By Alexa Lemzy, Contributor
When it comes to marketing your sports bar, creating engaging and personal marketing campaigns that reach your guests can be a challenge. Text messaging, however, can make it easy to contact your guests directly with personalized messages and offers to maximize their impact.
SMS marketing offers many ways to engage customers and keep them coming back to your sports bar. Texting lets you inform customers about upcoming events, offer loyalty rewards, and provide fun activities they can take part in at home.
Here are six sports bar text messaging strategies that will boost your sales:
Promote Upcoming Games, Matches & Competitions
Texting is an ideal way to let customers know about the upcoming games and sporting events being screened at your bar. It is especially important to do this if you are showing a non-traditional sports event.
While many customers will assume their local sports bar is showing the big football game, fans of alternative sports may not know you show these kinds of events. With the rising importance of eSports and other non-mainstream competitions (like eSports), letting guests know you show these kinds of events could be key to attracting more Gen Z and Millennials.
Furthermore, this also gives you the opportunity to offer a discount or reward to subscribers who confirm their attendance. Getting this early commitment will help you plan for major events and busy nights. If you are expecting a crowd for the big match, a text can also advise customers of your ordering policy and distancing measures to avoid confusion later.
Fantasy League Updates
Fantasy football leagues are a powerful marketing tool unique to sports-themed businesses, and text messaging can boost their impact on your sales.
Setting up a fantasy league can be a great way to build a community around your bar and gives your customers a way to engage with each other and your business from home. Including fantasy league updates in your SMS newsletter keeps players engaged with the game, and can attract other customers to the league.
Texting out coupons to your players that expire at the end of each week of the season can help prevent the less successful players lose interest in the game, and keep them coming back despite their setbacks.
Guest Loyalty Programs
SMS marketing enables a wide range of customer loyalty programs and promotions for sports bars. Offering a discount code for signing up to your text messaging can help turn first-time visitors into long-term customers, while texting loyalty rewards to your regulars keeps them coming back more often.
For example, Corey’s Sports Bar lets users sign up by text to earn discounts every time they visit, and get exclusive offers and promotions sent straight to their phone. Loyalty programs have a clear impact on sales, with 84% of loyalty program members redeeming at least one offer from the program.
Similarly, text referral rewards can increase your sales by encouraging customers to bring their friends. Send out referral codes that they can share by texting their friends, or offer your SMS subscribers free drinks or snacks when they arrive with a group and show your text.
Sport News Updates
Sports fans are always looking for the latest updates, team stats and player transfers. Sharing sports news and giving updates on local teams keeps customers engaged during the off-season and when there are no new events. Staying in touch between events is key to any sports SMS marketing strategy.
By creating separate SMS mailing lists for different customer interests, you can make sure you send only the most relevant news for each customer. This personalization shows that you remember each customer and the sports they follow, making them feel more valued and welcome back at the bar.
You become more than just a place to watch the game, but elevate your business to being the sports hub for your community.
Sport Trivia Quizzes
You can also discuss the latest news by sharing quizzes and trivia games with your text subscribers. SMS-based quizzes that test your customers’ sports knowledge can be a fun way to keep people engaged outside of the bar, and you can also translate quiz participation directly into sales by offering discounts or other rewards to winners. There are plenty of ways to keep these fresh and topical, for example asking subscribers to guess the outcome of a match or tournament correctly for a discount on their bar tab.
Short text quizzes can also generate more interest and awareness of the quiz nights you host at the bar. Getting a few easy questions right over text can prompt a customer to bring their friends to the bar to really test their sports trivia.
Improved Customer Service
Text messaging is an invaluable tool for customer service as well as promotions. 90% of consumers use their phone to find out more about a bar or restaurant before visiting. Texting makes simple queries more convenient for you and your customers. Customers don’t need to make a phone call to ask about events or opening times, while you can reply to their questions at a free moment instead of dropping everything to pick up the phone.
In fact, many of the everyday queries you receive via text can be completely automated. Create keywords and personalized response templates for common queries such as opening times to give customers an instant response even outside of working hours.
Texting even makes your customer service at the bar go more smoothly. Signing up for a rewards program can be a bit of a hassle when you’re trying to enjoy a night out. By providing a number guests can quickly text to sign up instead, Duffy’s Sports Bar chain was able to attract more subscribers while servers spent less time asking for customers’ details.
Conclusion
SMS marketing is a great way to engage your customers and build a community around your sports bar. Besides providing numerous ways to offer your customers rewards and incentives for coming back, it’s a great way to share what’s going on at the bar and increase attendance at your events.
As a result, text messaging can convince more of your new visitors to come back, and keeps your existing customers returning more often.
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