When Grizzlies rookie calls fans over the web, they listen—and buy tickets
In last place and struggling to get its fans back to fill the 18,000-seat FedExForum in Memphis, the Memphis Grizzlies sent their rookie star Rudy Gay onto the web to record and send a special invitation to 6,000 fans. 1,500 of them bought tickets.
“With over 18,000 seats to sell for each game, we need to be creative to entice fans to fill up the arena,” says Dennis O’Connor, vice president of tickets and services. The Grizzlies used a web-based system from Vontoo Inc. to have Gay record a promotional message and send it to names on a fan database over a Voice over Internet Protocol network.
The Grizzlies had planned a special game promotion earlier this season to give away free Rudy Gay jerseys to the first 3,000 fans who came through the admissions gate, plus a special offer to all arriving fans of a “2 for $22” ticket plan.
But with only 10 days between the start of the promotion and the day of the game, O’Connor was concerned that the team might not be able to get the word out fast enough to its fans.
In addition to driving in ticket sales for the promoted game—the team brought in $33,000 at a cost of using the Vontoo system of $650—the message from Gay had additional and unexpected benefits, O’Connor says.
“Using the player’s voice was the key,” he says. “The message boards lit up with fans telling us how much they loved getting a phone call from Rudy. Some fans were so thrilled to get a call from an NBA player that they forwarded the Rudy Gay message to their friends.”
In the future, he adds, the Grizzlies will use Vontoo’s instant connect feature which allows fans receiving the calls to press a number on their phone keypad and be connected immediately to a ticket agent.
Vontoo charges about 10 cents per minute for the promotional calls over its system, and only charges for calls that are answered, president and chief operating officer John Wechler says. Vontoo also provides marketers with web access to an administration page to view data such as the number of calls processed and answered.
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