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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
On today's episode, you'll hear from a founder obsessed with putting fans first, who turned a nearly bankrupt baseball team into a sellout sensation that now plays to millions of fans around the world. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave Sherest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. And join me here, the voice you love hearing next to mine. Say hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:Hi, Kelsi. Hi, Dave.
Dave Charest:That's exactly what I was hoping you would do.
Dave Charest:And of course, this is the
Dave Charest:time I choose to say the voice you enjoy hearing next to mine when both of us are a little under the weather.
Kelsi Carter:I know. We sound great.
Dave Charest:We sound amazing. So I hope you'll bear with us as we work our way through this introduction today. But Kelsey, introduction today. But Kelsey, great to see you.
Kelsi Carter:Great to see you as always.
Dave Charest:I'm glad we're we're still able
Dave Charest:to do this, because the show must go on as they say.
Kelsi Carter:I know. I tried to get it all out beforehand.
Dave Charest:Well, let's see if we can barrel through. So here's my question for you. What do you get when you take a baseball team obsessed with its fans and influenced by the likes of PT Barnum, Walt Disney, Cirque du Soleil, and a little bit of the WWE?
Kelsi Carter:I honestly think that could be the one and only the Savannah Bananas.
Dave Charest:That's correct. And what better way to celebrate our hundredth episode of the Be a Marketer podcast than having the Savannah Bananas with us here today. Right?
Kelsi Carter:I know.
Dave Charest:So if you've never heard of the Savannah Bananas, this is an independent exhibition team that really blurs the line between sporting event and, I would say, stage show. And really the epitome of what it means to do things differently. So I love this. Kelsey, who are we chatting with today?
Kelsi Carter:Today, we're chatting with Jesse Cole, the cofounder and owner of Savannah Bananas. We're also joined by Kara Heater, the team's vice president of marketing, and Carson Bowen, the director of ticket experience. The Savannah Bananas whole approach really comes down to something their owner Jesse Cole always says, fans first, entertain always. And that's not just a catchy phrase to them. It's how they make decisions every day from how they run the team to their customer service.
Kelsi Carter:It's really the core of everything they do.
Dave Charest:I absolutely love this, and it's really paid off for them. I mean, the team recently sold, like, 65,000 seats at an NFL stadium. And this is really extraordinary when you really consider that the team started in 2016 and they had only sold a handful of tickets in their first few months. Jesse and his wife, Emily, they really, you know, ended up running out of money and they had to sell their house to keep the dream alive. The goal?
Dave Charest:Well, let's go to Jesse as he explains.
Jesse Cole:The whole goal was to start a baseball team that could be fun for everyone. And, you know, I think about Walt Disney when he came up with the idea for Disneyland, he said, I wish there was a place that adults and kids could have fun together. And when I think about what we tried to create was a game that, you know, isn't just your grandpa's favorite pastime, it's something that's, you know, more fun for everyone, kids of all ages. And so, built it and we did a lot of entertainment at first, a lot of dancing, a lot of celebrating, a lot of promotions and then we said we had to do it even more. And that's when we created the game of Banana Ball where we actually changed the rules of baseball to make it faster and more exciting for fans.
Jesse Cole:And from a two hour time limit to you win the inning, you get a point to no stepping out, no bunting, no mound visits to fans catching a foul ball for outs, We really recreated the game to make it best for fans, and that's where we are. We're doing world tour all over the country, and we have big plans to go international in the future with more teams and build the league and, really just try to bring this game to more people.
Dave Charest:Amazing. Would you mind sharing just and you don't have to get into like specific details but or percentage of what like, but how does the business make money today?
Jesse Cole:Well, that's not the first question we think about. And so whenever you ask that question, you know, my mind says that's not even part of the mindset for us. What we think about is how do we create fans? Every question we ask is, will it create fans? Is it fans first?
Jesse Cole:When the name of your company is Fans First Entertainment and your mission is to be fans first entertain always, that guides all your decisions. We're fortunate. By creating fans, we happen to produce revenue. And whereas most sports teams, most leagues, they drive the revenue from sponsorship and TV rights. No.
Jesse Cole:We drive our revenue from the people that support us, and that's our fans. And so everything we do is for them. And so, yes, you know, when you think about it, it's ticket sales and it's merchandise. You know, that's 90 to 95% of our entire business is selling tickets to fans, creating an amazing experience that then they wanna wear merchandise all over and share how much they love that brand. That's everything for us.
Dave Charest:So it's interesting when you say that, Drew. Right? You bring up that idea of sponsorship, and you would think a professional sports team in in many ways. Right? Like, you're like, woah.
Dave Charest:That's, of course, what they're gonna do. And I love what you do. You're like, you don't even have sponsorships, like, within the in the stadium. Or how do you even think through sponsorships? I'm sure you do some things but it's in a different way.
Dave Charest:Right?
Jesse Cole:Yeah. When you look at all the big the big leagues and and how they drive their revenue, it is 50%, you know, TV rights, twenty, thirty, 40 percent sponsorship. We are 1% partnership and 1% TV rights. It's complete opposite model. And so, yeah, I mean, we don't look at sponsors in a conventional way.
Jesse Cole:We look at everything is again, will it create fans or will it add to a fan experience? I don't believe anybody comes to a ballpark to be sold to, marketed to, advertised to. I don't believe anybody goes on TV to watch ads unless it's the Super Bowl, you know, but it's we get noise every single day from every single outlet about people trying to sell us and promote to us. Our focus is how do we create the best experience? And so, in Grace's Stadium, a hundred year ballpark, we took away all our ads in 2020 and we dedicated it back to the fans.
Jesse Cole:We literally have a fan wall instead of where there are sponsor ads where fans actually get to sign and put their name on the wall. And so that's how we look at everything. I mean, there's a reason why we have no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. We pay our fans taxes. There's no shipping fees.
Jesse Cole:That's why our games are all free on YouTube. Every single thing we ask, is this best for fans?
