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Justin Price is the senior manager of multichannel marketing at the Milwaukee Bucks. He built the team's SMS program from scratch inside a legacy Marketo stack. The welcome journey delivers 104x ROI and a 38% conversion rate. Checkout abandonment runs 233x. Subscriber growth hit 455%. The team behind it is five people across five brands.
This conversation covers how Attentive connects to Marketo through third-party middleware, why identity resolution is the next frontier, and what actually moved the unsubscribe rate in a 32-50 year. It wasn't the record. It was the trade-rumor cycle.
Sports marketing runs on a level of seasonality few marketers manage. A rumor breaks, your list reacts, and you had no hand in the news. Justin explains how that shapes send strategy, why RCS is still on the bench, and why he'd start with an imperfect solution rather than wait for the perfect stack.
Timestamps
02:30 — Keep one channel: why Justin picks email over SMS
06:07 — The rumor mill moves the unsubscribe rate
07:52 — Hottest take: AI will not replace human capital as fast as people think
15:20 — Identity resolution is the next frontier
20:47 — Concierge reps and the fans who just want to be heard
22:59 — RCS is still on the bench
29:43 — Eight years in the NBA: stay flexible, let fandom fuel the work
35:49 — Best solution beats perfect solution
37:31 — All-in-one versus best-of-breed
41:48 — Set it and forget it: the in-season automation playbook
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What is Making Sense of Martech?
Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.
Welcome to the making sense of MarTech, where the rabbit hole goes deeper than the headlines. This
is a show that pressure tests ideas, not just platforms. On the hot seat today, we have Justin
Price. He built a multi-channel marketing program that delivered 455% subscriber growth for a
team whose subscriber count keeps growing. So the real question is what happens when the marketing
team out plays the team on the court, the strategy, the roster, everything underneath it. So a little
bit about him first. Justin is a senior manager of multichannel marketing at the Milwaukee Bucks.
That is a tongue twister. Might I add. He built the SMS program from scratch within an existing
legacy stack. The Welcome Journey delivers 104 x ROI with a 38% conversion
rate. Check out abandonment runs 233 x ROI. He started his career doing HTML and CSS QA
on class action mailing sent to 20 million people. Before fan engagement, he was stress testing
whether the broken tag could blow up mass communication at scale. Welcome, Justin. Thank you
for being here. Of course. Yeah. Appreciate it. Excited to talk all things digital marketing.
Me too. All right. So to dive in first we're going to do some rapid fire. What was your first martech
tool? First martech tool was an ESP. So it was the ESP that we used to deploy
all the class action mailings to millions of people. So that was my first foray into
email development but then also segmentation. So I saw the full gamut of what it looked like. What
was the martech tools name? It was called deliverer. Oh, okay. Yep. All right.
So speaking of what is one instinct from your QA days that still runs in the background before you
hit send on 50,000 texts? I will say for me, proofreading and rereading things over and
over, even if, like, I throw it through some spell checker, I'm still
reading it over and making sure it sounds coherent just because, like, as you know, with SMS
and other digital tools, once you send it, it's out there. There's no editing, no updating. So making
sure I review and like review ad nauseam. Well, hey, at least now if there are mistakes, you can say
clearly it wasn't AI, right? Right. There's a human involved. Exactly. Email or
SMS? Keep one tomorrow. Which one survives? I will probably go with email, but
as you know, it's a costly channel, so you have to be very particular about what campaigns you do
send out. And then for us, for email, I feel like you can send out a higher volume of
campaigns you can nurture, you can gather feedback, you can send out any promotional content you want.
And I will say to the flexibility with how the campaign ends up looking to the end consumer, you
know, with the text, it's either just plain text link or it's creative or GIF. Plain text link. So
you're really fixed and confined to certain elements with email. It's like the world is our
oyster. That's true. That's the one exciting thing about RCS coming up is the opportunities that
that brings. I wonder minus the price, if if you'll change your tune.
Speaking of SMS, what was your worst performing campaign this year? What broke? There are some
where when we bucket them because of the type of audience like we can't
necessarily engage with a youth clinic participant just given the
nature of their age. So a good example is like when we have camps and clinics, messaging. It's
like very niche messaging because not only are we trying to communicate with someone who is
younger, we also have to communicate with someone who is looking to purchase for an event that's
around here. And like if we don't have someone's zip code or their direct email or locale,
it becomes a little bit more difficult to message them directly and try to hit it like the nail on
the head. With the campaign that makes a lot of sense is hyper personalization or lack thereof.
