EVERTON FOOTBALL CLUB
Everton FC stays on the ball with Salesforce.
“For the 2019/20 season, we exceeded our renewal target and hit a new record. With Marketing Cloud, we can personalise season ticket campaign emails and make it easier for fans to auto-renew.”
96.7%
season ticket retention rate
Everton Football Club is top of the league for fan engagement with Salesforce
There’s a lot more to Everton Football Club than players scoring goals on a pitch. Every year the club’s official charity contributes to around 40 social programmes that support the local community - from helping people find employment opportunities to providing supported living for youngsters.
“Our work in the community helps to attract players and retain fans and create a real family atmosphere,” said Tom Rowell, Head of Marketing & Ticketing at Everton. This sense of family was one of the reasons that midfield maestro Andre Gomes decided to return to Everton, which has built a reputation in the footballing community as being the People’s Club.
Personalised approach boosts season ticket renewals.
To attract international stars like Gomes, the Liverpool-based club needs to ensure it maximises revenue generation. Season Ticket Members make an important contribution to the club’s annual turnover of £189 million - and help to ensure there’s a great atmosphere in the Goodison Park stadium for every match. “Sell-out home games are really important,” said Rowell. “A fan buying a season ticket is the peak of engagement.”
Everton has 31,330 Season Ticket Members - the vast majority of whom renew every year. Securing these renewals involves a massive effort by the marketing team. With Salesforce, Everton can make the renewal process more efficient without impacting engagement. “For the 2019/20 season, we exceeded our renewal target and hit a new record,” explained Danny Harris, Everton’s CRM Manager. “With Marketing Cloud, we can personalise season ticket campaign emails and make it easier for fans to auto-renew.”
The estimated value of email conversions for this season was £1.6 million, nearly a third higher than last year. A retention rate of 96.7% also contributed to a reduced campaign cost.
Explore the products that are helping Everton grow.
Tableau CRM
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Everton breaks news to fans faster with Marketing Cloud.
Fan engagement and loyalty at Everton is so high that there’s a record number of Blues on the Season Ticket Waiting List. “We want our connection with fans to extend well beyond the 90 minutes they spend watching a home game,” explained Rowell. “We have multiple other touch points - from our website and mobile app to social media and email.”
With Salesforce, the Club can track fan interactions across these channels and use this information to enrich its CRM efforts. “Prior to Salesforce, we were using different systems and running fragmented campaigns based on sending less personalised emails,” said Harris. “Now we can segment, personalise, and automate communications, which helps to boost engagement.”
For example, Everton uses Marketing Cloud to send birthday messages from players to fans, which generates an open rate of 45% and lots of positive social media feedback. It also announces big club news, like the Gomes signing, via personalised emails. “We want to be the first to share breaking news with the fans,” said Harris. “With Marketing Cloud, we can react quicker and publish content faster.”
A single view of fan interactions across multiple channels.
Everton has even extended its personalised approach to the fans’ match day experience. For example, for the first home game of the 2019/20 season, the club gave a goodie bag to every new Season Ticket Member aged 13 and under. It also assigns cases to supporters when they contact the fan services department to report a problem. “Our fans have high customer service expectations from the Club and little details can make a real difference,” explained Harris. “With Service Cloud, the team can see previous customer service queries, retail and ticket purchases, and online interactions, which enables them to provide one-to-one service on a massive scale.”
The fan services department uses Service Cloud to log and prioritise hundreds of cases per month and spot any recurring issues. By integrating Service Cloud with the stadium’s entry system, the club also has visibility of whether a Season Ticket Member has missed any recent home matches. “It’s important to identify if a supporter is no longer engaging with the club as this might impact Season Ticket renewal rates,” added Harris.
“We want to be the first to share breaking news with the fans. With Marketing Cloud, we can react quicker and publish content faster.”
Engagement scores keep marketing campaigns relevant.
To help score the level of engagement with individual fans and keep campaigns relevant, Everton uses Einstein. “The audience profile for a campaign can change five minutes before it’s due to go live,” said Harris. “With Einstein, we can adapt the target size and segment really quickly.”
Fan engagement scores are not just important to the club; its partners and sponsors also want visibility of how people respond to different campaigns. “With Salesforce, we can capture better metrics in a shorter timeframe,” said Harris. “This makes it easier for us to meet the growing commercial demands on the club and adapt to different fans’ behaviours.”
Making a growing family of fans feel special.
Maximising fan engagement will be key when the club moves to its new home in Liverpool in 2023. The proposed £500m stadium will increase seating capacity from 39,000 to 52,000, which means Everton will need to sell a lot more season and single game tickets. “We’ll have a responsibility to the Club to help sell out the new stadium,” said Rowell. “On-boarding first-timers and ensuring they have a great match experience at the new stadium will be the pinnacle of our usage of Marketing Cloud.”
By continuing to personalise its interactions with thousands of fans, Everton will be able to unlock richer insights and deliver richer experiences. “Our focus on fans is a big part of being a People’s Club,” said Rowell. “With Salesforce, we can make our fans feel special and part of the Everton family even when they are not attending a game.”
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