Team GB increases fan engagement by 46% ahead of Olympic Games

Team GB prepares and leads British athletes at the Olympic Games and is responsible for promoting the Olympic Movement in the UK.

Siloed data limited marketing campaigns to mass mailouts.

Fans are everything to Team GB athletes. Having the support of the nation is not only invaluable to athletes as they prepare to perform on the world’s sporting stage, but it also gives them a platform to attract media attention, sponsorships, and to carve out their post-sporting careers. But training for the Olympics starts long before the Games, and bridging the gap between fans and athletes all year round is vital.

Team GB represents a huge variety of sports, and no two fans are the same. That made it challenging for the marketing team to build meaningful relationships – some fans might only want updates during the Olympic Games, while for others, sport is their way of life.

Fan data was collected from multiple sources. It was often patchy, duplicated, and siloed across multiple systems. That limited the marketing team to sending generic mailouts to all contacts, which failed to maximise engagement rates with an otherwise avid sports audience. Team GB needed a new data and marketing strategy to get closer to fans, understand their interests, and send tailored communications – all part of the plan to bring fans on the journey to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Creating richer fan profiles and increasing contacts 140%.

Under its new data strategy, Team GB removed duplicate records and migrated high-quality data into Sales Cloud. This keeps data secure and complies with privacy regulations while capturing all new contacts in one place no matter where fans sign up to receive emails.

Fan profiles are created and enriched with browsing, behavioural, and engagement data, which is possible thanks to an integration between Sales Cloud and Team GB’s website. Fans can update their profiles to add their date of birth, location, gender, and sports interests. In the first 12 months, Team GB grew its contact list 140% and now has much better visibility of its fans, which enables better commercial partnerships and support of stakeholders such as national governing bodies.

Visualising data in dashboards to segment leads and track trends.

The CRM team builds dashboards and intelligence reports in Marketing Cloud to help marketers better understand Team GB’s audience and track trends. The marketing team uses this insight to segment fans by interests and to plan content and to target partner campaigns better.

For example, data revealed that 65% of Team GB’s audience is female, and a large percentage are also Gen Z. It created a YouTube show called Sporty AF (and Female) to target this segment.

Achieving open rates of 46% with personalised journeys.

Marketers use Journey Builder to automate communications and send fans on trigger-based journeys. Fans receive a welcome email an hour after signing up, which prompts them to log into the preference centre to add more information about themselves and their interests. Sixty percent of fans open this email, and Marketing Cloud automatically follows up with those who don’t.

With richer data, Team GB creates journeys that match fan interests, which has increased average open rates to 46%. To add more value for fans with diverse interests, the first email in this sequence suggests links to articles on a variety of sports. The emails they receive going forward are then tailored according to what they click on.

Fans who share their date of birth receive a personalised birthday greeting with a 25% discount to spend in Team GB’s shop. This has been a huge success, with open rates of 45% and a 10% uptick in sales at the webshop during a non-Games year. This is also a future area of development for commercial partner offers.

Using AI to understand fan behaviour and how to turn insights into better results.

Team GB uses AI to send every email to the right person at the right time with Einstein Send Time Optimisation. AI predicts the right time to send an email to each and every fan, which improves engagement and open and win-back rates.

The organisation also uses Einstein Engagement Scoring to identify the most loyal fans and learn how to make its communications even more effective from their behaviour.

Einstein 1 brings Team GB’s data into one platform and empowers the marketing team to tell trusted stories that build loyalty with fans. Thanks to AI, communications reach fans at the time each person is most likely to engage, increasing the impact of every campaign.