Dave Charest:I love all of this. I mean, I think and we'll get into it a little bit more. I wanna I wanna stay on the background here just a little bit before we get into that. But was owning a business something you thought you was this in the plan for you? Was this something you thought you were gonna do from early on?
Dave Charest:Or
Jesse Cole:No. My goal is to play baseball. I wanted to be a professional baseball player like most kids back in the day. And, you know, I was fortunate I had some opportunities and then tore my shoulder, which was the best thing that ever happened to me because it got me working in the front office. And, you know, I don't think I ever thought, let's start owning a team.
Jesse Cole:I didn't have money. I mean, I started as a 23 year old GM, there was $268 in the team bank account. I couldn't pay myself for three months because we weren't driving any revenue. I was paid minimal at anything when I finally did get paid. And so it was just, I fell in love with something.
Jesse Cole:I fell in love with the idea of creating something that people have never seen before. I fell in love of getting people together at the ballpark. There's something to be said about, especially now more than ever, about bringing people together and feeling like they're partisan. You know, I think back just a couple weeks ago, and we're playing our first NFL stadium with 65,000 people and you look around during yellow and everyone's got their flashlights up and we're singing yellow together and we're all a part of a moment. And I think that's something that I just really gravitated towards and wanted to create since day one.
Jesse Cole:And so that's the focus. Bring people together, bring joy, bring fun. And if you do it well, the money takes care of itself.
Dave Charest:So when did it transition from so I guess, you know, you got hired, you're doing these things. It wasn't what this is now, right, at that beginning stages. I'm I'm assuming. You tell me if I'm wrong. But, like, when was this transition?
Dave Charest:Like, how did this start to happen? And then when did it become about, like, the entertainment and and all of that? Like, what was that journey like?
Jesse Cole:Well, for ten years, ran a team in Gastonia, the Gastonia Grizzlies. And that's where we, you know, we were failing. There was only 200 fans coming to the game. So I read every book about PT Barnum, Walt Disney, started reading about Cirque du Soleil, WWE, and we started saying, hey, we're not gonna be like everyone else. So that first year, people don't realize back, jeez, almost twenty years ago, we had players dance for the first time.
Jesse Cole:Because I said, hey, we want people to think of something different. So players literally did the jump on it dance for the first time. We had a grandma beauty pageants. You know, we had flatulence fun nights. We had salute to underwear nights.
Jesse Cole:We had dig to China nights where we actually buried a trip to China. But when the woman found it, it was only a one way ticket to China. A one way to go there, no flight back, and no accommodations. She wasn't that happy. That was our marketing.
Jesse Cole:That wouldn't have been good from marketing. I eventually gave her a cruise, but we gave away porta johns. We did just ridiculous things. And I just wanted to try things and experiment and make people think that it wasn't like baseball. So that was ten years of doing that.
Jesse Cole:Eventually, my wife and I met Emily and she became our director of fund in Gastonia and we ended up buying that team. And that team went from, you know, last in the country in 10 to fourth in the country. He started selling out games in little small Gastonia. And at that point, we heard about the opportunity in Savannah, Georgia. And so they had minor league baseball for ninety years.
Jesse Cole:And we came in. They were leaving because they wanted a new $38,000,000 stadium. And the city said no. You know, they weren't drawing fans. They left.
Jesse Cole:We convinced the city to give us a shot. We showed up and the ballpark was abandoned. Literally everything was taken out. The phone lines were cut. The interlines were cut.
Jesse Cole:And it was Emily and I and our president Jared, twenty four year old, three 22 year olds out of college. And we said, let's let's make it happen. And we only sold a handful of tickets in our first few months and we ran out of money. We missed payroll. Emily and I had to sell our house and we had to then create attention and get people to understand that this is unlike the former baseball team or any baseball team that ever been in Savannah.
Jesse Cole:So that's when it went from running a team to owning a team, going from zero debt to over a million dollars in debt and taking on a bigger thing than we ever imagined. And we had to change know, our mindset. We couldn't just be an employee. We had to go in and own it and own it in a different way than anyone had ever owned a team before. And that's really when Savannah started back in 2016.
Dave Charest:What was that pressure doing to you? How did that change how you approach things or or which is what were you going through? Like, does it change your mentality at all?
Jesse Cole:Well, lack of sleep was number one.
Dave Charest:I mean Sure.
Jesse Cole:And that's that's partly because of Emily getting a twin airbed. She didn't even get a queen or king airbed. She got a twin airbed sleeping in an old garage. The lack of sleep and lack of eating real food because we were grocery shopping with just $30 a week, that went on for months. But yeah, no, I think what I've learned and what are we seeing with everything is you can talk and you can talk.
Jesse Cole:Everyone talks about marketing. Oh, you guys are good at marketing. It's like, well, thank you. But really what we're really good at is creating a great experience, capturing it and then sharing it. And so we were just talking.
Jesse Cole:We were doing social media like everyone else, talking like everyone else. It wasn't until they came to that first show and they watched players go in the crowd and deliver roses to little girls. They watched as we threw out the first banana. They watched as we lifted a baby in a banana costume up in the air and saying, nah, Sylvania, to start the game, which makes no sense. They watched all that.
Jesse Cole:So that was the biggest thing is we had to get people to that first game. We had to deliver an experience that was remarkable. And then we could just market that, promote that, share that, let people share that. That's when it started taking care of itself.
Dave Charest:So just to give people an idea who who may not know, I didn't really even understand the whole like, I I know of you guys, of course. Right? But, like, in doing the research and stuff, I I would guess I would say the closest to what I can think of that you might be related to, and I know it's not completely the same, but I mean, I I would have to say what Harlem Globetrotters? I mean, that a fair comparison in terms of what you guys do?
Jesse Cole:It's certainly fair. And we've heard it over and over again. And if you said that to me in the nineteen forties and fifties, it would probably be the greatest honor we could ever have upon ourselves. Because in the nineteen forties and fifties, they were the most famous sports team, the most successful sports team in the world. The NBA was booking them to play before NBA games so they could get fans to stay for the NBA games.
