Welcome to Week 3 of this special 4-week series, as we highlight the most creative and super engaging calendar marketing campaigns.
NBA: ⚡️Milestone Alerts
The NBA has taken fan engagement to the next level, injecting advanced match stats into game entries with this cool ⚡️ ‘Milestone Alerts’ feature! Whether it’s Carmelo Anthony moving into 95th spot for All-Time total rebounds or LeBron James tying Paul Silas and Tony Parker for 32nd on the NBA All-Time games list, the NBA is giving fans more of the moment! Watch out for the ⚡️ symbol in game titles to uncover important player milestones!
Formula E: Post Race Highlights!
Formula E is keeping fans engaged long after the chequered flag with its ‘🏎 🏁 Missed the action?’ calendar event. Racing enthusiasts can ‘catch-up’ on all the action with one click to the race replay and highlights video.
Morrison Centre: Ticket Status!
Performing arts theatre, the Morrison Center provides interested theatregoers with everything they need to make a purchase decision. Detailed show information, ticket pricing, ticket status (‘on sale now’, ‘selling fast’, ‘almost gone!’ and ‘sold out’) and one click access to purchase tickets
Premier League: Esports Deadlines!
ePremier League players will never miss a qualification deadline with timely calendar reminders. Entries feature detailed instructions, including cut-off dates, with one click access to ‘register’, ‘play now’ or see the ‘match schedule’.
Toronto Arrows: Pre Game Show
Major League Rugby team the Toronto Arrows is pushing events into calendars that aren’t restricted to the playing field. The team is promoting it’s live pre-game facebook show via the calendar to build awareness and increase time engaged.
This special 4-week series highlights some of the most creative and super engaging calendar campaigns we’ve seen lately. Great ideas, fantastic executions, awesome results. Here’s Week 2!
TAB: Virtual Locker Room
To help racing and sports fans navigate a hectic spring betting calendar, and the constraints of Covid-19 lockdown, TAB invited Aussies to ‘Make a Date with Play’. At the heart of the campaign, ECAL enabled sports fans to sync their favourite sports fixtures and feature racing events to calendar. To help bring mates together, users could create a Virtual Locker Room (a private virtual room), complete with live vision, odds boards, video chat and more. What an amazing campaign!
Rugby League World Cup: Priority Ticket Access!
Rugby League World Cup used the official schedule release to build their global calendar audience. This direct connection to high value, passionate fans has helped to drive early ticket sales within important priority ticket windows.
Arsenal FC: Home Kit On-Sale!
Arsenal’s significant calendar audience was alerted to the release of the new adidas Home Kit with a dedicated ‘On Sale’ calendar entry, with a clear call to action to ‘Shop Now’ online. Targeted marketing entries like these typically receive CTR’s of over 10-15%.
Harlequins: Competition Time!
English Rugby team Harlequins gave connected fans the chance to win a signed jersey via the calendar. This ‘Win a signed third shirt’ calendar entry asked fans to name the player they’d like to sign the top, with an action link to ‘Enter Now’, and achieved a CTR of 5.2%!
NBL: Partner Promotion
The calendar also presents a great opportunity for your corporate partners. Dream Courts, the official basketball courts partner of the NBL received this promotion in calendar, encouraging fans to create the court of their dreams!
ECAL’s Superheroes of Sync are here! This special 4-week series highlights some of the most creative and super engaging calendar campaigns we’ve seen from our clients. Great ideas, fantastic executions, awesome results. Check out this week’s Superheroes!
FC Barcelona: Match Day Challenge
FCB launched a ‘Match Day Challenge’ promotion to increase fan engagement and participation online. With the opportunity to win a match day jersey, fans are encouraged to ‘Guess the Score’, ‘Enter a Quiz’, and ‘Rate the Game’ for each upcoming game. FCB leverage their calendar audience via a dedicated tactical entry delivered one day prior to the game, and the ‘On!’ 🔛 emoji announces the ‘Match Day Challenge’ is open. FCB has seen a 3x increase in engagement via the calendar!
England & Wales Cricket Board: Tickets On Sale!
ECB launched their Men’s International season direct to their calendar audience to drive early ticket sales. This ‘Tickets On Sale’ calendar entry has multiple alerts (1 day, 15 mins prior) to drive awareness and prompt action, with an action link to ‘Get tickets’, and achieved a CTR of +11%!
