Making The Case: Real World Solutions from People in the Trenches
The Chicago Blackhawks Hat Trick: Email That's Easy, Entertaining and Effective
Like any business, the Chicago Blackhawks are always looking for ways to build customer loyalty and sell more product. For a professional hockey team, this means forging relationships between fans and players, and enticing fans to attend games.
Filling seats is no easy task for the three-time Stanley Cup Champion. The team plays its home games in the United Center, the largest arena in the United States. At 960,000 square feet, the arena seats 20,500 for hockey. Email has been an important tool to achieve the Blackhawk's marketing goals, so when the team's email software started holding them back; it was time for a change.
The Challenge
The Blackhawks organization sends out a weekly newsletter, Red and White, which shares game previews, press releases, player journal entries and answers to fans' questions. Web producer Adam Kempenaar describes his job for the Blackhawks as part beat reporter and part webmaster. As the team's webmaster, Adam is skilled with Internet software. However, what he encountered with his email solution made him spend far more time creating emails and managing lists than developing content for the eNewsletter.
Producing the eNewsletter was difficult and frustrating for Adam. Managing subscriber lists was timeconsuming and not intuitive. The system made it difficult to add new subscribers, and even when uploaded they wouldn't appear for 24 hours.
The email tool also required Adam to work in an HTML environment. Instead of flowing in one article at a time, adding content required him to manipulate all the copy. Frustratingly, saved content often disappeared, requiring Adam to recreate it. If he wanted to make a copy change or update last minute information after the eNewsletter was scheduled to be emailed, he had to make the changes then go through the entire scheduling process again.
The Solution
Adam turned to SubscriberMail to simplify the email process. SubscriberMail had recently designed a successful email program for the Chicago Bulls and Adam liked what he saw. The walkthrough of the program's content manager and simple delivery proved to Adam that this tool had the user-friendly edge his previous tool was missing.
Managing subscribers is easy, and creating the eNewsletter was streamlined and reliable. It took only two weeks before Adam was ready to send the first email. In that time, SubscriberMail had created a design with the right text and style to match the look and feel of the hockey team's existing website and brochures, and to upload subscriber lists. The SubscriberMail reporting feature allows Adam to see subscriber behaviors-if they are clicking on links, which links draw more clicks, etc. His previous tool didn't provide this rich detail.
The Results
The frustrations from Adam's former program are gone. In 2006 alone, Adam added 3,000 new subscribers. He credits this to SubscriberMail's consulting on simplifying the registration process and forms. Now, Blackhawks fans can easily subscribe for specialty newsletters on a variety of topics- breaking news, charity information, player appearances, promotions or special events. There's even an exclusive edition for season ticket holders. Adam now can painlessly upload new contacts that are active instantly. He can quickly update any subscriber's account information, and even change the newsletters they subscribe to.
The tracking and results component is simple to navigate, so Adam knows at any time who's clicking on what information. With a larger subscriber base and easier reporting tools, Adam has become more creative with how he reaches out to fans. Recently, he implemented a loyalty offer that required him to identify subscribers and filter them by behavior. To reward regular readers, Adam sent a special email offer to those subscribers who had opened the last three eNewsletters. That kind of filtering and use of data would have been unthinkable before SubscriberMail. Scheduling also is greatly improved. The newsletter's delivery can be scheduled for any time. Should a player's status change suddenly; the eNewsletter can be updated immediately-before delivery without going through the distribution scheduling a second time. The program is so user friendly, the Blackhawks intern picked it up in 15 minutes.
During the off season, when it's difficult to find news, but important to keep fans interested, Adam now has more energy to be creative and get back to what he loves: writing about the Blackhawks. "The newsletter that used to take me four hours to assemble now takes 30 minutes, tops," said Adam. "SubscriberMail allows me to be more creative. It gives me time to play beat-reporter." TMP