Jesse Cole:They beat the Lakers. Literally, Wilt Chamberlain played for the Globetrotters before he played for anybody in the NBA. They were selling out Madison Square Garden back to back nights. They played in front of 75,000 people in Berlin. They were the most famous sports team in the world.
Jesse Cole:But then something happened. And they said, Well, if we just replicate and do the same show every single night, we don't have one Globe Charter team, we have two, we have three, this will be easy and we'll create fans all over. But what happened is they started doing the same show over and over again and fans didn't have the same reaction. It became kind of tired to ensure And so now the Globetrotters tons of respect, hundred year business. Any business that makes it a hundred years is doing something right and they are still playing all over the world.
Dave Charest:Absolutely. Yeah.
Jesse Cole:But for us now, because every single night it's dramatically different. We have four teams, we're about to have six teams, we're launching our own league, the Banana Ball Championship League. Every night we do between 10 to 15 things we've never done in front of a live crowd. There's 20 to 30 trick plays people haven't seen. There's new dances, new walk ups, new celebrations.
Jesse Cole:Every night, it's not scripted. So whereas the Globetrotters win every night, you know what's gonna happen or here comes the slow motion, here comes the confetti, here comes this. Every night you never know what you're gonna get. And that's why we're fortunate. We have fans all over the country that travel hours and hours to watch them play because you never know what's going to happen.
Jesse Cole:We're building the sport of banana ball. We're not just building one team in the Savannah bananas. And when you think about the party animals, our second team, they have more followers than every Major League Baseball team on TikTok. That's our second team. And so that's what's happening is we're creating fans first and then we're building the league, and then we're gonna keep growing that as we go.
Dave Charest:Awesome. So I wanna go to the team here. Kara, when you start thinking about just your role in all this, how did you get involved?
Kara Heater:Yeah. So I actually started back in 2018. I was the marketing intern for that summer. After the summer was over, I was asked to stay on and I worked part time remotely while I finished up my last year of college actually. And I did that for two years.
Kara Heater:I actually went and got a whole full time job somewhere else for a bit. And bananas was kind of my little side gig for a little bit there. And then actually came on full time in 2020 and kinda just been rocking and rolling ever since.
Dave Charest:What are you responsible for? Let's start there.
Kara Heater:Yeah. So I help oversee everything that goes out on social media. So I work very closely with Jesse, the rest of our marketing team, our video team, and our entertainment team to basically just choose, you know, from idea generation to execution to actually posting what's going out on each team's social media pages and platforms.
Dave Charest:Got it. Got it. What do you love most about the role?
Kara Heater:Oh, I think it's being able to tell the story of the game for the fans who aren't able to make it to the game. Mhmm. So obviously, in the digital world, we know that there's a lot of people following us who haven't been able to make it to a game just yet. And it's really cool to be able to see how much they enjoy the content and to be able to tell the story of the night for them after each game. And also just see their their brand loyalty grow and their fandom grow and and see them now that we have more than just one team, pick a fandom for a certain team, I think is really special.
Dave Charest:What do you find most challenging about the role?
Kara Heater:I think it will always be the same for any digital media stuff is how quickly things change in the the social media world, whether it be trends, algorithms, just pop culture relevant stuff. Everything is constantly changing, so it's a lot to keep up with and adapt. But I also think that's what we're so good at because we're able to just adapt and not have that red tape of what can we do, what can we not do. As long as it's putting the fans first and making baseball fun, we know that it's right for us.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Carson, I wanna go to you. How'd you get involved in all this?
Carson Bowen:Sure. I was working for another team in the Costa Plain League. So I was with the Wilmington Sharks from 2014 until 2020. It was to the point towards the end of my time there in Wilmington where I had to stop watching the bananas content because they're they're so good. I'll never beat the bananas.
Carson Bowen:I can never do that. And then I got a call one day from Jared who said, hey. If FatePosition opened up here, would you wanna learn about it? I tried to play it cool, but on the inside, I'm celebrating. Like, okay.
Carson Bowen:Here we go. I can I can join the good guys? So, yeah, October 2020 was my first time with the bananas here.
Dave Charest:Okay. So what are you responsible for now in in in the in the organization?
Carson Bowen:The ticketing process. So from before they buy tickets to the time they're buying tickets to after they have the tickets, what does their experience look like? How can how can my team map out their process to make it as frictionless as possible to where they're like, hey, that was a fun ticket buying process. Something that not a lot of people can say.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I wanna get into some specifics of the things that you guys do in a little bit. But what do you love most about your role?
Carson Bowen:I think my my favorite thing about the role is the opportunity to problem solve and solve problems for people that they don't know they have or that they could have. So, you know, if you ask people two hundred years ago what they wanted, they would say faster horses. But, you know, how can we create a process that is able to push the fan experience forward digitally to complement what they see online, to complement what they see on the field? Most challenging for you? The fact that we can change everything about our ticketing process.
Carson Bowen:So we can't just have the excuse of, oh, that's just the way our ticket system is built. So, you know, we have the ability to change everything. So that's that's my favorite thing about the job and also my least favorite thing is we can do anything.
Dave Charest:That's interesting. So Jesse, wanna ask you the same questions. What do you love most about particularly where you are now and then what do you find most challenging about it?
Jesse Cole:It's the moments. It's always the moments. So I think you know, I live by those moments and what's amazing is that we've been able to create these moments that didn't exist. Not just for, you know, ourselves but everyone on our team. The players that all had dreams of playing Major League Baseball to go to play at their favorite Major League stadiums, whether it's Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium this year, to play in front of 65,000 at Football Stadium.
Jesse Cole:But it's those moments. I mentioned yellow before. I also have, hey baby, you know, it's a moment that we all dance and you get, you know, 50,000 people doing it or at the end of the night, we put our arms around each other, we sing Stand By Me. It sounds Kumbaya but again, you look around, you say there's nowhere else in the world that's doing that. Or with this team, you know, I look at Carson and Kara, you know, after a night that we just killed it.