Aston Villa FC: Villa Gaming
Aston Villa announced ‘Villa Gaming’, a new eSports platform for gamers feat. FIFA21, NBA2K and Rocket League. A great initiative to extend their fanbase. So Villa created a new ‘Villa Gaming’ schedule in ECAL, and this tactical event to existing users drives registration.
LIVENow: Watch it Live
Streaming platform LIVENow uses ECAL to drive tune-in and live streaming sales. Each calendar entry shows the latest event details, purchase options, localised pricing (based on user’s geo-location) and action links to ‘Buy This Event‘ and ‘Watch This Now‘.
NBL: NBL Cup Launch
The inaugural NBL Cup was decided over 36 games within 4 weeks of the regular NBL season. Designated Cup games were updated with a 🏆 emoji in calendar, and a series of ‘teaser’ entries in calendar were used to drive awareness, educate fans and drive advance ticket sales.
ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing solution, is proud to announce its partnership with Dream11.
ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature provides India’s biggest Fantasy Sports platform with the world’s best digital calendar service. For ECAL, this is yet another significant partnership with a major fantasy sports franchise.
With Dream11’s enormous popularity estimated at over 100 million users, this partnership takes the ECAL service to a significant new audience in sports-mad India.
The online fantasy sports platform includes cricket, football, basketball, kabaddi, hockey, volleyball, handball and baseball.
Registered users create a virtual team of real-life players and earn points based on their performance and compete with other sports fans!
ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature provides users with timely reminders via the calendar of upcoming contests, complete with entry deadline information and direct access to enter, tips and stats, earn referral points and lots more.
Dream11 users can ‘sync’ individual matches, team schedules and entire competition schedules to calendar via the IOS and Android app, ensuring they won’t miss a moment (deadline!) of fantasy action.
The NBL Cup tips off on February 20 with a four-week basketball extravaganza in Melbourne! All 9 NBL teams, 36 games, 1 winner!
In what will be one of the biggest basketball events ever staged in Australia, the NBL Cup will feature 18 double headers at John Cain Arena and the State Basketball Centre.
The 36 games will count towards the 2020-21 Hungry Jack’s NBL Season and, in a first for the league, will also decide the winner of the inaugural NBL Cup with total prize money of $300,000 up for grabs. All games will be broadcast live on SBS, ESPN and Sky Sport (NZ).
Ticket prices start at just $17 with a blockbuster double header featuring Melbourne United v Perth Wildcats and Cairns Taipans v The Hawks to open the NBL Cup at John Cain Arena on Sat 20 Feb.
Don’t miss a moment of the action, sync your team(s) fixture to calendar here to receive timely reminders, broadcast information and direct access to purchase tickets, watch live and shop the NBL store.
Celtic fans, it’s here! Your digital 2020/21 Celtic FC fixtures are ready to sync to calendar.
Never miss a moment of hoops action this season, sync every Scottish Premiership, European Fixtures and League Cup clash to your calendar, thanks to ECAL.
ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature provides fans of the Scottish Football powerhouse with the world’s best digital calendar service. Match details are updated dynamically throughout the season, complete with direct access to the Match Centre, betting odds with principal partner Dafabet CelticTV, Latest News, Social Media and lots more.
The addition of ECAL’s Sync to Calendar button coincides with Celtic’s newly designed website, enabling fans to engage with their team like never before.
Support Celtic FC throughout the 2020/21 Season and beyond with ECAL. Sync the Celtic fixture to your calendar now.
The AFL has released its ‘rolling fixture’ for the 2021 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. 2021 sees footy return to Victoria, NSW, ACT and Tasmania after a Covid-19 affected 2020 season.
The league has locked in the opening six rounds, starting with the traditional Richmond v Carlton blockbuster at the MCG on Thursday, March 18. Match-ups for Rounds 7 to 23 have been determined, but don’t yet have specific dates or timeslots.
For AFL Club ECAL subscribers, fixtures automatically hit the calendar, and will continue to be updated as the rolling fixture continues to evolve throughout the season. The days of the member fridge magnet fixture are gone, the calendar is where all the action is!
Timely reminders, TV broadcast information, official game hashtags and direct access to Club Memberships, Tickets, Online Shops, Video and Latest News just a click away.
It’s going to be big! Don’t miss it when footy returns, sync the full AFL Fixture to your calendar here or from your teams fixture page.
The NBL, Australia and New Zealand’s pre-eminent professional men’s basketball league is back for 2020/21, the League releasing the first part of it’s rolling schedule.
A total of 39 games will be played over the first 37 days of the season in front of fans across Australia.
