Instant payments in-calendar set to become a reality.
London, UK / Melbourne, Australia: Payments orchestration platform PayDock has announced a multi-year agreement with ECAL, a leading calendar communications platform to offer seamless calendar-driven payment solutions. Currently relied on by 3m+ monthly active users, ECAL is a preferred pipeline for time-sensitive, actionable communications between brands and consumers. PayDock’s capabilities as a mature payments orchestration platform provide a strong foundation for ECAL’s payments roll-out during 2020.
Patrick Barrett Founder and CEO at ECAL
“Today, the calendar sits squarely at the forefront of the merchant-consumer relationship. Our success in driving consumer action and response from right-time communications will be elevated via seamless in-calendar payment capabilities. ECAL Pay powered by PayDock will offer consumers a simple, direct and timely way to pay bills, support charities or buy tickets to their favourite events instantly, and without leaving their preferred personal time-management platform. Merchants similarly benefit from improved cashflow, reduced costs and greater transparency within their customer relationships.”
Rob Lincolne Founder and CEO at PayDock
“Our mission at PayDock has always been to stand behind businesses that transform the merchant-consumer relationship. ECAL is at the forefront of value-added brand engagement. We are highly excited along with Pat and the team at ECAL to assist merchants in the dramatic enhancement of customer experiences through the provision of timely, actionable and efficient payment capabilities. Offering ECAL capabilities as part of the PayDock services ecosystem ‘out of the box’ will enhance the value our payment service providers, merchants and consumers receive from each other.”
PayDock is a payments orchestration platform serving an international merchant base and over 30 payment service providers globally. PayDock makes it easy for businesses to rapidly harmonise and deploy payment ecosystems for increased value.
ECAL is a world-leading calendar communications and marketing platform, used by hundreds of major brands globally in sports, ticketing, media and now payments. ECAL’s ‘sync to calendar’ technology enables smart, dynamic, event-based communications straight to calendar, for better business outcomes.
Clients include Premier League, NBA, LaLiga, Formula E, AFL, NRL, MYOB, and Ticketek to name a few.
For more information, please contact:
PayDock
Rob Lincolne, Founder & CEO
Phone: +44 7828 948 683
Email: rob@paydock.com
Website: paydock.com
ECAL
Patrick Barrett, Founder & CEO
Phone: +61 411 650 445
Email: patrick@ecal.com
Website: ecal.com
The Premier League is set to make its return after suspending its season due to the coronavirus pandemic, confirming the fixture schedule for the first three match rounds of the resumed 2019/20 season.
The League kicks back into action on Wednesday 17th June, Aston Villa hosting Sheffield United under lights at Villa Park and Manchester City tackling Arsenal at Etihad Stadium. Like with most live sports that are returning, there will be no fans.
Liverpool requires just two more wins to wrap up the title upon the season resumption whilst the at the bottom of the table Norwich City is four points behind everyone else and six points from escaping the relegation zone.
Premier League subscribers were instantly updated with all the latest fixtures straight to their calendar, and will continue to be updated as the fixture evolves. How good is that?!
It’s going to be a massive re-start! Don’t miss it when the Premier League returns, sync your teams schedule here.
So Binge, a website that delivers everything you need to binge and more is using ECAL’s Sync to Calendar technology to engage music, tv and movie trivia buffs via its Chatbot.
Throughout June, Tuesday night is Quiz Night, with participants testing their knowledge on a range of subjects including Taylor Swift, Noughties Music and the MARVEL cinematic universe.
The versatility of ECAL’s Sync to Calendar technology is showcased with So Binge, with the button integrated into its facebook messenger chat bot.
With the help of ECAL, fans won’t miss a moment of virtual quiz night, with the So Binge digital calendar providing up-to-date details on the trivia subject, instructions to participate, with handy alerts and direct access to join in, all from the convenience of your personal calendar.
Think you know your movies, tv and music? Jump online and chat with the So Binge bot or sync the Virtual Quiz Night schedule here.
After two months of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the AFL has released the next four rounds (Rounds 2 to 5) of the Premiership season, with a focus on starting with a bang in a treat for players, fans and broadcasters across the game.