Jesse Cole:I mean, we absolutely the content was great. The moments were great. You could feel it. Like Philadelphia last year, our biggest crowd up to that point was 45,000 and we're just, you could feel the electricity. It was unbelievable.
Jesse Cole:When we first came out and three hours before the game, there was 20,000 fans in the streets and it was like, this is special. The ticket operation went smooth. The marketing went smooth. The moments went smooth. Banana ball was smooth.
Jesse Cole:You look around and like at the end of the night, seeing everyone that made it happen. I mean, Dave, what people don't realize is we travel with over 200 plus people. You know, you mentioned the Globetrotters earlier, they travel with 30. So we're traveling with seven times the amount of people to put on this show. And Kara had this famous line that she said, wasn't supposed to be famous, but ended up being famous.
Jesse Cole:It was when we first did our ESPN show on Banana Land series. And she said, we're just a bunch of kids running a baseball team. And I still feel like that. I'm I've now reached the forties. I'm I'm over the hill obviously in our thing.
Jesse Cole:But like, I still feel like a kid with that energy of running a team and doing things that never happened before for fans. And the moment is as great as is with the fans and celebrating, it's afterwards that we get to look at each other and say, look at what we just did. That's the cool thing. And that happens The last few years, it's happening almost every month, every two months, we're doing it regularly and that's what's so exciting. And that's like a drug for me.
Jesse Cole:It's like, Well, what can we do next year that we've never done before? Where could we play? So it's those moments and that excitement that I love. And what was the second part? The most challenging?
Dave Charest:The challenging piece of that. Yeah.
Jesse Cole:It's people. You know, everyone we have a very strong vision. We know where we're going and, you know, people on our team joke, you know, if we said we're gonna play at the moon, we probably will. And and I'm not saying we won't do that at some point. We might be able to get there.
Jesse Cole:But it's the people on the way to getting
Dave Charest:Are those still gonna be $35 tickets though to get there?
Jesse Cole:All can tell you, there'll be no ticket b's, no convenience. Right. I can guarantee that. But when I think about the challenge, it's the people. You know, we have, you know, right here on this call, you have two A players and we look about the great people that are part of our team.
Jesse Cole:And then how do you continue to build those A players? Because A players want to work and play with the best players. And when we're growing so fast, how do you make those sure those great people are aligned and growing? And so daily, we're thinking about the people that are on the bus with us. Are they in the right seats on the bus?
Jesse Cole:Are they going in the right direction with us? And we need that. And we have to course correct with people every single day. We're trying to work on that. So that is the thing that is the most difficult.
Jesse Cole:It's trying to make sure that we have the right people, that they love what they do, they're passionate what they do, they're doing great work every single day.
Dave Charest:And if we can continue
Jesse Cole:to do that, it's going be pretty fun the next five to ten years.
Dave Charest:Well, so I think you mentioned something that's really important, though, right, is that idea of having a vision, right, and knowing specifically where you are trying to go. Because then it's easier to get everybody else on board, right, because you all have a clear idea of where that's going. And so when you think about, of course, you're talking about this idea of, you know, fans first, entertain always. Talk Talk to us a little bit more about that. Like, what does that look like?
Dave Charest:You mentioned some of the things, but, like, how does that go throughout the organization to help you do that?
Jesse Cole:Well, it's clear on who we are and what we stand for and where we're going. But the big challenge is that we're doing things that have never been done before. And anytime you do things that have never been done before, it's hard. It's extremely hard. And we don't know and we make mistakes and we mess up and we hope that it's gonna go this right way.
Jesse Cole:But we know that if we are singly minded, like we get a lot of criticism now, Dave. It's as soon as you start growing up
Dave Charest:Sure.
Jesse Cole:You get criticism. And what I realize is that I can't get down the criticism because we know we are doing the right thing. If we know in our hearts that we are doing things that are best for fans, that we believe is gonna be the best experience, that we're trying to make amends the best way we can, then we can't let that frustrate us. But yeah, I mean it's every decision. We have to literally look at every decision.
Jesse Cole:And so that is every single thing that we do at our games, whether it's a celebration, whether it's a walk up, whether it's every email that goes to fans. Is that email clear? Number one. Is it making sure that we're doing the right thing? When we make a mistake, how do we come back and make it better?
Jesse Cole:You know, all those things, it has to be guided by that spirit. Is this best for fans? And what the big challenge is now, one time you'll do something that's best for one group of fans, but it might not be best for another group of fans.
Dave Charest:Sure, yeah.
Jesse Cole:So we have our K Club members, we have our local fans in Savannah, we have groups, we have people all over the country. And no matter what something you do might not be best for this fan and you have to choose, is this best for the greater good of our fans overall? Those are decisions that we have to weigh every single day and we have to hold ourselves accountable to say, we believe it's the best thing that we can do for fans and we have to get in front of people and say it over and over again and believe it. And if our team doesn't believe in it, we don't believe in it, we're not doing our job. So it's just, it guides us.
Jesse Cole:We will never put added fees on people. We will never do things just for money. We will never take a sponsor just to take money. We will never do any of that. If we can do things to be a better experience for fans, we will always try to find a way to say yes to that.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So, of course, talking about experience for fans, one of the things that is not always an enjoyable experience is the ticketing aspect of this. Right? And as someone who goes to a lot of shows, the ticket feeds are outrageous as you mentioned. Maybe, Carson, I'll go to you on this.
Dave Charest:Like, talk to me about the ticketing platform. Right? The Fans First Tickets. Is this the this is the name of it?
Carson Bowen:Like Sure.
Dave Charest:I mean, I feel like a lot of people would resign to we have to do it a certain way, but you said no. We're gonna create our own thing. So what's that experience like?
Carson Bowen:The only people I think that we can trust with our own ticketing process is ourselves. I think to ship that out that experience out to someone else would be relying on the way that the industry was built around making money, just squeezing every dollar and and cent out of fans. And, again, that's not our interest. Our interest is making this experience as smooth as possible for our fans. So being able to dissect every single piece of the ticketing process, like, what does this arrow look like?