And if you don't have it, you can't do it, or you don't have the data to back you up. Right. There's
more than just the bucks. You've got five different brands, I think one, we should name all
five, but you're using only one system. So of the five, which is the hardest to write for. So we have
the books, we have the Box Pro shop and then we have Pfizer Forum
Wisconsin herd and then Deer District. And I would probably say the one
that's the hardest to write for is probably Dear District, because
really, like that is all about hospitality and events not tied to basketball, like
marketing for a basketball team like there are. Yes, the potter on the court changes, but at the
end of the day it's a bit easier because it's easier to explain for sure this type of
ticket offer for these types of players, etc., etc. but for dear District, especially if it's an
event where we haven't run the event before, you're having to explain what is the event
and then really to drive it home to value. I feel like that's the most difficult part because some
of these events too, they may not even be a paid event, but we may have only a certain number of
days for a heads up. So it's like, what can we do to drive someone down here? Because that's really
what it boils down to, getting people in the Deer District Plaza. That makes sense. Okay,
this might be a little harsh, but the bucks went 32 and 50. Did that show up in your unsubscribe
rate? So it's funny that you mentioned that because during our off season we've
had a lot of changes. Like that's the best way I can put it and put it nicely. So we did see our
unsubscribe rate go up. And I can speak specifically to SMS because again like I
mentioned it's a costly channel. So we're monitoring size of sin, number of characters, etc..
And I do recall around the time we had basically the rumor mill happening, I noticed our
unsubscribe rate did go up. I wouldn't say like substantially, but it went up enough to where
it caught my attention because it's usually, relatively speaking, low. So that's where we had to
actually think about like, man. Like maybe right now is not the best time to deploy to a huge
portion of our database, and we need to actually get more hyper personalized. Plus, look at what
can we do via email as well and other digital channels. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel
like that's a level of seasonality very few marketers have to manage and
oversee. Is that. It's funny you say that because it's not like these reports are even coming from
us. They're coming from the rumor mill. The big. Exactly. So we have no control over how
much they want to ruminate over. Is he here? Is he not? We just have to basically, like straight
face. That's so interesting because you have no control about it. There's really little you
can do besides pump the brakes or really focus on your loyal, loyal fans.
Exactly. All right. Last but not least, what is your hottest take? AI will not replace
human capital as quick as people think. I think it's easy to think of it as like a turnkey plug
and play black and white. But what we're realizing is that there is still a lot of work to be done,
especially when you're talking about AI being used with enterprise systems and like those
enterprise systems exposing data to in tools like cloud ChatGPT
and like what that means from a, I would say IT infrastructure standpoint. So it sounds great in
theory when someone says like, oh yes, I want to use AI for x, Y, and Z, but I don't think it's as
it's as easy as it sounds. I think there's a a long road ahead. Oh yeah. It is very artificially
intelligent, right? Well, it doesn't argues that one unified architecture with the same
segmentation logic and format as a variable is the right way to build multichannel, but that
discipline system runs on top of Marketo, which he also calls archaic. And in the year when the
only thing going bingo for the bucks was a subscriber count. Bingo, for the uninitiated, is
what bucks fans yell when a shot drops from the deep, and also the name of the team's mascot. So
this year's marketing numbers had it. The roster didn't quite. So if the ESP is at the center of
your stack and that is your weakest link. Isn't that discipline built on a cracked foundation?
What have you actually done to manage that short of replacing the platform? Yeah, for us, we've been
a long time customer of them, and I feel like we've come a really long way into getting other
systems connected. But we have our SMS provider connected to Marketo, so we're
able to see data back and forth in between the two to where we could potentially send out an
email campaign to someone and then using this enterprise AI system,
wait a couple days retargeting with a text message, and then wait a few more days, maybe hit
them with a paid advertisement. And then at that point it's like, oh, maybe we want to retarget them
and have a sales rep follow up. So I think it's understanding the robustness of the tools,
because that's one thing I can say about Marketo. The number of integrations that we have tapped in
and tied to Marketo, it's pretty strong. So it's realizing what are the strengths of the tool and
then figuring out how can we best utilize other tools with this tool. That makes sense. And can you
give some examples of what tools you use on top of Marketo. Mhm. Yep. So attentive. Our
SMS provider that I mentioned and then Stellar Argo. That's our CDP,
and it's essentially a segmentation tool that's sitting on top of a bunch of data from our data
lake, and it can crunch and push someone to a static marketplace within seconds. And then
Movable Inc., That is a tool we use for dynamic content and personalization. And we've been a
customer of them for a very long time. I've been able to do a lot then tradable bits.
