabilities are being utilized by premiere university clients to make up for 2020 losses. Through this intelligence, FanThreeSixty clients are able to take existing areas that generate revenue and capitalize on it by making the right decisions, with the right fans, at the right time.

LSU intends to use this data to develop their sales strategy during the 2021/2022 season. The Tigers are able to gather this data from their mobile app thanks to building it in conjunction with FanThreeSixty. Gabe Merville, Strategy & Analytics Coordinator at LSU Athletics, recently spoke to Front Office Sports to provide more insight into this process. 

“FanThreeSixty put a lot of their focus on putting data behind the mobile application to help segment and make sure the right people are getting the right messaging,” Merville said. “In that regard, it’s kind of mirroring what we’re trying to do because our goal is to keep targeting the information we’re sending people. With this partnership, we can get that data even better.”

LSU is aiming to achieve a 95% retention rate for football season ticket holders next season. While the brand power of LSU football carries a great amount of weight in the southeast, data still plays a key part in their growth and retention strategy. New and more detailed leads obtained through the mobile app created with FanThreeSixty means that Merville’s staff are able to serve better and more effective ads as well as see which fans need to be reengaged if they haven’t interacted or made LSU athletic purchases in a while.

“We’re operating now with the mindset that we will be at full capacity in the fall. We think we can start the process of bouncing back from the pandemic year,” Merville stated. “So we’re using that data we collected in conjunction with FanThreeSixty to create this retention score because we have a sales team of four people, and we’re trying to make them as efficient as possible.”

Director of Data Science at FanThreeSixty, Caleb Overman also added insight into how his company is helping college athletic departments utilize advanced analytics and machine learning built into the FanThreeSixty platform to intelligently target relevant fans.

“We really feel that the FanThreeSixty platform provides LSU and others with best-in-class data capabilities that let them accomplish their goals, even with the resource constraints brought on by COVID. Using our tools, their data is augmented with nearly 200 attributes about each individual that they can use to micro-target their messaging. FanThreeSixty also provides advanced machine learning capabilities which help them identify likely donors, upsell opportunities, fans at risk for renewals, those likely to buy a last minute ticket, and other insights. All of these are seamlessly integrated into our platform, which allows teams to easily utilize the data points to automate their sales and marketing efforts.”

As college basketball picks up and planning for a new college football season intensifies, FanThreeSixty is heavily focused on unifying ticketing, retail, and donations data, and providing intelligent audiences to focus on to help bridge the gap from 2020 losses more quickly.

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