Carson Bowen:What is the button shaped like? When they click here, how long does it take for them to get a confirmation email? Was that confirmation email set? Is there a video in there? How often do we change that video out?
Carson Bowen:You know, we're able to dissect every little tiny piece of the process because, you we understand that people, it's not just buying a QR code, know, it's buying a family outing, it's celebrating someone's birthday. These things, it represents something. It's not just buying a ticket.
Jesse Cole:Dave, can I jump on that for a second?
Dave Charest:Please,
Jesse Cole:yeah. Go back to November of twenty fifteen and we've only sold a handful of tickets, We're pretty much out of money and we have to make a decision on how are we going to sell tickets if we are able to actually sell tickets. And so we have a in front of us, we've got two ticketing platforms and they're saying it's gonna cost this fee plus $1 to $2 per ticket. So we said, all right, well, we sell a hundred thousand tickets, which was the whole season, plus the fees, it's costing us about a hundred and $50,000. And they're like, no, no, no, It doesn't cost you.
Jesse Cole:Just put that on your fans. I'm like, no, no, no. The name of our company is Fans First Entertainment. Won't do it. It's going to cost us $150,000 And then if we sell more tickets, it's going to continue to cost us more.
Jesse Cole:That decision was very clear. We will not go with the main ticket brokers right there. So then we found this upstart little ticket company that they were doing it for a few different groups and they said, Hey, it'll be about $2,000 and all your tickets, do all that. I'm like, Oh, we can handle that. And they let us kind of custom design and do all that.
Jesse Cole:They hadn't worked with many people. We said, Yes, we'll do it. We figured it out. So we kept doing it, kept doing it. Then as we started getting bigger, it started shutting down.
Jesse Cole:So then we went to them and said, got a crazy idea. How about if we buy your company? So we bought them and then working with Carson, Jared, Kara, we started saying, all how do we now build this to be something that we think is best for our fans? And so now we built our own ticketing platform, fans first ticket, where there's no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. And now any stadium in the country, we can build the manifest for it, build all the seating, do it the way we want.
Jesse Cole:And so that was a long game play that we made back in the day. And we said, hey, our decision making based on fans first, it was a no brainer. There was no other option. And that has guided us to where we are now with our own ticketing platform.
Dave Charest:Well, I was gonna say this is an interesting thing. Right? And I love the way you said, like, guides us. Right? Because, like, I think as a business owner or even just even what you're gonna do in your everyday life, you're gonna be making decisions time and time again.
Dave Charest:Oftentimes, you might not always have the best information. And so sometimes you need that thing to guide you to say, alright, well, does this match this? If it doesn't, then the answer is no. If it does, the answer is yes. And sometimes you just need that shortcut.
Dave Charest:Right? And I love what you're saying here about that idea of, alright. Well, we can't do that because it goes against everything that we stand for. And then it leads you down that other path, which then creates a whole new other set of opportunities. Right?
Jesse Cole:And we had no money. Yeah. People don't realize, I love the fact that we had no money. Yeah. Constraints foster creativity.
Dave Charest:Oh, yeah.
Jesse Cole:Because we had no money, we had to think differently. And I wanna make sure like one of our Pran's First principles is relentlessly resourceful. And because of that, that guides us to have even more constraints and do things that if you have a lot of money, you'll make this one decision, But that's not always best for fans. Yeah. What what does this now give us an opportunity to do?
Jesse Cole:We think about that constantly.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Cara, first, I wanna say my wife wanted me to tell you that she absolutely loves the Savannah Bananas TikTok. I'm not on TikTok, but I've been informed it's amazing. So kudos to you on that. What can you tell me about your content strategy there?
Dave Charest:Like, how are you looking at that?
Kara Heater:Yeah. I think it again, it all goes back to our mission statement, fans first entertain always. When we're posting content, we ask ourselves these three questions. So is it fans first? If the answer is no, we're going back to the drawing board.
Kara Heater:That second question is, does this make baseball fun? We wanna make sure that we're doing things on a baseball field that nobody's ever seen before. So we're taking ideas from things totally outside our industry. Like Jess said, Cirque du Soleil. We're looking at Broadway theater shows, stuff like that, not always the sports entertainment industry because we wanna be different.
Kara Heater:We wanna stand out. And then that last question is, is it shareable? Is this something that we are proud enough to share to our own friends and family on our personal pages? And if the answer is no, why in the world would be okay and proud enough to share it with the millions of fans that follow us on social media? So that guides a lot of our strategy.
Kara Heater:And then it also kinda comes back to that fans don't wanna feel sold, they wanna feel valued. We realized back in twenty eighteen, nineteen, we had all this engagement drop and none of our posts were doing that well. And it was because we took a look at our content and we were like, well, it's because we're asking our fans to do something with every single post. It was, hey, buy a ticket for this. Hey, join this list.
Kara Heater:Hey, buy our merchandise. And we were like, of course, it's not doing well. They don't want a call to action post. So if you go on our social media pages, you'll notice that 99% of what we post is things that are just for fans to enjoy. We wanna bring positivity to the world and let fans experience just a moment of relief where they don't have to worry about anything that happens in the outside world.
Kara Heater:So whether that be at a show itself in person or online, that's what we're really looking to do is just spread joy and and bring things to fans that they'll just enjoy.
Dave Charest:Carson, I wanna go back to you and something you mentioned just in terms of just, like, how you're communicating with ticket buyers and through that experience and that journey. And one of the things that I I really love that you do I come from a theater background, and I used to do some marketing for a theater too. And I was in New York at the time, and imagine, right, theater in the strangest places. Like, you're in an alley between two things or, like, all this. And and one of the things that you do in the emails that you send out to ticket buyers is the the know before you go guides.
Dave Charest:And to me, this is something that is so overlooked by people because particularly when people are going to some place they've never gone before or doing something they've never done before, I don't think people appreciate how much anxiety people have about that. And I love that you put these things in there. Like, just just talk me through just how you for lack of a better phrase, like, you you hold somebody's hand once they've bought a ticket to kind of guide them along that journey until they actually get to the stadium. Talk to me about that.