The AFL season bounces back into action on Thursday 11th June, with Collingwood hosting reigning premiers Richmond under lights at the MCG.
The match will be followed on Friday between modern day rivals Hawthorn and Geelong before the Adelaide Crows and Port Power clash in the Showdown.
Luckily, AFL Club ECAL subscribers have been instantly updated with all the latest fixtures straight to their calendar, and will continue to be updated as the fixture evolves. How good is that?!
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.
After two months of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the next two rounds (Rnds 3 and 4) of the NRL season have been announced, with a focus on starting with a bang in a treat for players, fans and broadcasters across the game.
The NRL season kicks back into gear on Thursday 28th May, with the Broncos to host the Eels at a venue in Queensland (to be announced).
The clash will be followed on Friday by an all-Queensland derby between the Cowboys and Titans before Latrell Mitchell and his Rabbitohs line up against the Sydney Roosters in a match almost two months in the making.
Luckily, NRL ECAL subscribers have been instantly updated with all the latest fixtures straight to their calendar, and will continue to be updated as the fixture evolves. How good is that?!
It’s going to be big! Don’t miss it when sporting rivalry returns, sync the NRL Fixture to your calendar here from the official NRL website.
STACK SPORTS (SPORTSTG) PARTNER WITH ECAL
Sports fixtures delivered, straight to the digital calendar
Stack Sports (SportsTG), the leading provider of digital solutions to national, state, grassroots and professional sporting organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom has today announced an exciting partnership with ECAL, the leading calendar communications and marketing software business.
ECAL’s dynamic ‘sync to calendar’ functionality will deliver the latest sports fixture information, straight to the personal digital calendar of users, to keep them up-to-date and connected. This solution will become a standard feature on the Stack Sports competition management platform.
Anthony Richardson, Director of Digital for Stack Sports), said: “ECAL’s offering compliments the existing features of our products and solutions. Stack Sports continues to evolve our business and product set and we are excited to have partnered with ECAL whose offering will now benefit Stacks customers.”
Patrick Barrett, CEO/Founder of ECAL said: “We are thrilled to partner with Stack Sports, and bring ECAL’s smart calendar technology to the lives of its extensive user community. During these unprecedented times, as competitions begin to reschedule fixtures, accurate and dynamic communications will play an important role in successful competition management. The Stack user community, with the help of ECAL, will be well placed to know exactly what’s on, when and where, so they can better manage life.”
Stack Sports have been providing high quality technology solutions in the Australian market since 2001 along with working in other key markets including the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Stack partners with a large number of National Sporting Organisations including the AFL, Basketball Australia, Touch Football Australia, Hockey Australia, Basketball New Zealand, New Zealand Rugby League, Rugby Football League, and Basketball England.
The technology Stack Sports provides assists in administering everything from national programme registrations to school holiday programs, week to week competitions to digital website solutions, and club sales and revenue-generating eCommerce platforms. Stack Sports will continue to partner with sporting organisations and other bodies to be the leading provider of sports digital ecosystems across the world.
ECAL is a world-leading calendar communications and marketing software business. It’s smart, dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology is used by 300+ major sports, ticketing, media organisations incl. Premier League, NBA, ICC, LaLiga, Formula E, AFL, NRL, Ticketek, Fox Sports and others, servicing 8M+ users. With over 70% of adults relying on their digital calendar to manage life, effective calendar communications are an essential weapon in the marketing toolkit for events-based business.
For more information and interviews, please contact:
Cameron O’Riordan
Director of Sales & Marketing
Stack Sports – APAC/EMEA
Phone: +61 (0) 475 415 801
cameron.oriordan@stacksports.com
Patrick Barrett
Founder / CEO
ECAL
Phone: +61 (0)411 650 445
patrick@ecal.com
ECAL is thrilled to announce the appointment of Shataksh (Shak) Tiwari as its new Chief Technology Officer, based at the company’s Melbourne HQ office.
Mr. Tiwari was most recently Co-Founder and CTO at PulseID, a large-scale mobile communications platform for the financial industry in the APAC region, and prior to that was CTO at Proximiti, a location-based mobile technology that understands consumer behaviour and performs targeted interactions. Prior, he held multiple technology roles at ANZ, one of the ‘big four’ banks in Australia.
