Whether we’re talking about a week-long tennis tournament that is slowly winding down or the final inning of a 100-game baseball season, all sports eventually meet the same end: the off-season.
But, unlike your favorite teams and players, your app doesn’t need to take a break. In fact, if leveraged correctly, your app can (and should) act as a mechanism to maintain and even build fan energy and momentum as your organization navigates the downtime between events.
How? I’m glad you asked.
Don’t Allow Fan Engagement to Fizzle
Let’s start out with where the majority of your off-season fan engagement probably lives right now: social media. Now, we’re not here to trivialize the effectiveness of a rockstar social media strategy. However, tweet all you want, but eventually, your fans are going to scroll right by your posts to see that funny GIF a few swipes below.
Bottom line: You can do better.
The good news is that, with your BleachrONE mobile app solution, it isn’t hard to keep fresh and fun content fueling your app on a consistent basis.
The best part?
It’s really up to you how engaging you want your app to remain during your organization’s off-season. You have full creative control over what your fans see and what they engage with. Here are a few examples that our partners have seen success with in the past:
Expand the Geofence. Come off-season, an effective way to engage your local fans is to expand the geofence beyond the walls of your venue and offer the opportunity for fans to complete Trivia and Challenges that take them around the local area. Do you have local sponsors? Create a challenge that sends fans to a sponsored location and then rewards them for stopping by! Simply create an event in the app admin, set it’s duration to the entire off-season and you’re ready to go.
Pro tip: Take advantage of your very own in-app social stream! Keep pumping content in the Fan Stream to encourage fans to do the same.
Switch up the Home Screen. Your app’s Home Screen is the front page of your app. It is the first thing fans see when they launch the app, but it’s important to fill it with dynamic, exciting content so it’s not the last thing fans see, too. Use it to highlight featured news, exclusive merchandise promos, ticket sales, or special events. Consistently switching what users see upon app launch will keep it fresh and unique for everyone, every time.
Unique Push Notifications. During your organization’s off-season, sending out Push Notifications highlighting something in the app can act as a great little reminder for fans to open up your app and see what’s new! Need an idea or two? Offer early bird ticket access available exclusively through the app or send out a notification highlighting an off-season event in the venue or in the area.
RSS Feed and Social Media. Two of the easiest ways to always keep a variety of content in your app is through integrating an RSS feed and integrating your social media accounts. Adding an RSS feed from your website or other trusted media source automatically pulls in relevant news content for fans to stay up to date on your team or event. By integrating your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), the app will automatically pull all posts from your social media into the app so fans can view and engage with them all in one place.
The ideas laid out above hardly begin to cover the numerous opportunities available within your app to keep engagement high during the off-season. Fans never take a break from supporting their favorite team or players, so why should your app? If your fans are looking for ways to stay engaged with your organization during the off-season, your mobile app should be one of the first places you start.
Have an awesome idea but aren’t sure how to execute? Drop us a line and let’s work together to see if we can help make your idea a reality!
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