Carson Bowen:Yeah. I like the way you phrase that. Yeah. We hold their hands a little bit. We guide them.
Carson Bowen:So we're the we're the sherpas to get them to the top of the Bandolana Mountain here. Yeah. I think you said it best. You know, when you're going to somewhere you've never been before, where I where am I gonna park? What time do I get there?
Carson Bowen:What kind of food are they gonna eat? What are the things that I can expect when I get there? So because there are so many things that we do differently in terms of what happens on the baseball field, You know, we need to make sure that people are, well informed about what time to be in their seats when those crazy things start happening on the field. So, it it takes a lot of effort from my team to, you know, have those conversations with the host cities and the hosts that are that are having us for these couple games, you know, trying to make sure that, again, we are getting the right information to the right people at the right time. The day after people buy tickets, they don't need to know exactly where they're going to be parking.
Carson Bowen:Right? They don't need to know exactly what the bag policies are. They might know it, but they're gonna forget it. So how can we time that correctly so where when the time comes to book flights and and get hotels, you know, they're not thinking about where to park. You know, how do we get them that information at the right time leading up to their event?
Dave Charest:Kara, when you talk about all these things that you're doing from a marketing perspective, how do you get that stuff done? Are you blocking time in your calendar? Are you guys meeting regularly? What what does that whole process look to actually get things out the door?
Kara Heater:In terms of content, you mean specifically? Yeah. Yeah. So we we actually took inspiration from SNL here. We we kind of have a pretty standard setup throughout the week.
Kara Heater:So every Tuesday, have what we call our OTT meetings, which is OTT stands for over the top. So basically, it's where a bunch of us meet, we come together, and we pitch ideas for the games that we're going into that weekend. So what things are we gonna do in our games? What's gonna be the new thing that the fans are gonna see this weekend? And from there, we sit down and choose those things and plan out our our script.
Kara Heater:So the games are not scripted much to everyone's thought, but some of the entertainment pieces are. So we're able to put in, okay, during Bill Arroy's third AB, he's going to do a walks up walk up lip syncing to Ariana Grande's new song or something along those lines. And then at 4PM, we have a full table read with everybody who's going to the games and working the games that weekend. So it's basically where we just go through every single entertainment piece that we're doing on the script. So that's everything from promos to these OTT moments, which are walk ups, run celebrations, all that good stuff.
Kara Heater:And then after that, Wednesday and Thursday is is spent for some fine tuning on those ideas, getting the music cut, all that good stuff. And then we go into rehearsals. So the entertainment team will actually connect with the players and go ahead and get a head start on what it is they're doing that weekend. So they have to learn dances. They have to learn all these crazy things and remember them to put on the best show we can.
Kara Heater:So they they spend some extra time doing rehearsals with them. And then we get to game day, and it's another round of rehearsals just to make sure that we're actually nailing it all. And that's when our video team gets involved and is actually walking through like, okay. This is how we're filming it. We're coming down from the First Base grandstands or we're coming from the center field gate and making sure that the route we've chosen is perfect, that the timing lines up, that they're gonna end up in the best places to make the video come to life.
Kara Heater:And then from there, it gets put into the hands of the social team where we choose, hey. This is what platform this makes sense to go out on. We know that this was trending on TikTok, so we're just gonna put it out on TikTok tonight. And then there's other things where it's like, okay. We know this is not a TikTok trend, so it's going out on just x or just Facebook.
Kara Heater:So it's a lot of different departments, on the creative side coming together to make sure that things from the very beginning of idea generation come to plan and come to fruition throughout all the execution and rehearsals to eventually, hopefully, do very well and provide some good content for our fans on social media.
Dave Charest:Thank you for that. So, Jesse, I had a question here, but I I have a feeling I know how you're gonna answer it. So I wanna rephrase it a little. Right? But, like, the question was gonna be, you know, what does success look like for you and how do you measure it?
Dave Charest:Right? And so I'm assuming there's gonna be an answer about a fan here, right, and making sure that people are taken care of. So I wanna rephrase it a bit. How do you get to that point? What was the thing in you that triggered, no.
Dave Charest:This is how we do it. Because I've often like, I'm a big believer in that idea of, look, if you focus on the people you're trying to reach, you help them become successful and you do the right things, the right things happen. But how do you get there?
Jesse Cole:Well, I learned from George Lucas of Star Wars and Ed Catmull from Pixar and they said they wanted to create movies that they would love. And he said, I wanna create something I would love. I thought about that and I think if you really want to build something truly special, you have to have yourself in mind and are you building something that you love more than anything? And I think about now people in sports and, you know, people that are in the game, you know, that work for teams, they don't watch every game. And so I thought about this, know, how can we create something that, you know, I would never get bored.
Jesse Cole:And I've seen it all. You know, every pitch, you never know what's gonna happen. Every play in a ground ball that's hit in the infield, you never know what trip play they're gonna do. You never know what celebration the hitter's gonna do. You never know what's gonna happen in between innings.
Jesse Cole:You never know what's gonna happen at the end of the game. You don't even know what's gonna happen six hours before the gates open when we open we do our rope drop. All those moments, I think it was just, you know, really is creating something that I would love. And then I believe that if I created something I would love, and we all created it together. When I look at Kara, Carson and our team, when we get fired up about doing something, there's a different feeling.
Jesse Cole:We go into rehearsals and we're jazz, we're high fiving, we're dancing. I mean, there's videos of Kara literally teaching full dances to one direction. And we perform better when we're passionate about something, when we're having fun, when we're energized by it. And it's not just doing the same thing over and over again. And when you look at these sports teams that play 162 games a year and every year it's like, Oh, well we hope we have a good year this year.
