How Gwinnett Stripers Kept their Fans Hooked Throughout the Year

The Triple-A Gwinnett Stripers are more than just a final minor-league stop before the 2021 Baseball World Champion Atlanta Braves. The team has its own legion of local fans in Georgia’s Gwinnett County who fill out the Stripers’ 10,000+ seat stadium, Coolray Field, night after night to enjoy professional baseball on a budget. With tickets starting at $8 per seat, Gwinnett Stripers offer affordable entertainment in a state-of-the-art stadium that features high-tech video equipment, tasty food, and fun for the entire family.

Spring, Summer, and the Inevitable Fall Off

As you might expect, capturing the attention of baseball fans when the baseball season is over requires some creative marketing. In October, for example, Coolray Field becomes an enormous outdoor movie theater for their family-friendly Halloween event, Flick or Treat. And, during the early months of 2022, fans were invited to the Field to see the Atlanta Braves’ World Series trophy in person as part of the Braves’ Trophy Tour. But the core of the Stripers’ marketing revolves around weekly email campaigns and their newsletter that fans receive throughout the year.

Grow Fan Base

Increase Ticket Sales

Nurture Quality Leads

Uplift Merchandise Revenue

Factoreal Solution Nets Better Results

In 2021 , Gwinnett Stripers decided that they needed to take their marketing game to the next level by replacing their manual, multi-tool system with an automated, all-in-one solution from Factoreal. To say the solution was a hit would be an understatement; it was a home run. In one year, the team saw its single-game ticket sales rise by over 30% and its merchandise revenue increase by 11%. The team attributes the rise to the Factoreal solution, which enabled the Stripers to nearly double its email output (from 475k to 800k) and more than double its email open rate, from a below-average 18.41% to a well-above-average 39.50%. At the same time, their click rate from emails also grew substantially, from 2.85% to 5.91%

”Factoreal has helped us grow our email marketing immensely. It is quick, easy, and efficient in getting our messages out to our user base. Anyone in our office can learn how to set up and send emails in no time. By being able to focus in on certain subsets of our database, we can make sure our emails are being sent to the right people and our marketing is opened by the people we are targeting.
Kyle Kamerbeek, Gwinnett Stripers’ Marketing Manager

Fishing for Fans in the Right Place

With the insights and victories gained from Factoreal’s customer engagement platform, the Gwinnett Stripers are poised to reel in even more fans in the coming season. For example, Factoreal’s marketing analytics revealed that email subject lines with a call to action had a higher engagement rate, as did emails that were geared to a specific audience (e.g., Teachers Night, Star Wars Night). The Stripers marketing team plans to use this data to better customize their email campaigns to specific audience segments.

Want to win fans for life?

MVP: Most Valuable Promoter

Ultimately, the Stripers see Factoreal as not just a way to keep fans engaged during the offseason but to enhance their in-season experience as well. The team is even considering using Factoreal’s SMS-based marketing features to support in-game contests to fans during their games on their mobile devices.

As Kyle Kamerbeek, Gwinnett Stripers’ Marketing Manager, sees it, Factoreal had an MVP-caliber season in its first year with the team. “Factoreal has helped us grow our email marketing immensely,” he says. “It’s quick, easy, and efficient in getting our messages out to our user base. Anyone in our office can learn how to set up and send emails in no time. By being able to focus in on certain subsets of our database, we can make sure our emails are being sent to the right people and our marketing is opened by the people we are targeting.”