It's a gamification slash Legion tool. It kind of falls within two worlds, our team and
then our VP of digital platforms. It falls within his team's world as well. And
then dynamics 365. That's our CRM tool. And that fuels all the
leads for our sales team. Got it. Okay. So we reference this already but
455% year over year subscriber growth. But growth in health, aren't you? Almost always
aren't the same thing. And most SMBs lists churn 20 to 30% per year. And
so what's actually keeping your 2023 subscribers engaged in the year of 2026? So it's honestly
pretty ironic that you're asking me this question, because I was just talking to our account rep a
few weeks ago, and she was just showing us the percentage of people who haven't engaged, but
they're still subscribed since we started our program in 2023. So one thing that we're thinking
about doing is a campaign where we're essentially just asking people, hey, like, what are you most
interested in hearing about? Again, because they joined so long ago, they wouldn't have received
welcome campaign messaging in a really long time. So what we're focused on is, okay, we know
these people, they're engaging, but how about this subset of people? And obviously it's a pretty good
chunk of people who we want to engage with who have it engaged. So I think it's asking them, where
do you want to hear more about who's your favorite bucks player? Are you living in Wisconsin?
Are you not? Just so that we're not just sending them message after messages pelting them over the
head, but we're trying to understand again, what are you interested in hearing more about? Yeah, for
sure. That's it's always a good idea and also saves a lot of money for everybody because it
adds up. When we first started, our list was pretty small so we could send campaigns out
to a few thousand people and it's like, no shirt off our back. Whereas now, like you're sending
hundreds of thousands of people. Things change pretty quickly. Yes, it's the downfall. And the
best part of having a large and engaged audience is it costs a lot more. Exactly. And so
your job is even more important. So what did this year actually reveal about the limits of what
marketing can do when the product on the court isn't cooperating? Yeah. Honestly, I think it
revealed to us you really can't rest on the laurels of what you've done in the past, or like
the laurels of, oh, this person will always be here or will always have this core.
And by thinking that, it makes you realize you really do have to make sure you're listening to
the customer because the product you sold last year with your roster at that time, it's not the
same product that you can sell this time. Going into a new season with the expectation that you
will sell the same or more products, I just think is pretty unrealistic. So I
think it's constantly going back to like, okay, how does this pricing compare to when we look at
another product, whether it's a sing, a ticket or a group package, just making sure it all feels right,
as if you were the end customer and you were were receiving that messaging because that will always
Trump. Yeah, it's something I think many folks don't realize is yes, it's the same product every
year, but it's a completely different ingredients list, exactly like one year. Your ingredients list,
it could call for meat and potatoes, the next year it could call for something more
premium. Yeah. So that's true. That's true. Well, I'm hoping this year you get the premium steak.
Exactly right. Right. All right. Now to talk about tech a little bit more. So your principle is to
fold it all in and not to spin it up. So whether it's SMS, MMS and RCS as format variables within a
single architecture. But Attentive and Marketo don't natively talk to each other, what's the
actual connective tissue and where does the seam get exposed? Yeah, the connective tissue is through
a third party middleware system called DCB formerly vertically. And it's
looking at the phone number and it's inattentive based on the phone number that is
exposed in Marketo. But then like on the flip side, if we're looking at data happening, data change is
happening. Attentive. But we want to push it back to Marketo because Marketo is an ESP is looking
at, well, what is the email address tied back to it. So that's one thing we actually noticed where I
feel like we had to make some refinements early on. It was a lot of, okay, how many people can be
getting a database phone number and everything else is just a cherry on top. Whereas now
we're like, okay, we have their phone number, what is their email address? Because we want to start
to track the activities happening inside of attentive. We want to track those inside of
Marketo as well. So a lot of our sign up units, they were initially based on just capturing phone
number. And then over time they've evolved to where we're asking for phone number plus email
and then honestly, to even zip in first name just so that we can start to capture like, oh, this
person is an SMS subscriber, email subscriber, and they're in Wisconsin. We know we can hit them with
this messaging because they can actually come to a game versus if you just have someone's phone
number, you have no clue. That makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like identity resolution is really
kind of the next frontier for you and the team to be able to do your jobs at the best scale and
personalization possible. Yeah, I would 100% say that, especially two. Like I mentioned, we're trying
to tie these other enterprise tools into what's happening inside of Marketo. But
if we can't connect the dots because we only have one data point here, another data point here,
then it's just not as helpful. Like you said, you can't scale it. Yeah. That's true. All right. So
you've got attentive handling, abandoned carts and price drop follow ups. And you've called it
reliable and too generic in the same breath. Give me a specific example of where it's falling short.
