The football and rugby seasons are drawing to a close in the UK and while some teams are battling it out for honours and trophies, there are others who will spend the summer regrouping after being relegated or underperforming during the season. Those who have been successful may be developing their marketing strategies to focus on recruiting new fans, growing their membership, increasing their brand reach and improving sales of merchandise. For those at the other end of the spectrum they should be focused on one thing – Customer retention.

Some companies have realized that, sometimes, the best people to market to are your current customers. It generally costs a hell of a lot more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current ones. Sports teams need to think “How much is an ‘engaged’ fan worth to us?”  There is a natural tendency for clubs who have dropped a division to try and squeeze as much revenue from as many sources as possible but if they think first of all, how to provide value to their existing fans then they will be in a much stronger position to increase their reach and financial activity when the tide turns.

As a fan of a beleaguered club, you probably aren’t feeling too hot about spending hundreds more pounds on renewing your season ticket or buying the club’s new kit for the kids, so the clubs need to think how they can reach out the fans and create a ‘we are in this together, lets get out of it together’ mentality. Offers, Deals, Promotions are great…but also giving them exclusive content and more importantly, a platform to voice their opinion and a better ‘user experience’ when interacting with the club. A lot of the time, human beings just want to be heard or noticed – especially when you are as passionate as a sports fan, the smallest amount of interaction or connection with the club can have a big impact.

The brand equity that clubs could win by making the fans believe they are important to the club, their opinions do matter and ideas they have can be implemented, would be a good start to retaining their loyalty (and revenue) for another year.