Playbook
College Athletics Text Messaging
Text messaging is the next tool your college athletics department needs to ignite fan engagement.
Here’s how college athletics departments leverage texting to draw bigger crowds, increase ticket sales, generate in-game engagement, and more. This playbook can apply to universities of all sizes, but we specifically have ones with bustling athletics departments in mind.
4 Essentials Before Your Athletics Department Starts Texting
1. A contact list of fans who have opted in for texts.
Collecting fan phone numbers needs to be a part of your university’s marketing tactics, if it’s not already. All it takes is adding a section for phone numbers on your existing ticket purchase forms, or advertising a Keyword like “GOTEAM” to encourage fans to text you to receive updates.
Mobile carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile want businesses to only text consumers who’ve expressed an interest in receiving text messages from that business. In other words, they don’t want you spamming fans who aren't opt-ins.
Opt-ins are contacts who have expressed a clear desire to be text messaged by your university.
As for your fans who have already opted-in, put them into a spreadsheet to upload into Text Request. Organize this spreadsheet of contacts by:
Cell phone numbers in column A
Customer names in column B
Any desired custom fields in the preceding columns (alumni status, sport, etc.)
If you don’t know which of your existing fans’ numbers are cell phone vs. landline numbers, our Text Request support team can clean landline numbers from your list, so you know the numbers you’re texting will receive your message.
2. A registered 10DLC.
10DLC is an abbreviation for a 10-digit long code phone number. It refers to a standard phone number, like 423-218-0111.
10DLC regulations state that you must:
Register your business for texting
Prove that contacts opted-in to receive texts from you
Show how they opted into those messages
We’re happy to help you through this process. Just ask, or review our 10DLC registration guide.
3. Tech stack for managing contacts.
We have integrations that will import existing contacts from your other software into Text Request. That way you’re ready to roll from the start—and you make the most out of the contacts you’ve already collected.
HubSpot
Constant Contact
MailChimp
Square
These integrations can also help you create SMS automations to make staying in contact with fans even easier.
4. Marketing materials and photographs to share with fans.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then texting photos and graphics to your fans is a surefire way to get them hyped about upcoming events. Have all those attachments accessible, so you can text them to fans later for things like:
Game highlights
Ticket and merch promotions
Season pass reminders
Stadium and parking maps
And more
We’ll cover these concepts in depth below.
5 SMS Tactics to Increase Fan Engagement
1. Create in-game engagement.
In-game giveaways and contests are a great way to generate hype and encourage fans to keep coming back. Advertise Keywords on your billboards to invite people in the stadium to enter-to-win.
A Keyword is a unique word or phrase that fans can text to your university to opt-in for a chance to win a prize.
For example, say you did a version of 3-card monte on your jumbotron during the game. You could invite fans to text 1, 2, 3, or 4 to vote for their guess, and the winners would get entered into a drawing for a giveaway.
Another example could be a promotion for “last call” on drinks. Fans could text LASTCALL to opt in and get 10% off.
You’ll get their entries, plus save their contact info for upsell opportunities later.
2. Increase individual ticket sales and attendance.
It’s best to send a mixture of texts regarding promotions. Some can be for a specific sport and have a call-to-action—like purchasing tickets—while some can simply provide info about all your upcoming events, including:
Player signings
Meet-and-greets
Press conferences
Themed days
Even if these events are free to attend, you still want huge turnouts—so text fans about them!
Updates like these ensure you keep fans engaged and updated on what games are coming next. Most people tend to make decisions last second anyways, so sending texts both leading up to the event and last-minute can contribute to a notable uptick in ticket sales.
Create text templates for frequently sent promotions, plus add fans to Groups that you can send targeted texts to later. Contacts can be in more than one Group, which is helpful for fans who attend the games of more than one sport. You can even have a group for your corporate sponsors, so you can easily identify who they are and which business they're associated with.
Check out our list of pre-made events and ticketing text message templates.
3. Share stadium policies, updates, and game-day reminders.
SMS gives you an easy way to share event reminders and last-minute updates. Treat fans well by keeping them in the loop, and they’ll continue to return to your events. These updates and reminders could include:
Event start-time and door-open reminders
Digital versions of tickets
Clear bag policies
Stadium and parking maps
Seat locations
Inclement weather alerts
Any themes, promotions, charities prioritized that night
Mass texting makes it easy to get all this valuable information in front of fans. Like BCC email, mass texts give you the power to reach all of your fans at once. Any replies become one-on-one conversations that can be used to turn into upsell opportunities or to help fans with any questions they have.
Your fans will love having everything they need in one place without digging through their email or pulling up your event’s website. It creates a seamless experience that keeps them coming back for more.
4. Promote merch and other upsell opportunities.
One-on-one personalized sales will often get potential ticket buyers to bite faster—especially if it’s for the team they love. This is where those Groups we talked about earlier come in, so you can better target fans with individual upsell opportunities.
These could include:
Merch for their favorite team
Specialty food and beverage options
Upgraded seating
And more
Particularly for upgraded seating, if there are unsold great seats for a game—front row, courtside, on field, box suites, etc.—you can text key fans or corporate sponsors and see if anyone wants to upgrade. The personalization of those asks is great, and it's an easy way to improve sales.
A solid upsell promotion text message will show fans why they should be excited about the offer, create urgency with something like a limited-time discount, and provide a next step on where to purchase with a link. Check out our full guide on how to write texts your fans will love.
5. Highlight promotions on behalf of other partners.
You have a ton of sponsors and partners who help support your university’s athletics. Text messaging can be one more way to help promote them, plus potentially incentivize new sponsors to join in.
For example, if there’s a local business that gives discounts the Monday after a team wins, you can send text messages to your fans to promote that offer. Advertisements like these—sending promotions on behalf of your sponsors—are just one more way to upsell your sponsors.
Text Request gives you the power to create reports for message-open rates and link click-through rates, so you can share ROI from your SMS promotions. Metrics like these can be a powerful tool for swaying new partners to advertise with you.
Ready to Give Fans Your Best with Text Messaging?
Text Request not only makes your current phone number textable, we also provide ongoing training and support to help your college athletics department get the most out of text messaging.
Reach out to our team of experts today to learn how we can boost your fan base together!
