About Raycom Sports
Raycom Sports is a production, distribution, and event management company with over 30 years of experience and a reputation of being one of the nation’s finest independent sports syndicators and producers. With deep roots in college football and basketball, Raycom Sports has also expanded its portfolio to include a vast array of sports opportunities on the local, regional, and national level and partners with the ACC and The CW Network.
Challenge
Broadcast media companies, such as Raycom, are grappling with the challenges posed by the digital age. Audiences are fragmented due to the proliferation of digital platforms and online streaming – and broadcasters and their strategic partners in media and advertising need a deep understanding of audience data and effective insights sharing to deliver meaningful experiences.
After using interest data and segments created in BlueConic to personalize content on site and in Facebook campaigns, Raycom Sports and their flagship partner, the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), wanted to get more viewer information from ACC site visitors to create more flexible and dynamic customer journeys. With the college football playoffs approaching, they anticipated a surge in site traffic, offering an ideal opportunity for data collection.
Solution
Using Progressive Profiling to Personalize Customer Journeys
Raycom implemented progressive profiling using BlueConic Dialogues and Lifecycles to present dynamic surveys and collect survey responses from ACC site visitors into Profiles. Using a series of dialogues, the team created a multi-step survey to capture core information about their viewers with questions such as:
Have you attended a college or pro sporting event in the last year?
If no, would you travel?
If yes, how often do you travel?
How far would you travel?
If staying overnight for a college or pro sporting event, what is your accommodation preference? (Hotel, Airbnb/VRBO, Friend, or Relative)
To dynamically change the survey based on an initial response, Raycom relied on Lifecycle stages to organize dialogues and automatically display the right survey based on a previous response. These questions not only allowed Raycom to build a rich audience of travelers who visited the site, but from there they were able to break this audience down in several ways using Insights and Segments. Raycom and the ACC can now take these audience insights to their advertising partners to better tailor messaging to the individuals who visit the site.
What’s more? Since Dialogues can be configured using robust out-of-the-box functionalities, Raycom did not have to rely heavily on technical resources to get new experiences stood up. BlueConic Lifecycles were also set up by non-technical teams to dynamically guide users through a sequence of next-best questions. If a viewer answered “no,” to a question, for example, they were entered into a stage with another set of questions instead of exiting the survey. Raycom and the ACC gathered more information about viewers without them ever leaving the website with an experience that felt cohesive to their brand and the customer journey – a win-win.
BlueConic enables us to discover who our website or event visitors are beyond simple demographics. We have access to lifestyle and buying habits that allow us to better target potential clients or sponsors. Each of our campaigns is fully customized to capture key data points to drive successful outcomes."
Research Manager, Raycom SportsResults
Progressive Profiling yielded outstanding results, with a conversion rate of 7.23%, and Raycom collecting over 27,000 data points from visitors of the ACC website. The travel survey enabled the creation of detailed audience profiles including travel preferences, behaviors, and other invaluable data points. The rich data collected provide Raycom and ACC the ability to approach advertising partners with highly targeted and segmented viewer profiles. Additionally, because BlueConic provides a one-stop, first-party data solution, Raycom didn’t have to go through a third-party to source that data, saving money and time.
Raycom can now easily set up progressive profiling without relying heavily on technical teams. Business users within the organization can replicate similar use cases to attract new business and advertising partners. BlueConic provides the technology for Raycom to move quickly and implement customer experiences that have the brand feel while simultaneously providing the mechanisms for activating the first-party data that is collected instantly on the website and through advertising channels.
