If you want to run truly successful marketing campaigns for your sports bar, then you need to know who your guests are. Not just their names but also what they’re interested in, what they like and dislike, their favorite teams, food and drinks, and want from your restaurant.

The best way to do that is by collecting guest data. This info can help you build your bar’s guest demographics, tailor marketing to individual guest’s interests, and create marketing programs that work in the background while you take on more pressing business matter.

Let’s dive in.

First, How Sports Bars Can Collect Customer Data

Before you can do anything with the data, you need to collect it. Here are four ways your sports bar can collect customer data for future marketing.

Forms that Push Data into Your CRM

Your sport bar’s website is a great place to collect data from both your current guests and potential guests. Your site is one of the first places potential guests will visit to learn about your restaurant; they want to learn about your vibe, see your menu, and find out what games you’re showing. So leverage it to gather info about who’s interested, so you can market to them.

The form can take the shape of a pop-up that appears over screen. Data collected here are typically minimum – name and email address. You can also embed a more in-depth form on your site where you can also collect the guests’ phone number (for SMS marketing), their favorite teams and sports, home address (for snail mail marketing), and anything else pertinent to your business and marketing efforts.

You’ll need a reason to give them a reason for handing over this info. Sometimes signing up for your newsletter or future marketing is enough to get folks to give their data, but not always. You may want to give a good offer in return, like a free app on their next visit or discount on drinks, etc. It’s a small investment with potential big, long-term returns.

All of this data should be able to be pulled directly into your email and customer relationship management (CRM) service, so you don’t have to type it in manually. All of this info can be used for personalized and targeted marketing efforts later.

Tagging Links in Emails

Another great way of collecting customer data is by tagging links in your sports bar’s email marketing – both newsletters and promotional. Tagging, or email tagging, is assigning labels or categories to contacts, letting you segment those contacts later. For example, you can tag all Boston Celtics fans as “Celtics” or all guests interested in Happy Hour with “Happy House,” etc.

This can be done manually from other methods of collecting data, but it can also be done automatically through your email provider. For example, if you’re running a Celtics watch party and an email subscriber clicks a link to more info on your site, that subscriber can get the “Celtics” tag automatically added to their contact profile.

This is especially easy to do with the SportsTV Guide HQ, the only email and CRM marketing platform made specifically for sports bars.

Event Sign Ups & Other CTAs

If you require guests to register or sign-up for your special events (such as watch parties or eSport tournaments), that’s data you have on them that you can use. You can use online forms that integrate into your bar’s CRM service or manually input it if you collect in-person with pen and paper.

Giveaways & Contests

Raffles, giveaways, and contests are a classic way of getting some information on your guests. In essence, your guests are trading their info in exchange for a chance of winning something cool.

Depending on what the prize is, you can ask for more or less data on your guests. At minimum, you’ll want to get name, email, and phone. You can also ask for their favorite teams and sports, or any other info that’s important to how you run your sports bar.

In-House & Delivery Orders

Don’t overlook your transactional data. There’s a wealth of information you can get from your transactions than “when is the busiest time of year.” You can look at it at a macro level (what the general population of your guests order) and a micro level (what specific guests order).

All this information can be used in a variety of ways that we’ll discuss in the next section.

How Sports Bars Can Use Collected Customer Data

Once you’ve collected data, you need to find ways of using it. The best pool of data is no good if it doesn’t get used. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a data-guru or marketing genius to leverage the power of your collected customer data.

Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling.

Know What Games to Show on Your TVS

If you collected the right data, not only will you know folks’ names and contact info, but you’ll also learn what their favorite sports and teams are. This is especially crucial info for sports bars. The number one reason people visit your bar is to watch sports, so you need to know what games to show.

For some markets, this is easy; it’ll always be the local professional teams. For smaller markets, this might be a bit more nebulous. So, learning what your guests like to watch and who they root for is paramount to giving them what they want.

And honestly, even with larger markets this is good info to gather. You can learn about secondary and tertiary sport and team interests from your customer pool. By adding those events into the mix, you show that you understand your guests and are serious about sports. You become the sports HQ of your area.

You can also send targeted emails to guests (see next section), promoting those games and events; create easy head-to-head game graphics with the STVG HQ: Social Media Graphics generator (see above image); and even list those games on your TV screens.

Send Personalized Email Marketing

This is super simple but it’s still more than sending an email with the guest’s name automatically embedded. We’re talking about sending them emails that are personalized and targeted to their interests.

This is easy to do if you’ve been adding tags to your contact lists. You can create a segmented list so you can send emails to folks that they’re more likely to be interested in. Spamming your entire list with messaging that half your contacts don’t care about often leads to unsubscribes. Targeted email marketing, on the other hand, increases your open rates, lowers the chance of hitting the spam filter, and lowers your unsubscribes so you can stay in contact with more guests.

For example: let’s go back to our Boston Celtics fans who got tagged as “Celtics” in your email/CRM system. You plan on showing the next Celtics game coming up and want to let folks know. You could spam your entire email list but non-basketball fans (and non-Celtics fans) are going to get tired of that real fast.

Instead, you create a segmented list that pulls in only contacts that have the “Celtics” tag. You whip up your messaging, hit send, and get on with your workday. Simple as that.

This is all easy to do with the SportsTV Guide HQ, and we’re happy to walk you and your team through the process.

CRM & Email Marketing Automations

Few folks are busier than the modern sports bar operator. You wear a million different hats, from personnel manager to customer service and more… including marketing. The good news is that you can set up CRM and email marketing automations that work for you while you take on more pressing matters. CRM and email automations are a nice tool for taking some work off your plate.

For example, instead of having to track and hand-send birthday emails and offers to your guests, a workflow automation does this automatically when the system realizes a contact’s birthday is in X days (X being whatever number you choose) or it’s their birthday month.

You can also use automations to send Weekly Football Cards to your guests who are tagged with an interest in football. That same automation can send them reminders to fill out their cards, let them know how well they performed, and their prize (should they win).

Automations can also be used to alert guests of special events (like watch parties or trivia nights), get them to click links and sign up (potentially getting you new tags and data on the guest), reminder emails, and any follow-ups.

Automations do a lot of work for you and will run until they’re told to stop.

As a plus, our team can help create these automations for you and also teach you how to make your own in the future. It’s part of what you get with the SportsTV Guide HQ.

BONUS: Special Offer to STVG Subscribers

Now through the end of the 2024, SportsTV Guide Subscribers can get UPGRADED Concierge Level STVG HQ marketing service (a $3600/year value) at Pro level pricing of just $150/month for 2500+ contacts. This includes your STVG subscription! Plus:

• Complete technical setup, including migration of your email templates and contact list
• Unique newsletter and single-send email template designs, exclusive to your brand
• Base email campaign and design setup (birthday, reward programs, etc.)
• Email marketing planning meetings with the STVG HQ staff
• Prebuilt sports-themed promotions (March Madness, Weekly Football Cards, etc.)
• Content creation for your email marketing and social campaigns

To learn more about STVG HQ and to schedule your free demo to see it action, visit here.