ECAL CEO, Patrick Barrett says: “Shak is a highly experienced technologist, with a track-record for delivering smart, scalable, cloud-based SaaS platforms with big-data, security and innovation at the fore.”
“Shak will spearhead the next evolution of the ECAL platform, and ‘CalendarAI’ project, that will deliver optimised communications to calendar, smarter marketing capabilities, and data insights for our enterprise client network. This is exciting times for our company, and reinforces our commitment to push the boundaries in calendar communications and marketing, and deliver amazing outcomes for all our customers, and the millions who rely on our technology to make the most of their day.”
Mr. Tiwari officially started with ECAL at the beginning of April, and has wasted no time in laying the foundations for ECAL’s next-generation products!
3 July 2018
Sydney
TEG, Australasia’s leading Ticketing, Live Entertainment and Data Analytics company, is delighted to announce that the TEG-owned Ticketek has entered a partnership with ECAL, a global leader in calendar marketing and communications technology.
The partnership sees Ticketek, Australasia’s leading ticketing and data-driven marketing company, integrate ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology across the breadth of the ticketing experience on its website and email communications. The integration will incorporate everything from event search and discovery, to waitlist and post-purchase scenarios.
With just a couple of clicks, fans can easily add their favourite sports, teams,music and entertainment events directly into their personal calendar for free. Dynamic updates keep fans informed of important ticket on-sale dates, specialticket offers and other specific event details, with direct access to purchase; all from the convenience of their personal calendar.
A recent online survey by ECAL reports that 70% of Australian adults rely on their digital calendar most to manage their life, with over 47% reliant on their mobile calendar. ECAL’s smart calendar marketing system enables events to bypass the inbox and sync directly to a calendar.
TEG CEO Geoff Jones said the new ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature adds to the suite of innovation under the Ticketek Ignition™ program.
“The ECAL platform will enable Ticketek to help our partners engage in exciting new ways, gather invaluable consumer insights, continually learn and refine the calendar communications service to optimise sales,” said Jones.
“This represents a new media channel that is ideally suited to the sports and entertainment market, given that event dates, start times and venue details are the most relevant pieces on information when it comes to the show.
Ticketek Ignition™ opens Ticketek’s internal network and systems to enable multiple ticket purchasing experiences across multiple platforms and partner systems”.
“The new ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature is a wonderful initiative by our product and marketing teams, and reinforces our commitment to deliver the most personalised, connected and intelligent ticketing experience for today’s modern, mobile consumers,” said Jones.
Ticketek’s network of partners across sports, venues and entertainment promoters would reap the benefits of enhanced fan engagement and digital marketing.
ECAL Founder and CEO Patrick Barrett said: “ECAL is thrilled to partner with Australasia’s leading ticketing platform in Ticketek, to work hand-in-hand with TEG Analytics to uncover insights into purchase behaviour, and further develop our smart data and ‘decisioning’ platform.”
“We are looking forward to delivering a highly beneficial service for entertainment fans, and more sales and support for sports, venues and promoters, with ECAL’s in-calendar marketing logic typically working at up todouble the normal ‘purchase rate’.”
About Ticketek
Ticketek in Australia and New Zealand is the region’s number one ticketing agency, powered by advanced data-driven marketing and technology solutions. Ticketek has over 150 venue and sport partnerships, issues 28 million tickets per year, and by ticket sales volume Ticketek is in the top three
ticketing companies in the world. Ticketek’s website has 26 million impressions monthly, and is a leader in mobile commerce with over 1.3 million app downloads.
About ECAL
ECAL was founded by technology entrepreneur Patrick Barrett in 2010, and is the world’s first purpose-built ‘calendar marketing’ platform that delivers ‘rich’ and dynamic communications to the personal calendars of users. ECAL services millions of users globally, and works with some of the world’s
best known brands in sports, ticketing, media, conferences, banking, and payments. ECAL is an Australian based company headquartered in Melbourne.
About TEG
TEG is Australasia’s leading Ticketing, Live Entertainment and Data Analytics company. TEG includes Ticketek, TEG Live, TEG Dainty, TEG Analytics, TEG Rewards, Softix, Qudos Bank Arena, Eventopia, Life Like Touring, The Entertainment Store, The Brickman Experience and TEG Asia.
