This transcript has been lightly edited by AI
Sean: And so once you start, once you get that view, you can then start looking at it from that 30,000-foot view of what the data is telling us and what opportunities are in that space. Is that where the role of the digital commercial manager started to develop because you started having that strong foundation of what your data was?
Jesper: That's exactly the way that everything's developed. As soon as we got the general overview, we could pretty easily identify areas with potential like low hanging fruits. My role at that point got split up. We hired a ticketing manager that also handles the fan club now and we hired a marketing coordinator to do like the more day to day work on setting up campaigns. I was free to do more strategic things around, leading the company in the right direction. From a business case standpoint, you're looking at, okay, we could optimize our ticket sales by doing this so I could create a CRM strategy. We can optimize our engagement work by doing this. I can do an engagement strategy. So, leading the company in the right direction but always based on the foundation of data.
Sean: And was there a re-education process required because knowing when you go from those that siloed data with that hasn't been brought together and have a single view, you'll have commercial relationships that use terms like email blasts and things like that. Was there a re-education process for the commercial folk or the partners that you'd worked with in the past that have said I'll call you would you send out an email realizing that it didn't work? That was the terms that they were using, where you were saying no it's actually going to be better if we send this email just to these 30,000 people. It's half as many as we usually send out but it's more effective. How did you go with that education process?
Jesper: Yeah, actually I think that's a great point because it's a whole another mindset that needs to be implemented in pretty much all school organizations. I think this whole development in '14 came at a great time with DBU because the years leading up to this, we've had some two main challenges from a commercial standpoint. Ticket sales were dropping, we were having issues with selling tickets for home games. We were having huge issues with loyalty. We had quite a lot of left customers. The second challenge was selling mean partnerships. Sponsorship deals surrounding the national team because as everybody knows, the sponsorship market has developed from some like sure exposure to a much more return on investment focus from the partners. So that was like the mental challenges that this whole mindset change. Going back to your initial question, we actually did quite a lot of education internally in DBU. I presented slides for the entire organization visualizing how we now collect, we gather data pools in one single customer view so be really specific on how each department can use this to create value. And at the same time for the sales team getting me involved in the impetus for potential partners so I can go to meetings and talk to Carlsberg or other big partners on how we can use this in order to create value in their partnership. So we actually needed education from bottom up so all departments can take on it. And also, I was going through to departments telling them about this.
Sean: Yeah, I mean and that's a vital piece because you do all the work back of house and don't tell the sales team and don't tell your partners nothing changes. It's like you've done all this great work. And I'm guessing you're finding as you're going to more and more of these pitch meetings and meeting with partners that data is becoming more and more in focus especially as you said moving more to a partnership rather than just pure impressions and that kind of thing is that what's leading the conversation they're saying tell us about your data, who've got that kind of thing. That's where it starts?
Jesper: Actually in the sport, no enterprise sponsorship world, that's different companies get different takes on how they see value in partnerships. Still a lot of it, there's still few values in the whole image thing getting their brand connected to the image of the DBU especially when we've got the world when you think of. But especially a couple of the last couple of years, they've been focused very much on the data and that's been leading the conversation especially with companies that sell directly to consumers. Carlsberg is a big customer, but they don't do like direct sales for consumers, they're more bars and stores and forecasting the data maybe doesn't make that much sense to them. But we got a false bargain as well. They are extremely interested in this because they are focusing on generating traffic to the customers all with their marks all we can do segmented campaigns in specific areas for specific each group with specific income that's extremely interesting for a company like that.
Sean: And that's the thing I think that's the danger for first sports marketers and commercial folk if they don't realize the difference between those two types of sponsors because you're right there's still the Carlsberg zone out of the world that's still just want the logo on the chest and want to be still seen as number one and it is an awareness piece. But if you don't understand that the customer acquisition piece and you those types of sponsors for a lot of people getting it at a very cheap price because it's not being valued appropriately whether it's trying to sell electricity or telcos or those kinds of things that are very much in the analytics and CRM space for far longer than sports and so they know the value of their customer. And I think that's where that's where I think that the game will be levels up a little bit as sports lifts its game in that space.
