dane wrote:
Did your tour of the us turn up some better ideas?
Just a few dane-o... One organization was horrified when I told them Carlton outsource customer service throughout the season to sell $200 raffle tickets. Even more horrifying was their response when the major prize is a product from the major sponsor.
And this thing is just plain fundraising under the premise that young players receive some monetary benefit. Of course - being truthful doesn't sound nearly as glamorous...
"Your donation could be used for the Elastoplast tape for Juddy's shoulders in Round 1! AND...if you donate more than $50 - we'll send you a piece of Juddy's shoulder strapping in the mail!"
The clubs efforts are better utilized by employing business development executives to sell 3 game membership packages and for the club to get its CRM right...something it thinks it's mastered - if it were 2005 they'd be right. While much more attention has been paid to it, I'm not convinced Carlton understand customer relationships as well as they think they do. Are they aware of the variety of relationship types? Do they understand what kind of relationship many of their fans want? While we all want something slightly different - the club has to cater to that need as best they can. You can't just buy some software and do it ad-hoc.
If its response is "We don't have the resources to do that" - as it was from a former CEO who didn't know what CRM was, then the club is content with where it is at...going nowhere fast, failing to address customer retention and continuing to ask its membership for more money on top of the money it's already paid.