Yeah, I think for us, if we're sending out a price drop campaign and I
think this is really on me versus the tool itself, but if we know that the price drop for a
certain product, could we try to surface up other similar products that maybe had a recent price
drop? And then could we try to take those items and then place them in someone's cart dynamically
so that it's not just, yes, this price drop for this product, go back to the product. It's like, oh,
we actually we found a bucket of similar items. And then just trying to make the conversion
process more efficient and dropping in similar products so that we can raise our average order
value number. And with that do you mean add the similar products to their cart or in the
email itself as suggested items. I think both. Like ideally, if we could surface that up
in the email, that's like great. But I think that's step one. But then it's like step two. Having those
products be readily available when we send out those campaigns. I wonder, I have yet to come
across any company that's adding things to your cart automatically, even if it was like a wishlist,
because I know some like to wishlist Shopify. So like, yeah, if it was like a suggested
wishlist. Mhm. Something. I like that idea on those lines. Yeah that's smart. Based off of
their recommendations, really like putting real power to those AI engines and recommendation
engines. That makes sense. Okay, so you've said memes and rich media move sports fans much more
than just plain SMS. And every sports marketer claims this. What does your data actually
show? The same offer, the same segment Ms. versus SMS. And does it hold when the
team is winning or losing? Yeah, I think when the team performance, when it
subsides or it changes pretty drastically, I think for us that's when we have to
basically have to step outside of the norm. Because one, just like I mentioned, when we had the
changes happening all off season, when people are getting messaging from us some I mean, I
can attest to what I saw in our SMS inbox. There were some pretty strongly
worded messages, to put it nicely. So I think it's like it's stepping outside of the norm
when you do have things outside of your control happening. Because I think too, another thing is
making sure you you're not tone deaf. Because I think for us sports
and people's affinity to their team, it is so strong to where if you sound even a
bit off from a messaging standpoint, you will get roasted. Yeah. No, it's it's very true. And
people take great pride in their team, whatever their team may be. Now I'm curious, do any of those
maybe strongly worded messages thematically get grouped and shared upwardly,
or is it something just the marketing and customer support teams have to absorb with SMS
specifically? We have a feature inside of attentive called concierge, and we have reps
that we're paying for that they're working on behalf of us. They're answering a lot of these
inquiries, and we can actually respond with like, hey, this tone it didn't hit or like, oh, this
content wasn't right. So we have people working on our behalf just to feel those questions and
sometimes to I think it boils down to some fans just want to make sure that they're heard. So I
think is leaving that up to the concierge reps. We understand how you feel. Fill out this form
to share your feedback. Or like, oh, we have ticket deals. If you feel like the team is not performing
at its best, you think this ticketing product is too expensive? Well, we have other offerings for
you because we understand there's a different product for every fan. Yeah, that makes sense.
