Embed Rolls Out the Industry’s First Publishing-to-Payment Events Marketing Platform in Partnership with ECAL
SINGAPORE, 28 June 2022
Transforming the business of fun since 2001, Embed, the ultimate cashless solutions provider for the amusement, entertainment, and leisure industries, launches another industry-first innovation at the International Bowl Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, from June 29 to 30. True to its commitment and legacy in technology innovation, the developer of the award-winning Mobile Wallet – the first of its kind since its launch in 2019 – proudly unveils EVENTS:
EVENTS, an end-to-end events marketing platform that gives FECs and guests in-sync in-venue events, is the life of the party! EVENTS is one of the software solutions under Embed’s TOOLKIT suite that connects all business touchpoints in one integrated solution.
For this innovation, Embed partnered with ECAL, the world’s leading events and calendar marketing platform, on a mission to communicate events better, setting the global standard for effective events content management, publishing, marketing and smart, dynamic communications to calendar.
Guests will never miss out on an event or promotion when they sync in the fun! EVENTS automatically syncs to customers’ calendars – driving more revenue, foot traffic, traction, and conversion to events. Embed Solutions Group CEO Renee Welsh talks about how FECs can greatly benefit from the platform:
“70% of adults rely on mobile & desktop calendars to manage their daily schedule. Imagine your events and promotions mapped on your customer’s day-to-day, keeping your business top-of-head! We’re excited to have our customers experience the EVENTS difference and see a dramatic increase in their events awareness, a doubled ticket purchase or booking rate, and more engagement in their marketing efforts with this new channel.”
FEC operators who will subscribe to the service will be receiving a free EVENTS Creative Toolkit, specifically designed to drive uptake and adoption of EVENTS with end-users. This includes EVENTS messaging that covers the entire consumer journey (with zoning strategy) and customizable creatives for each customer touchpoint – from strategic to tactical, including how-tos, and employee cheat sheets.
“We at ECAL are thrilled to collaborate with Embed to share our beautiful event displays and smart ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology with its customers. This rich, dynamic events connection will deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right place, to drive increased sales and engagement, and backed by deep consumer data and insights,” says Patrick Barrett, Founder & CEO of ECAL.
Create > Automate
EVENTS can now be automatically synced to customers’ digital calendars. Any fun event activity published on an FEC website, like gaming tournaments, brunch parties, the big game, and even Happy Hour, can make their way into guests’ social calendars – all in a seamless guest journey, from your website to booking, payment, and confirmation. Pre-payment means low-risk to the FEC operator.
Party Pusher
EVENTS turns digital calendars into a powerful new communication channel with patrons, as well as an effective replacement for event marketing efforts that offer limited tracking and reporting.
Syncing Deep
Enjoy in-depth customer data and insights that enable FECs to plan events that give customers more of what they want and run promotions against the contact details to drive return visits and customer loyalty, ultimately future-proofing the business.
Demos, Drinks, and Bling
Visit booth #146 and catch free demos of EVENTS from the Embed Mavericks, along with the roster of breakthrough innovations like the KIOSK+, the award-winning Mobile Wallet, the integrated cloud-based software solution TOOLKIT, the smartTOUCH arcade debit game card reader, and a full range of wearables and game cards from Embed’s famous Bling Bar! Participants are also invited to daily Happy Hour sessions from 12 PM to 4 PM.
About Embed:
Embed is the worldwide leader of the cashless business management systems and solutions for the amusement, entertainment, and leisure industries. Designed to deliver a superior guest experience, the platform is a complete integrated cashless solution for business owners to maximize revenue and operational efficiency while reducing costs.
With Embed’s platform, a business (single or multi-location) has real-time visibility and control across its entire operation: from guest party-planning and bookings via mobile to integrated point-of-sales, including bundles and upsell packages, a full range of games management, real-time prize inventory, game card kiosks, and more – all integrated and accessible via mobile.
With over 1,000 customers and more than 3,000 installations around the world, Embed is equipped and ready to empower Family Entertainment (FEC) businesses with direct sales, services and support anytime, anywhere.