With fixtures increasingly subject to change, sporting leagues across the globe are implementing rolling fixtures. ECAL’s dynamic calendar solution provides the NBL and its fans certainty when it comes to the season schedule.
Fans of the nine-team competition are treated to a live and dynamic feed of game details, delivered straight to their digital calendar of choice.
Basketball lovers will never miss a moment with match entries automatically updated with TV broadcast information, official game hashtags and direct access to Buy Memberships, Online Shop and more, just a click away.
The 2020-21 Hungry Jack’s NBL Season tips off on January 10 with the Throwdown between Melbourne United and South East Melbourne Phoenix headlining a nine game opening round.
Follow your team throughout the 20/21 Season and join thousands of basketball fans who rely on ECAL to stay up-to-date and connected to the NBL via their calendar!
The Stable
October 7th, 2020
Australians have been waiting for spring with anticipation unrivalled for decades. We’re all longing to burst out of the box. Even Aussie sport had to hibernate throughout winter due to the restrictions that Covid placed on everyone’s lives. So this year’s spring racing and sporting calendar promises to be quite a gala.
While it is synonymous with the Spring Racing Carnival, this year, spring is loaded with NRL and AFL Finals, NBA Playoffs, a new NFL season, the MLB World Series, French Open Tennis, Masters Golf – and the State of Origin Game 1 the day after the Melbourne Cup in November.
To help racing and sports fans navigate a hectic calendar, TAB is inviting Aussies to Make a Date with Play. The M&C Saatchi campaign aims to excite Australian sports fans and connect them fully through technology and new product offerings, so they never miss a moment.
At the heart of the campaign is TAB’s spring calendar creator, a utility that syncs user’s calendars to any racing and sport event, linking them to venues and set reminders. There’s also a new way to connect with friends and family through the TAB Locker Room, a social utility using Twilio that allows users to stream in virtual rooms with each other, watch live racing as well as live content normally found in a TAB venue.
Setting the spring excitement in motion is a film by Revolver Will/O’Rourke’s Matt Devine, in which classic flip-down stadium seats come to life across the country like giant keyboards to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, inviting Aussies to grab a seat wherever they are. The “seat theme” continues with TAB Hot Seats in social channels, a weekly show that dives into the sporting calendar co-hosted by comedian, Sam Simmons, and Fox Sports presenter and sporting enthusiast, Andrew Barnett. Hot Seats brings entertainment, banter, history and information to sports hungry sports fans in a fresh new way for TAB.
“We’ve had a lot of fun building a campaign for what is to be an epic Spring, one that helps get bums on seats via tech as much as it celebrates pulling up a pew in film and content. The Calendar Creator is going to sort out a few headaches as racing and sport collide like never before. We’re proud of that, it’s the kind of UX that truly adds value to sports nuts,” stated Cam Blackley, chief creative officer, M&C Saatchi.
Luke Waldren, executive general manager marketing, customer & product, TAB, added, “Regardless of whether fans can attend racing and sporting events this Spring, we want to make sure we continue to bring Australians together in whatever way we can and ensure they enjoy every moment. That may be at the track or stadium, visiting their local TAB (in States where that’s possible) or on the couch watching live vision and chatting to their mates in the TAB Locker Room. This will be a spring like no other and we can’t wait to see it all unfold.”
The hero film is supported by product films promoting Venue Mode and Live Vision and activity around TAB venues throughout spring.
Article first published on The Stable, 7th October 2020
ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing solution, is proud to announce its partnership with the Delhi Capitals. ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature providing DC fans across the globe with the world’s best digital calendar service.
For ECAL, this is yet another significant partnership with a major global sporting franchise. With an enormous audience, particularly within the Indian subcontinent, this partnership takes the ECAL service to millions of new users.
CEO and Founder Patrick Barrett is thrilled with the partnership.
“The IPL is the most popular domestic T20 competition in the world. Over 200 million people tuned in to the opening match of the competition. The 2019 tournament saw a 12% increase in viewership with a whopping 462 million viewers watching on the Star Network over the 8 weeks of the competition.
It’s great to have the Capitals onboard, delivering dynamic match content into the calendars of fans, complete with handy reminders, broadcast information, and direct access to the Match Centre, Shop, DC TV Latest News, Social Media and lots more.
We hope this is the first step in becoming a must have feature for not only Indian sporting teams, but across multiple industries, given the great versatility of our software”.
Delhi Capitals fans, it’s here! The 20/21 IPL season is underway, and to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the action, sync the Capitals fixture to your calendar now.