Jesse Cole:They hope they win. We are hedging our bets by no matter what happens, we're going into a weekend, we're excited about some things we're going to do, then we're going to have that energy that then is contagious with our players, our cast, our fans, and everyone else. And so that for me, when you look at success, it's that passion, excitement, and energy that as a leader you show up and then everyone else has that around them and we can feel it. We go into a stadium, we can feel it. We know it's going be a night people will never forget because we're bringing that energy because we're excited because we're a fan as well of what we're doing.
Jesse Cole:So how do you create something that you're a fan of, that you love, that you're passionate about? How every day the work that you're doing, are you not only proud of it, like you want to share. Like I have my three kids that are under six years old, every day they draw something, Daddy, look, they want to share. Like they are so excited. That is awesome.
Jesse Cole:Somehow some of us lose that when we become adults and we just go through the motions of doing the same old work that we have to do. It's that passion, that excitement, that energy that fires everyone up. So when I look at success, if I can surround myself with people that have that same type of energy, that are proud of the work they're doing, that get fired up about the work they're gonna do, everything else will take care of itself.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Love it. So I wanna use the rest of our time. So main audience here listening to us today will be Constant Contact customers, folks using the same platform as you. And so I wanted to ask some things specific to how you're using the platform.
Dave Charest:But first, I was wondering, how did you end up at Constant Contact? What brought you to Constant Contact? Does anybody have an answer for that?
Jesse Cole:Oh, jeez. I don't know. That's many years ago.
Dave Charest:That's many
Jesse Cole:years ago. If I were to say an honest answer, it was because of great branding and great knowledge and great job getting out there. I think that's what it was. Standing out versus the competition.
Dave Charest:Gotcha. Overall, how's that constant contact experience been like for you?
Jesse Cole:Disaster. No. I just
Dave Charest:There's our clip. Thank you, everybody. Eric,
Jesse Cole:you could you could go on this one. Sure.
Kara Heater:It's it's been incredible. I think what stands out about Constant Contact so much is the help the support team's able to provide us. So not only are we able to customize all these templates and make our emails perfect for fans depending on whether they're getting an email from the bananas, the party animals, the tailgaters, the firefighters. We're able to customize everything, but also it's just a very simple platform too, which I think we all love. So it's not overly complicated and you know that you can just go in and and find exactly what you're looking for and get things done.
Kara Heater:It allows us to touch base with our fans in in ways that we, you know, might not be able to in other platforms.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Can you talk me a little bit about I mean, you guys have like, what, 62% open rates. The last we looked at 5% click rates. Really, you know, highly engaged numbers. Can you talk me through a little bit of what you're doing?
Dave Charest:Just like an overview of how you're, like, actually using the platform and what are the types of things that you're doing with your emails?
Kara Heater:Yeah. I think the the overall strategy is we don't reach out to people and we don't send them an email unless we have to or we need to. We never want to be the people who are sending 52 emails a day and they have to unsubscribe 82 times to try and finally get rid of them out of their inbox. That's not us. We want people to get the information that they've asked for.
Kara Heater:So whether that be for tickets, for merchandise, for broadcast emails, anything along those lines, we are strictly communicating with them for the things that they're interested in. So Carson handles all of the ticketing emails. So it's on sale dates to here's your lottery time slot to the know before you goes. And then we also follow-up on email too and say, thanks for coming. You know, we have handwritten letters go out after each weekend from either a player, a coach, a staff member that just thank the people for coming.
Kara Heater:So it's a really cool way to just touch with our fans and and get them information they need and also just thank them every now and then too.
Dave Charest:Yeah. When you think of segmentation, I have to imagine you're using segmentation, maybe even tags come into play for you. Talk me through how you're you think or approach that.
Kara Heater:Yeah. I think we wanna dive into that a lot more. The support team's actually starting to help us build out a plan to get fully segmented for merch and broadcast and content and tickets. So we're kind of in the midst of that right now. But I know that Carson utilizes the tags a lot for when it comes to our lottery list.
Kara Heater:So I'll let Carson talk through that a little bit more.
Carson Bowen:Yep. Absolutely. To Cara's point about not wanting to send people emails just for the heck of it. Like, oh gosh. We have an email scheduled for later this month.
Carson Bowen:Let's send it to everybody. I'm gonna make sure we're sending it to people who have asked for that content. We're also gonna be mindful that, like, okay. These people might have just gotten an email from us about their tickets for St. Louis or an upcoming lottery sale for Charlotte, North Carolina.
Carson Bowen:Like, maybe we don't wanna send them this one particular email because they just got one from us four hours later or they will get one from us soon. So using that segmentation to make sure that, again, we're not pestering these fans basically with our with our emails.
Dave Charest:Are you using any automation at all within Constant Contact?
Kara Heater:We recently utilized it for our merchandise campaign in December. We launched a full holiday catalog, a bunch of new pieces, and we were able to test it out for the first time back then. And it went really, really well. We were able to put in automations to where if they purchased a product, they got a thank you email that was just a very fun shows you the process of how your package is shipped and packaged and then Yeah. Given up to you and how it ends up on your doorstep.
Kara Heater:And then if they didn't purchase, they actually got a follow-up email that was kinda like, hey, we saw you like the party animals gear. We saw you like the tailgaters gear. Just wanted to remind you, these things are, you know, available kind of stuff. It was a lot more fun than that, but that was consensus.
Dave Charest:Another scenario here where you're all talking about just really thinking through that whole experience. And I think and making it your own. I think it's very easy to sometimes let the platform, whatever that is that you may be using, kind of take over the experience for you a little bit, right, and what it does. But I love that you're actually thinking through and then sending that follow-up, doing that thing that that is really interesting. And I know you've worked with marketing advisers to get the Shopify integration set up.
Dave Charest:Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience has been like you and and really what's changed for you on your side of just even getting things done since activating that?
Kara Heater:Yeah. That's been phenomenal. I think just the fact that we don't have to manually upload those lists anymore is amazing. Mhmm. It's just automatically in there, but also it gives us the ability to understand what customers want and what fans want to see, whether that be more party animal stuff, more banana stuff, that all that.