GLOBAL Media Contact:
Kathleen Goy
Global Head of Events
kathleen.goy@embedcard.com
About ECAL:
The world’s leading events and calendar marketing platform, ECAL is trusted and relied upon by some of the world’s biggest brands across sports, media, ticketing and payments, servicing over 10 million users. ECAL is on a mission to communicate events better, and sets the global standard for effective events content management, marketing and smart, dynamic communications to calendar.
For more information, visit: https://ecal.com/
Contact Details:
Patrick Barrett
Founder & CEO
patrick@ecal.com
Celtic fans, it’s here! The official Celtic FC ‘digital calendar’ service is the only way to keep up-to-date with a busy schedule ahead, including the 2022/23 cinch Premiership, Champions League action, Scottish Cup and more.
The Celtic FC ‘digital calendar’ is dynamic, and syncs all the latest match and important event information, straight to your personal digital calendar, so you never miss a moment.
Check out Celtic FC’s promotional ‘sync fixtures’ video below! (you gotta love this!)
Match details are updated dynamically throughout the season, complete with direct access to the Match Centre, CelticTV, Latest News, Shop, Social Media and lots more.
Celtic kick-off their title defence at home against Aberdeen on Sunday 31st July at Celtic Park.
Every match. Every moment. In sync. Sync up with the Champions this season here.
Premier League, the world’s most popular football league, has released its 2022/23 season fixture to football fans across the globe.
For ECAL, Premier League’s official ‘digital calendar’ provider, the official release to millions of fans all over the world requires a major technical effort with a well-crafted and co-ordinated strategy.
Pre-promotion for the release began seven (7) days prior, with a ‘Sync Fixtures’ takeover on the Premier League website, encouraging fans to sync now to receive the fixture as soon as it’s released.
Promotion ramped up through the week leading up to release day, with a ‘splash’ page on site entry, home page masthead banners, run of site banners, social campaigns and direct email promotion. On launch, a drive to ‘Sync Fixtures’ was also included on the official release articles.
The campaign saw excitement and antiicpation build leading up to the release, and worked to smooth out the enormous demand to subscribe to the ECAL service. Over the week, ECAL serviced hundreds of thousands of new subscribers to the Premier League ‘digital calendar’ service, whilst keeping millions of existing users up-to-date with the new fixtures.
The highly advanced ECAL service is dynamic, and rich with details, with game entries updating automatically in the calendar, as the finer details of the fixture change throughout the season. Users receive localised broadcast information, and direct access to tickets, merchandise, video, social media, fantasy and more.
The 2022/23 Premier League season kicks off on 5th August with Crystal Palace facing Arsenal at Selhurst Park. Defending champions Manchester City begin their title defence against West Ham United at London Stadium. Will Tottenham Hotspur continue its rise under Antonio Conte or will the Premier League again be painted blue?
Don’t miss a moment of the world’s most popular football league! Follow your favourite team like millions of others around the world, and sync to calendar here.
The countdown to the NFL season is officially on with the release of the 2022 season schedule, including the highly anticipated Sunday Night Football (SNF) match-ups. The Sunday Night Football schedule features the league’s biggest matches and NBC’s exclusive coverage has been America’s number one primetime show for eleven years running.
NBC ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature will continue to provide fans with rich, up-to-date match information, with one click access to Stream Live and on the go via Peacock, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports App. For NBC, ECAL’s world-leading technology will help drive tune-in and more fan engagement than ever, with direct access to streaming, latest news, video, statistical insights and lots more, delivered at the right time and in the right place to passionate NFL fans everywhere!
Love Sunday Night Football? Don’t miss a moment of the action on NBC and Peacock. Sync the official Sunday Night Football schedule to your personal digital calendar now.
Awesome ways to display, share and sync your events!
ECAL’s amazing new Event Displays are here! Available in three (3) modes to suit you, ‘Page’, ‘Carousel’ & ‘Column’ Event Displays are highly customisable, high impact, and rich in features to drive awareness, participation and action.