Further information
Kyle Patterson
Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs
TEG
E: kylep@t-e-g.com.au
M: 0412 193 148
O: +61 2 9266 4073
Patrick Barrett
Founder & CEO
ECAL
E: patrick@ecal.com
M: +61 (0)411 650 445
O: +61 (03) 9956 5000
Leading calendar communications platform, ECAL, has released results from its annual survey to find out what people rely on most to manage their daily schedule. One thousand (1000) people were surveyed and were randomly presented four options: “Mobile Calendar (Apple, Android etc.)”, “Desktop Calendar (Apple Calendar, Outlook etc.)”, “Paper (Diary, Journal, Planner etc.)”, and “Other (please specify)” with the ability to add a custom response.
The survey targeted both males and females, aged between 18-64 years from all geographical locations across Australia in a representative sample, to hinder any bias.
Overall, 70% rely on a digital calendar most to manage their life, with 46.7% of respondents (470) relying most on their mobile calendar, and 23.3% of respondents (234) relying on a desktop calendar. Paper calendars such as a diary, journal or planner are preferred by 28.3% of respondents (278), whilst other scheduling tools, representing just 1.8% of the response, include “brain”, “none”, “wife”, “head”, and “memory”, to name just a few!
The same survey was delivered in 2016, with very similar results! In 2016, it was found that 48.2% of respondents (489) relied most on their mobile calendar, 21.7% relied on their desktop calendar (221), and 26.9% on a paper version (263).
Reliance on a digital calendar across the various age groups is relatively consistent, ranging from 70% to 75%, with the exception of 55-64 year-olds (62.8%). The age groups with the highest percentage using digital calendars is 35-44 years and 24-34 years, with a median average of 75% and 74% respectively.
In Deloitte’s 2017 Mobile Consumer Survey, it was found that “smartphone penetration continues to rise, but it’s no longer all about the younger generations”. It is interesting to consider, that in both the 2016 and 2018 ECAL surveys, the age groups with the highest reliance on their mobile calendar are 35-44 year-olds followed by 25-34 year-olds.
There are slight differences amongst genders too, with males (73%) relying on digital calendars more than females (67%). Whilst reliance on a mobile calendar is virtually the same across genders, 32.1% of females rely most on a paper diary, compared with just 24.6% of males. Conversely, males (25.2%) rely on their desktop calendar more than females (21.3%).
ECAL’s own user statistics can reveal that the most popular mobile calendars used over the past 12 months are Apple (25.38% of all users), Google (25.11%) and Windows Live (4.52%). The most popular desktop calendar programs in use are Google (15.44% of all users), Apple (7.77%), Outlook (5.15%) and Windows Live (4.76%).
According to Deloitte, “Australia remains one of the leading global adopters of the smartphone and 88% of Australians now own one”. This report also found that ‘calendar management’ is the third most popular activity on a smartphone, reinforcing the growing reliance on mobile technology in effectively managing your life schedule.
Digital v Paper: Age Group
| Age Group | % Relying on Digital Calendar | % Relying on Paper Calendar |
| 18-24 | 72.35% | 24% |
| 25-34 | 74% | 25.9% |
| 35-44 | 75.24% | 24.8% |
| 45-54 | 70.93% | 29% |
| 55-64 | 62.8% | 36% |
Mobile v Desktop v Paper: Gender
| Gender | % Relying on Mobile Calendar | % Relying on Desktop Calendar | % Relying on Paper Calendar |
| Male | 47.7% | 25.2% | 24.6% |
| Female | 45.7% | 21.3% | 32.1% |
Don’t miss a moment of 2018 NRL season with ECAL
Published by Tanisha Stanton | nrl.com | 26th February, 2018
Get the 2018 Telstra Premiership schedule in your calendar now.
The NRL has partnered with ECAL to create an innovative way for fans to stay up to date with the greatest game of all.
You are now able to sync your favourite club’s draw or the entire Telstra Premiership schedule to your preferred digital calendar.
You can also add the NSW Intrust Super Premiership and Queensland Intrust Super Cup draws, plus the State of Origin series dates.