Kara Heater:So we know exact again, just exactly what they're looking for, and we're not just sending them random emails. But the Shopify has been really awesome. You're able to integrate the products in there perfectly and and really assemble the email to the design aesthetic that you want, which has been really cool.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So, Jesse, you know, we talk about, you know, being in the stadium, right, feeling what's going on. Right? There's a a palpable thing you can feel. How deep do you get into obviously, with a platform like Constant Contact, you get access to data.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, you can actually see the things people are clicking on and the things that you maybe you can't feel, right, because there's this digital screen before you. Right? Like do you do you dig into any of
Dave Charest:that at all or do you
Dave Charest:leave that to the team?
Jesse Cole:Yeah. Data can be very valuable. I I think it's there's just so much data now and sometimes people get way into data and not focused on the human connection. And I think there's a balance. I go back to before we had real data, you know, we were watching when our fans were leaving the ballpark and we were monitoring, we're taking pictures and video and now we keep track.
Jesse Cole:That's a very important metric that I pay attention to is, you know, I don't believe anybody that goes to a great movie and leaves a movie in the middle and says, Oh, that was great. I left halfway through. Or they go to a great comedy actor, you know, they went, Oh, I loved, I went to Taylor Swift. She was amazing. I left halfway through the set.
Jesse Cole:Like you just don't do that. Yet in baseball, it happens all the time. And so I pay attention to that data and I pay attention to what do we do to make our shows even better? I think open rates are very interesting, but again, you're competing in a world of noise. So like it's again, it's a metric that's valuable, but also not like I'm paying attention to like Cara said on shares, you know, what videos are we creating that people want to share?
Jesse Cole:You know, the best form of marketing is word-of-mouth marketing, create experience that people want to tell other people about. And so, yes, data is valuable but again, what data matters most? And I think a lot of people, they focus on the metrics that matter most to them, they don't focus on the metrics that matter most to their customers. So for instance, how quickly can someone, if they reach out to us, how quickly do they get a response? If they call our phone, how quickly do they get a response?
Jesse Cole:They leave a voicemail, how quickly do they get a response? When they're standing in line at our ballpark, how long do they wait in line? How long does it take them to get into their seats? How long does it take them to park and walk up and get in? All those things, those metrics matter because that's the metrics that matter in the fans first ecosystem.
Jesse Cole:And so that those are the things that I think about more. If you make every part of the experience better for fans and listen to those metrics, again, the revenue, everything else that matters to a business will take care of itself.
Dave Charest:Yeah. When you all think about all that you're doing, obviously, on location, but then digitally, and then being able to have your fans opt in, right, to get messages from you and follow that along. I mean, when you start thinking about that, like, what would it be like trying to do all of that without Constant Contact?
Kara Heater:It'd be hard. I don't know where we would put everybody. I think it would be a lot harder genuinely. It's been nice to be able to have just an organized place to to keep all those things to make sure that, again, we're not hitting the wrong people with the wrong emails and the wrong messages, and that we can always go back to you know, if somebody says, I accidentally unsubscribed, we can go in, see exactly what happened, and then pop them back in, send them the resubscribe. So I think it's just great to have a place that's very organized that we can always kind of rely on for all these different fans that we're we're getting messages to.
Kara Heater:And so, yeah, I just think it would be a lot harder if we didn't have constant content.
Jesse Cole:Thinking about this, you know, our goal, we have no interest in being a billion dollar business, but we wanna create a billion fans.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jesse Cole:This year alone, we'll play in front of over 2,100,000 fans. Our email list is gonna be approaching 5,000,000 soon. And so we continue we consider those fans. Every fan that interacts with us, whether it's on social media, whether it's coming to a game, whether it's on our email, that's an opportunity to create a fan and create a lifelong fan. So that those metrics matter to us And without Constant Contact or a platform or place that we can kind of hold on to those fans and continue to communicate with them, we wouldn't be able to grow towards a billion fans.
Jesse Cole:So it's all part of the process and extremely important every step of the way.
Dave Charest:So we're coming to the top of our time here. So Jesse, I wanna ask you, what advice would you offer another business owner maybe hoping to reach your level of success?
Jesse Cole:Be patient in what you want for yourself, but be impatient in how much you give to others. Our first ever Fans First Playbook, we have that on the back. And I think so many businesses when they start, they're driven by how do they drive their own success? How do you drive the success of your customer, of your fan? The more fun that our fan has at our games and our shows, the better everything else is.
Jesse Cole:And so for any business owner, when you're creating something, create something that you would love that is best for your customer, best for your fan. And then in every form of messaging, whether it's on Constant Contact, whether it's on your social media, whether it's any type of marketing you do, is that something that you would love to receive? Would you get excited seeing that email? Would you get excited seeing that social media? Would you get excited getting that product?
Jesse Cole:And if the answer is yes, you're on your path and then the money, the revenue, everything else will take care of itself.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, make every decision with your customer in mind. Jesse and the team don't just say they're fans first. They prove it by eliminating ticket fees, removing ads from the stadium, and even creating their own ticketing platform to control the entire experience. Now in everything you do, ask yourself, is this best for my customer?
Dave Charest:Let that be your filter for everything from pricing to email frequency to your next product idea. Number two, don't just talk about the experience, build one worth talking about. The bananas focus on delivering moments that people can't wait to share. From players dancing in the crowd to sending personal thank you notes after each show. How can you look for ways to surprise and delight your audience?
Dave Charest:Then capture and share those moments as part of your content strategy. What's something unexpected that you could do today that would leave your customers smiling? And number three, embrace constraints as creative fuel. Jesse started with no money, no fans, and a twin air mattress in a garage. Those limitations forced bold moves, like reinventing the game and owning the fan experience end to end.
Dave Charest:Instead of seeing your limitations as roadblocks, ask, what can I do with what I already have? Creativity often lives on the other side of we can't afford that. So here's your action item. Think about your next customer interaction. Ask yourself, would I be excited about this?
Dave Charest:If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board. Create something you'd be a fan of, and others will be too. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam.
Dave Charest:Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.