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scale. See what high touch can do for you at high touch. And now back to the hot seat. With such an
emphasis on SMS and SMS. RCS really is the next chapter. And every team, every
company frankly, are saying they're building towards something. And is this actually the
channel? RCS going to be something that comes off the bench, or is it going to continue just sitting
in warm ups? And if it's not live, what's blocking it? I will say for us, it's definitely sitting
on the bench like we've talked about it very high level. So just to give
you and everyone listening a glimpse into our world, our teams run, relatively speaking, our teams
run pretty small. So it's myself, I have my direct VP and then we have three other full time
employees handling marketing operations, email marketing, marketing automation. Do we actually
have the capacity to handle this? And I think another thing too is like during the season when
things get worse. When I say way busier, like way busier, it's like, do we have the time to
prioritize this? And like, is this a good use of our time? Or should we pivot to another marketing
theme or a game that's happening pretty soon? Yeah, that's definitely hard. I think many people
struggle with having a very lean team, which means you can't always upgrade where you would like
to. Yeah, for like, you know, we started our SMS program in 2023, but we had
not had an SMS program prior to three years ago. So like getting that off the ground from
an operational standpoint, from a legal standpoint, there's just so many hurdles that you have to
overcome, but it takes a lot. And again, when you run Lane, it's just it's one more thing to
have to consider without a doubt. Do you have short code or just regular SMS? Yep. Well, if you've
gone through short code, you will survive. Or CS? Nothing is as painful from my understanding,
but yes, it is a hurdle to you have to get all of your legal and finance things in order in order
to make it happen, but it will be well worth it once there's time. With the seasonality that comes
with literally a basketball season, is your off season slower, calmer, or
in time for planning? Or how do you kind of bucket each part of the year
accordingly? Yeah, I would say the off season is definitely a lot calmer. We have a lot more time
to plan because the goal really is that when the season comes, hopefully we've sold as many
memberships as possible so that when those games do come, there are less seats that need to be
filled, because then that requires us to promote different ticketing products that are just single
game, or maybe just a few games. But things definitely do slow down once the off season comes
and we're able to plan out. Okay, what do we want this marketing ticket promo?
Or where do we want the marketing ticket promo to live within the season based on these games, on
these dates, etc.? So we do a lot of sweepstakes planning so that when the season does come,
everything should be turnkey. That's awesome. It makes a lot of sense. So I imagine for you guys
it's not like, hi, we're planning for the next fiscal year. It's we're planning for the next
season. Right. And that is how your quote unquote kind of annual planning goes
instead. Yeah. Because then too, when the season does come. I mean, you want to talk about, like, all
hands on deck? Every game that is like, in our life, we're looking ahead
like, oh, we have a game today. Actually a month in some changes, our first home game. And unlike other
brands, like once we pass a date, that event is is gone. You can't market to it,
you can't sell against it. Whereas other brands like, I mean, they can continue to sell merchandise,
they can continue to sell certain food items, like whatever the case may be, which for us, we really
do have to capitalize on moments. So like if a trade happened in two weeks, the amount of
leverage and the amount of excitement that we have to build against that is pretty significant.
Just because once that window dies down fans, they just naturally become less. They're less excited
about the trade because it's not as new as not fresh. So we do capitalize on moments like, yes, we
can plan it or something happens three weeks from now. You better get ready. Saddle up. That makes
sense. Do you guys ever get a heads up that a trade is happening? Or that something is coming
down the pipe to be a little bit prepared? Or is it also kind of news to you? And you're like, all
right, let's let's do something with this, right? Yeah, I would say, at least from my standpoint,
being on the marketing front, it really does become news. So a good example is when we traded
for our former buck Damian Lillard. We traded for him in the summer of 2023. When
I saw the report from Shams, he was a beat reporter working for ESPN. My it was either
Shams or Adrian Wojnarowski, I can't remember, but it was a beat reporter that tweeted about a
potential trade. Like my eyes got big. The entire office was like, whoa! So that's when
we had first heard about it. But of course, at that time You can't really act on anything because
it's literally not official. It's just hearsay, even though, like it was pretty locked in. So then
the final press release dropped later that night, and that's when it's official and that's when
everything changes. So you're trying to sell as many memories as possible, take it merchandise,
whatever that makes sense. Okay, so you're learning pretty much with the news as the news comes in. Is
there. Do you have, like, the equivalent of a slack channel that's notifying you of the rumor mill? Or
maybe these, like the beat reporters and what they're having to say specifically about the
bucks? Yeah. I mean, I get notifications on my phone. It's kind of funny. I'm the group chat.
