SMS Marketing Advice for Minor League Sports
While SMS marketing could be used for any level of sports, its low cost and easy deployment makes it especially cost effective for minor league sports teams with smaller budgets than their major league counterparts. Most minor league teams do not have the staff or budget to manage costly direct mail campaigns and extensive media advertising.
Recently we worked with the Washington Wild Things, a minor league baseball team near Pittsburgh, PA, during the 2010 season to help them grow, and drive revenue from, their text message marketing database.
SMS List Growth: Minor league teams have a unique opportunity to grow an SMS subscriber database from every home game. In the stands they have hundreds (and usually thousands) of fans already using their mobile phones to text friends and family. By incorporating in-game SMS contests and promotions teams can build a list of mobile numbers very quickly without any additional costs for traditional media. On average 10-15% of fans in attendance at a game will text-in for giveaways, on-field contests, voting, coupons, and more. These SMS campaigns can be executed using the team’s existing Jumbotron or PA system.
Revenue Drivers: Perhaps the biggest driver of revenue for a text message marketing campaign is the ability to sell last-minute tickets to games that haven’t sold out. Teams can send same-day promotions to their mobile list and fill those empty seats within hours. Last-minute and in-game promotions can also be sold as sponsorship opportunities creating new revenue streams. Other opportunities for sales growth include early season ticket sales and merchandise.
Top 5 Baseball Drills To Improve Your Game
Contact your local minor league teams or even the Major League teams and ask when there will be open tryouts in your area. Then ask the team if spectators are allowed. Assuming they allow you to attend the open tryout, bring your child and any of his teammates as well as their parents. This experience will open your eyes to how the players are evaluated and may deepen your child’s desire to eat healthy and exercise because your child will know what is needed to be considered by professional baseball scouts. This knowledge then can help your child stay disciplined when exercising and practicing baseball drills.
When asked to hit, scouts do not look at the end result of whether the ball was a hit, home run, foul ball, etc. Instead, they look at mechanics in order to determine if there is a “loop” in a batter’s swing, weight transfer, and the batter’s overall approach to the plate appearance. If you are able to introduce your child to one of the scouts during a break at the tryout, ask the scout to give you a minute to understand what he likes to see in his ideal batter. You and your child may learn quite a bit.
Here is a good pointer:
This is used to determine sheer sprint speed, and it is chosen to determine the athlete’s ability to run from the length of two bases. If you decide to incorporate this for your child, do so sparingly and make sure that your child is warmed up. Also reduce the length from 60 yards to only twice the distance from home to first. Of course, make sure that your child is medically approved to do sprinting. Keep the number of such dashes very low and GRADUALLY build up over time.
THE 60 YARD DASH DRILL
After the testing is done, you should have a good two months dedicated to a program that incorporates exercises, running, and strength training. Once this part is done, practice the test points listed above again. This will help you accurately measure your progress and where to improve.
Diamond push ups Dot jumps Bench press Home to 1b 30 second sit-ups 30 second dips Standing 2 footed vertical jump 10 yard sprint 40 yard sprint
The first day should be spent testing the components of each skills set that are vital to an overall skill matching assessment. Test items can include:
Independent Professional Baseball Players: Why They Play For Such Little Money
If you have attended an independent professional baseball game then you know that the level of play is equivalent to different levels of the regular “affiliated” Minor Leagues. What is not known by many fans, however, is how little money many of the independent baseball players make.
Unlike many jobs across North America, independent baseball players do not have a union or company department like Human Resources. They can be released almost at any time, for almost any reason, and there is usually nothing in their contracts which guarantees any sort of payment after players retire. When told all about this, many fans say, “Why would these players do that?!?”
Here are a few of the reasons:
A genuine love of the game: Many players in independent baseball believe that they have been overlooked by the Major League teams’ scouting departments. They genuinely believe that they deserve a chance to be in an “affiliated” farm team with one of the Major League organizations; and they truly love playing baseball. Many fans whom have attended independent baseball games comment on the hustle and passion of the players. A player who believes that he was overlooked may play with a “chip on his shoulder” in order to prove that he belongs with a Major League-affiliated farm team.