Key features include:
- Three modes incl. ‘Page’, ‘Carousel’, ‘Column’
- Timezone auto-detection
- Sync to Calendar feature ‘built-in’
- Share single events (social, email)
- High impact banner imagery
- Filter menu
- Direct action links
- Easy to implement!
Page View
The ‘Page‘ mode provides a detailed, interactive and attractive display of your events, perfect for your ‘What’s On?’ or ‘Events Calendar’ page! Filter events by schedule type (or category), sort by month, expand the event tiles for details, take direct action (links), share with friends, and ‘Sync to Calendar’!
See live demo here.
Carousel View
The ‘Carousel‘ mode provides a high impact, high attention display of your events, perfect for your homepage, beneath your site masthead! Scroll through events upcoming, sort by month, take direct action (links), share with friends, and ‘Sync to Calendar’!
See live demo here.
Column View
The ‘Column‘ mode provide a neat, highly flexible, high impact display of your events in a vertical column, perfect for a side margin across the inside pages of your website! Scroll through events upcoming, sort by month, take direct action (links), share with friends, and ‘Sync to Calendar’!
See live demo here.
ECAL has partnered with the Marathon Center for Performing Arts (MCPA), to help promote their world-class events direct to calendar. For ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing platform, it’s another venue integration that will drive new customer acquisition, increase the ticket purchase rate and improve the customer experience.
Located in Findlay, Northwest Ohio, The MCPA hosts over 300 events each year across a wide range of genres including rock concerts, theatre, literary and community events. Now, at the click of a button, theatre goers, music enthusiasts and local visitors can easily ‘sync’ events they are interested in, straight to their personal digital calendar.
Events dynamically update in the calendar, so if there are any event updates or changes, they’ll be the first to know. Events include handy alerts, event details and even pricing information, with direct access to purchase tickets straight from the calendar. In addition to the event entry, 🎟 Ticket Alerts are automatically placed into subscribers calendars seven days prior to help drive purchases.
ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology is integrated across the MCPA website, with ‘Sync to Cal’ icons located on individual event tiles, Sync to Calendar buttons on each individual event page and main widget with genre selection on the upcoming events page. The feature is a great addition to the mcpa.org website, designed to increase awareness and engagement for events at the venue.
Visit mpca.org now to see what’s on, and sync to cal!
The Formula 1® Heineken® Australian Grand Prix 2022 is back and it’s bigger than ever – boasting an on-track bonanza that features the world’s best and emerging drivers.
There will be over 22-hours of on-track action across the four days of the Melbourne Grand Prix, headlined by the triumphant return of Formula 1® to the Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit.
ECAL’s world-leading, dynamic calendar marketing technology delivers the latest track schedule and entertainment events directly into the personal digital calendar of fans, providing fans with timely reminders so they don’t miss their favourite events. Racing fans can sync the track and AUSGP session events across each of the four days.
Don’t miss a second of the action! If you’re watching at home or live from the racetrack, sync the track schedule to your personal digital calendar here!
GameDay and ECAL are partnering up on another product integration project to further the solutions that both GameDay and ECAL offer to community sports and event organisers throughout the APAC region, UK & Europe. GameDay Events will soon support an integration with ECALs world’s leading calendar solutions.
As part of this integration, event organisers will be able to connect their GameDay Events account to ECAL in order to automate the creation of ECAL calendar widgets and button displays, and sync events created in GameDay to ECAL. Event Organisers will then be able to publish the widget of their choice on their own website event landing page.
This integration will support a number of public-facing event calendar widgets, sync to calendar buttons for event participants and event advertising displays. From these widgets, event participants or members will be able to easily sync events to their personal calendar of choice. ECALs calendar solutions sync to all popular calendar solutions such as Google, Apple, Outlook, Hotmail, Office 365 + more.
In addition, ECAL will become the event calendar solution for all GameDay Websites, meaning users will easily be able to manage their events calendar via GameDay Events which will automatically sync to the calendar widget activated on their Website.