I'm in with my friends from college. They're all into sports. I feel like that kind of serves as my
notification tool. We love that filtration system. If anything crazy happens in the NBA,
I'm probably going to see it in there before. I'll see it anywhere else. So that's like, funny enough,
it's not an official channel, but I guess it's pretty official news just based on what I see
online. That makes sense. That must be kind of hard not knowing some campaigns that you just have to
prepare for really quickly. It is because like, you don't have creative to work against. Yeah,
you might not have to take any product that you want to promote against that transaction. You
basically just have ideas in your head and it's got to execute. Exactly one thing with
working in the NBA for as long as I have. So I'm on my eighth year. You learn I feel like it's a
business like no other, some things you simply cannot prepare for. So you just have to be very
flexible. And as a former Mavs fan. Mhm. Oh. Oh relate. Oh I'm sorry I can relate I'm
sorry. It's okay. It's my second time being a mavs fan after the Dirk Steve
Nash separation. Yep. Broke my heart. Game over. Right. And then I tried again once Luka came
around. And so we're on a forever break. Right? Right. No, it's understandable, but, yeah, like, just
like you said, you just have to be ready for the unexpected and be okay with it. Just knowing
that's the nature of our business. Yeah, that's very true. Do you struggle with the
separation between work and personal enjoyment of the NBA, or is it
just make work more fun? Before I work for the books, I was actually contemplating
getting a half season ticket plan. And then later that summer I got hired. I was like, well, won't be
needing that, but I feel like I don't try to separate it. Just because sports as a
cornerstone of Milwaukee is just so integrated into our community. Even when I went to
Marquette, we would go to the games, we'd go to bucks games like, hey, you want to go? Hey, you want
to go? I probably went to like 50 bucks games. So again, I'm a sports fan and of course
a basketball fan. So I just it's just like embracing it because it is what it is. And I will
say too, it does help me think more creatively when I see what another team is doing. I'm like, oh,
like, how can we apply that? Mhm. So do you do a fair amount of competitive research. Oh absolutely.
So one thing that I always tell my team is like usually like when they first start I will tell
everyone on my team, subscribe to as many newsletters for opposing teams as possible just
to see what's out there. Like how are they messaging it? How are they using creative
differently? I'm really big on analyzing what the competition is doing because for
us, like we may think is the best way to go about things, but if you see it, present it in another
way. We could change the trajectory of everything we're doing from an engaging standpoint, revenue
standpoint. So yeah, I'm big on that. I'm subscribed to like probably five, six,
seven other NBA teams, SMS program, I mean, NBA, NFL, MLB, I get a
lot. It's like you almost need both a separate work phone and a separate email. Yep.
Literally just to keep up. I mean, it's like what I would do if I were in your shoes, I'd be like,
sports fan, you know, 1000 at gmail.com. And it'd be like, all right, we're signing up for every single
NBA teams email. We all have access. And that's also probably a really great idea for Claude or
ChatGPT to be able to analyze and see those trends on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. But, um,
yeah, that would be a lot of notifications. I hope you use turning off notifications
wisely as a result. So I actually have an email. It's like finding creative inspiration at
gmail.com that's like literally email. I just funnel everything in there. And then for SMS,
I get it all, I don't mind, you don't even have them on mute, I don't know. Oh
wow. So like when the user releases, I'll get like feels like ten text messages from NBA
teams. You're like, oh, it's around that time of the year. Yep. Oh, it's probably fun because you're
you're really combining, you know, something you love with what you get to do for work. And so it's
you don't need that separation. That's awesome. It's one of my favorite movies from growing up. I
just think of like Love and basketball, even though it's very different plot. Right? Right.
Similar. Similar theme. Yeah. Okay. Kind of taking a step back and thinking about the industry at
large. Most sports orgs are still running SMBs like 20 2012 email batch,
blast spray, pray and what you've been building is very segmented journey based
program with extreme growth. With the we'll put an asterisk for, you know, the
unexpected changes that you have to do one off campaigns and ad hoc campaigns for. And definitely
your adrenaline is going to spike for that. Why do you think this hasn't become a standard practice
or because you're doing the market research? Do you think other teams are prioritizing
this automation and template ization of things like our team? So let me give a shout
out. Jasmine Kenzie, she's our email marketing coordinator, but she has more than just emails
like email marketing, SMS marketing, lead generation, demand generation. And then we have
Emma Stenzel. She's our marketing automation coordinator, so she handles a lot more of our
marketing automation tools, whether it's front end or back end. She does some email campaigns. I would
say like, one thing that I do mention to them is like, let's always be looking at what others are
doing so that we can factor in or how can we personalize this? I think why others
aren't doing it potentially is just from the standpoint of their tools in what's
connected, what's not connected, and our team. So my direct VP Ben Conrad, and
then our database marketing manager Rachel Keeling them along with Jasmine and Emma. I feel
like we've all done a great job of like, how can we best utilize the tools that we do have
and like, how can we think outside of the box? Like, yes, we have an SP that may not be natively
integrated with SMS, but like that doesn't mean we can't find a solution even if it's not perfect.
