1. Introduction

For Arsenal fans across the globe, having the match schedule delivered dynamically into their personal digital calendars has become an expected and valued service. A service that has been consistently popular, however the content of the events lacked detail and context, with only basic match information, dates,times and location information available.

For ECAL, Arsenal’s official ‘Digital calendar’ provider, the opportunity to offer fans a more content rich, contextual, engaging experience, with improved match details, promotion and direct-action links had become increasingly important.

2. Objectives

• REDUCE / eliminate the human and technical overhead for the Arsenal business in delivering an automated, smart, dynamic calendar marketing and communications service..
• COMBINE relevant match data, broadcast data and reminders to
  ensure that fans receive the right information, in the right place, at
  the right time to increase awareness and tune-in.
• INTEGRATE the solution into ECAL’s existing ‘global displays’ that already have a smart language translation feature for the ‘sync to calendar’ user journey,
• ADOPT a platform approach to further revolutionise digital calendar communications using cutting edge technologies that would be relevant for other major global brands.

3. Strategy

Following months of investigation and testing, we partnered with Microsoft and OpenAI to develop an AI powered language
translation feature specific to the needs of calendar communications and our event-based client partner network.

4. Solution

From the outset of the 2023/24 season, ECAL successfully transitioned Arsenal to a totally automated events feed service. ECAL delivered smart, dynamic, relevant match events content for Arsenal with ECAL’s best practice content templates, and custom business logic, to communicate events better and deliver outstanding business outcomes.

5. Outcomes

ECAL has successfully developed the first mass language personalisation feature for Premier League, which will help inform its expansion and communications strategy going forward.

• Action & Engagement
  93% increase in the number of click-throughs (and CTR) on the direct-action links in-calendar almost doubled.

• Revenue Generation
  1/3 of all clicks were to revenue generating products, such as Shop, Membership and Tickets.