Patrick Barrett, Founder & CEO of ECAL says “our partnership is the coming together of two best in class technologies, to provide GameDay clients with an incredibly powerful, seamlessly integrated calendar marketing solution. The end result is a real boost for GameDay event organisers, and a wonderfully valuable, simplified experience for event participants.”
“We’re excited to partner with ECAL to further enhance our event solutions” says Mark Pititto, Senior Product Manager at GameDay. “This will provide our event organisers with added capability and benefits of using GameDay to manage their events. The integration with ECAL will also be really useful for those participants that register to an event by supporting a direct sync to their personal calendars so they have all the event information available to them and ensure they can plan their busy schedules”.
GameDay and ECAL plan to further enhance the integration in future with ECALs “Stay ‘n Play” partnership with Booking.com. Stay ‘n Play delivers the best available accommodation offers around upcoming events, straight into the personal digital calendar of its users. This integration will further enhance GameDay’s events solutions and ensure it continues to provide innovative solutions to existing and new event organisers.
The first phase of this implementation will see this rolled out to GameDay Event customers from May 2022 with future integration with ECAL to follow over the coming months. This integration will be made available to users via GameDay Marketplace.
About GameDay
GameDay, part of the Stack Sports family, have been providing next generation sports management technology solutions in the Australian market since 2001 and have extended their key markets to include the United Kingdom, Europe and New Zealand. GameDay provides a range of solutions including membership management, competition and tournament management, event/ticketing platforms and various digital websites, e- commerce, and online auction fundraising solutions. GameDay works with a wide variety of organisations including grassroots sporting clubs/associations, professional clubs/teams, national governing bodies, event providers along with charities and foundations.
More information on GameDay’s customers and the GameDay product suite can be found by visiting https://mygameday.app
Key Contact Details
Mark Pititto
Senior Product Manager
mark.pititto@mygameday.app
About ECAL
The world’s leading calendar marketing, communications, data and ecommerce platform, ECAL is trusted and relied upon by some of the world’s biggest brands across sports, media, and ticketing, servicing over 10 million users. ECAL is on a mission to communicate events better, and sets the global standard for smart, dynamic calendar marketing and communications.
We believe that time is scarce and precious. We see the calendar as a highly intimate and respected channel for brands, to communicate and engage consumers, to bring them greater utility and to simplify their life. To make life better.
More information about ECAL can be found at: https://ecal.com/
More information about ECALs “Stay ‘n Play” partnership can be found at: https://ecal.com/ecal-launches-stay-n-play/
Key Contact Details:
Patrick Barrett
ECAL Founder & CEO
patrick@ecal.com
Beyond Imagination: The Future of Creative Technology – a virtual week of insights, inspiration and discussion at the intersection of creativity and technology is using ECAL’s Sync to Calendar technology to keep attendees informed and ready to join.
From March 21st – March 25th Beyond Animation brings together artists, technologists and partners across Technicolor Creative Studios for a free, five-day virtual festival featuring live demos, panel discussions, podcasts and more.
With the help of ECAL, attendees won’t miss a moment of their chosen stream and events, with the Technicolor Creative Services digital calendar providing up-to-date session details, instructions to register and participate, with handy alerts and direct access to watch live, all from the convenience of your personal calendar.
Interested in discovering more about the technologies and trends that are evolving content production across Filmmaking, Advertising, Animation and Gaming – sync your stream of interest here!
NBCUniversal will present 230+ hours of Paralympic programming, including a record 120 hours of television coverage across the USA on NBC, Peacock, USA Network, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.
Like NBC’s hugely successful coverage of the Winter Olympics, ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature will again provide American sports fans with timely reminders via the calendar, so they’ll never miss a moment of the action. Event entries feature rich and up-to-date event information with one click access to Stream Live their favourite events on the go via Peacock. All from the convenience of your mobile phone, how good is that!
Don’t miss a moment of the 2022 Winter Paralympics action on NBC and Peacock. Sync your favourite sports to your personal digital calendar here.