Sometimes the best solution is just a solution versus the perfect solution. Because again, some of
these tools that you're using, it just may like you may miss the mark because you're so worried
about trying to find something that's perfect. Whereas like, let's just start somewhere. So I
think it's doing exactly that, knowing that start somewhere, start small. That's what we did with our
SMS program. We didn't always have data flowing back to Marketo from incentive, but we're like, you
know what, let's just try to start with this middleware solution. Let's try to get something
inside of Marketo. Whereas now we run lead campaigns based off of people engaging with
ticketing campaigns and SMS. So we're able to drive leads for our sales team because we've
eventually, over time, built out a system to have that data flowing back and forth. That's awesome.
But also, it sounds like you guys might need to trade in and trade up at some point. Yeah, I will
say like we are like we're looking towards the future of like, what would it look like
if our tools did live in one spot? Because again, just because we're living in
a world now where things are living in different systems, like maybe we do look at another system
down the road, continual improvement and trying to innovate. We're not just going to stick with what
we're doing just because we've done it in the past. That doesn't make any sense. It's always good
to audit, see what you could do, but it sounds like more than most companies, you really have a really
small window to attempt. But I want to push back on maybe an all in one solution. There's very
rarely an all in one that is best of breed, and you want the best team members
on your roster. So oftentimes it is more than one tool. And so it's tricky. It is. So we actually went
through the RFP process a few years ago to where. And I'm not even going to say the tools that we
use. But so there were some tools where they they were hyping up this omnichannel
feel and like that felt good. It's like, yeah, that's great. That's something that we do want. But
then when we actually looked at just simple actions like, oh, if someone clicks an email and
they're going to a landing page and they fill out a form, how quickly does that data flow back to
our sales team? Because outside of people buying things online, that's the lifeblood of our sales
funnel. We need to be able to push people to our sales team as quickly as possible. So it's like, if
a system can't do that, then like everything else doesn't matter. You can have predictive analytics
here, predictive analytics there. But if we can't push a simple lead to a sales person, then yeah,
that's not going to work out for us. Yeah, I think some companies really forget the fundamentals
that actually matter the most. Right, exactly. Every fan base carries some baseline loyalty. That
has absolutely nothing to do with how good your marketing is. And after a year like this one, how
do you actually tell the difference between the fans your program earned and the fans who were
never leaving regardless? Yeah, I honestly will say it's looking at our most core fans,
so that would be our season ticket members. I think it's understanding, like year over year,
we'll be able to renew a certain subset of people. And then for the people who did renew, it's like,
well, why did you renew or why are you still a member? And then the people that did not renew it
was like, well, why didn't you want to renew? Like, how can we find a product that might suit you
better down the road? So I think it's looking at our most core fans is just trying to understand
sentiment. So we do that through surveys. For a lot of the events we have. Member events will send out
a post-event survey just to gather feedback and then games. Specifically, we'll send out
communication after to ask them how the event went. Yeah. And to that end, do you tier the
level of loyalty between how tickets are based, how how many purchases they make
from the pro store versus I don't we haven't even talked about like social engagement in this
conversation as well. Like are there different tiering systems or is it
really primarily of course focus on average order value, whatever the order may be. Yeah. So we don't
have a tiering system. I would say post-purchase though when someone does
buy a membership and they spend X amount, they do fall within a certain members here. So we have
different tiers based on spend and then ten years. But that's more so for
our benefit. So we can understand how members rank. One thing that I have talked a
lot to Ben Conrad, my direct VP about, is like, can we almost have a like a full loyalty
program? We have a lot of, I would say, technical restraints because we have a third party app tool
that may not necessarily be tied to like the benefits tool. So it's just figuring out how that
all plays together. But I have chatted with him like we could always have like a fake loyalty
program. When we see someone that has spent a certain amount or their average order value for
concessions reaches this amount, let's trigger this SMS campaign to them and almost treat it
exactly and treat it like a loyalty program, even if that's not like the the genesis of it. That
makes sense. Is there anything you want to talk about that we didn't talk about in your as it
relates to your role and the things you guys are doing? Yeah. I think one thing that I didn't really
touch on a lot was like all we're doing from a marketing automation standpoint.
