SaiPa strengthens relationship with their fans with Apifonica’s outbound IVR
Saimaan Pallo (SaiPa) strengthens relationship with their fans with Apifonica’s outbound IVR.
A member of SM-Liiga, the top professional ice hockey league in Finland, SaiPa leverages Apifonica’s outbound IVR to engage with their supporters and make them feel a part of the club.
“Sports is all about emotion. You can’t overestimate the importance of relationship between the team and the fans,” - say Jussi Viljakainen, Communication and Marketing Director at SaiPa. - “Nurturing this unique relationship is an important part of our daily job.”
SaiPa relies on social media and the club’s website to keep the fans in a loop between games. But their fan engagement tactics go further than that. “We were about to announce that the team’s captain Ville Koho has prolonged his contract for the season 2019-2020,” - says Viljakainen. - “That’s where Apifonica reached out to us. The idea of Ville giving a personal call to every fan and announcing the news himself sounded fresh, for a surprisingly low price, so we went for it.”
Despite the holiday season, SaiPa was able to launch the campaign from scratch in a mere couple of days. Ville recorded a voice message, thanking fans for their support during the game season and announcing he’s staying with the team. Apifonica’s outbound IVR automatically dialed a list of 2000 phone numbers. Once the call was answered, a fan heard Ville’s message and had an option to request an SMS with a ticket deal. As a result, 700 people listened to the record, and 130 of them requested an SMS.
“It’s not every day that we see the 19% conversion rate for our engagement campaigns,” - Viljakainen says. - “But most important, a feedback from the fans was quite positive, with a notable buzz on social media. The Facebook post about Ville calling is among the most commented posts in our newsfeed. Impressive result for a campaign that cost 100 euros. Outbound IVR looks like a high touch and high impact engagement tactic, and I clearly see a space for it in our marketing mix, be it engaging with fans or promoting ticket deals.”