So we have journeys that trigger campaigns based on if they bought a ticket, we'll try to
retarget them with like, hey, this game you purchase is actually within this plan. Get the
entire plan at a fraction of the cost, basically of what you purchase the single game at. We have
campaigns going out to people well ahead of the game like, hey, gear up for the game shop merch by
parking, or even like, hey, here are some. Here are five things you need to know about the game
and what you can expect when you arrive to Pfizer form. This is very, very simple, but if someone
fills out a form, just simple acknowledgment and regurgitating whatever the product is for the
form they filled out, just letting them know, like, hey, here's what you can expect with this product.
We have page visit automation. We have it for a ton of pages. So if someone visits a gnome, fan
visits, a schedule page and they have not purchased a certain type of ticket, will retarget
them with messaging like, hey, here's how you can experience bucks basketball. Now that you visit
the scheduled page, we obviously don't say it as blatant as that, but you get the point. We also
have automation running post event for Bucks and Pfizer for them. So if we know someone who
attended a bucks game, we'll send them survey messaging and then we'll have a sequence of
emails go out based on ticketing. So we'll say like, hey, get
more bucks basketball for this price. And then it could be $20 tickets. It's called our running back
offer. And then we'll retarget them down the road like hey, come to even more bucks basketball, get a
plan, and then we'll send those people into converse, which is the tool I did not mention.
It's an AI assistant tool, and we can send out campaigns to where it's an
email that a fan would receive from our AI assistant saying like, hey, we saw you attended the
game. Can you tell us if you're interested in learning more? So those are just some things. Like
once the season starts, it's like, set it and forget it. Is there anything else besides the
automation piece that you'd like to highlight? I would just give a special shout out to my team. So
we've been able to add a dedicated person for building out digital marketing campaigns, demand
generation. We've been able to also add a dedicated marketing automation coordinator and
like having them on the team. It's been huge for our growth, our success. So definitely want to give
them a shout out and then give a shout out to our broader team, Ben and Rachel, who I've had the
pleasure of working with as long as I've been here. We all make up a very small but mighty
marketing team for the books and all of our other brands. Yeah, well, hopefully with all of the
wild ROI. It's proved to bring on some more team members. Right. Right, exactly. To
continue to scale. Exactly. All right. Well, Justin, most programs this well built don't come with
this much transparency. So we're grateful that you came and got into the hot seat. And we're grateful
you made the time. So before I let you go. Who is someone we should have on the podcast? Yeah, I
would say there's. She used to actually work for an NBA team on the marketing side, and then she
moved over to another company that was basically consulting other clients.
Aaron Johnson. Okay. Yep. Well, I will always take an introduction. And
thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Where can folks follow you follow along on
LinkedIn. They can follow me there and then also, if they ever do want to connect. Send an email as
well. Jay Price at Bucks Com. Awesome. All right.
Before we wrap, here's what I want people to actually walk away with. Not just the headlines,
but the actual takeaways. One. Monitor your unsubscribe rates. The boxes unsubscribe. Spike
didn't come from losing. It actually came from uncertainty. What was clear to the team was it the
churn bump traced to the trade rumor cycle, not the win loss column itself. Fans don't leave
because a team is underperforming. They leave when they don't know what's coming next. If your
program is only monitoring performance metrics for signs of disengagement, you're really not
looking at the right dashboard. Watch. Also, the news cycle two RCS oftentimes isn't stuck
because of the tech. It's stuck because of headcount and bandwidth. Justin's team has five
people across five brands. RCS isn't blocked by carriers or platform readiness here. It's a
bandwidth call weighed against whatever's actually happening in season. So if your RCS
rollout stalled, the fix probably isn't a better vendor. It's really an honest look at whether your
team has the room to run it. Three. Don't wait for the perfect system wired together what you have.
The attentive to Marketo connection didn't start as a clean pipe, and it won't ever. But it did
begin as a phone number, only capture via third party middleware, and grew into a full identity
resolution over time. In Justin's own words, sometimes the best solution is just a solution
and not the perfect one. Every team stalls waiting for the unified platform. His didn't wait. Thanks
for tuning in to the making sense of martech. See you next time. A special thank you to Christine
Murtaugh, who edited this episode. And extra special thank you to Jenna Carter for believing
in this passion project meets business. Stay curious.