The Premier League played host to ECAL Founder & CEO, Patrick Barrett and Client Services Director, Cassandra Calleja at the Emirates Stadium on Monday night (25th Sept 2017), for the match between Arsenal and West Bromwich Albion.

It was also a case of ‘Football Meets Football’ (big time!), with Barrett taking the opportunity to introduce the touring NFL team New Orleans Saints to Arsenal, for a media opportunity like no other.

In town for their weekend clash against the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium, 10 Saints stars led by Drew Brees, Mark Ingram and Cam Jordan, were treated to a night out they’ll never forget, thanks to Arsenal and ECAL.

With not even a day’s notice, the New Orleans Saints players were scheduled in for a pre-match pitch walk, media interviews, photo opportunities, shirt presentation and exclusive seating.

The two leading ‘football’ organisations worked together to create huge media value, with the story picked up by major media publishers across the US and UK, including ESPN, Fox, NBC Sports, Yahoo!, The Sun, The Guardian, The Mirror, Daily Mail and others.

For the Saints, this was the perfect promotional lead-in to their upcoming game on the weekend. For Arsenal, well, if there are any Saints or NFL fans that don’t yet have a Premier League team, they may have one now!

The Arsenal social media team produced a video from the footage and released this via Facebook  (541k views), with cross-posting provided to the Saints. A longer video feature was also quickly produced for Arsenal TV, and aired across their affiliates globally.

There was also some amazing ‘user generated content’ by the players themselves. The first goal by Alexandre Lacazette was sensationally captured by Drew Brees on his mobile and posted to Instagram. It’s an awesome moment, and has had more than 60k views. There’s also some cool content from Mark Ingram and the Saints.

ECAL Founder & CEO, Patrick Barrett said “I think this is a great example of how our company is unlike any regular technology vendor. As a team, we pride ourselves in going above and beyond for the success of our partner clients, and I think when you engage in at this level, sometimes, magic happens. Kudos to the unbelievable professionalism of Arsenal. What they were able to achieve as an organisational team, on the day of a game, was pretty damn impressive.”

For the record, Arsenal defeated West Brom 2-0 with Alexandre Lacazette scoring a brace. Arsenal currently sit seventh on the Premier League table.

You can follow your Premier League team throughout the 17/18 season directly from your personal calendar via the official Premier League ‘Add to Calendar’ service, proudly powered by ECAL.

For Arsenal fans, visit Arsenal’s dedicated ECAL digital calendar service for even more great content including First Team Fixtures, Ladies Fixtures, Academy Fixture and Ticket On-sale Dates.

The Australian Ballet has launched its 2018 season calendar with some exciting new features – powered by ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing platform.

Launched in April 2017, ECAL’s ‘Add to Calendar’ live and dynamic enterprise technology has been successful in enabling Australian Ballet to better service season ticket holders, acquire new customers and drive ticket sales for the culturally curious.

The 2018 season calendar launch will engage ballet enthusiasts like never before.

• For existing ECAL users, the 2018 Season dates will automatically sync into their calendar
• For ticket buyers, they can now easily add all the performances they’ve just purchased straight to calendar with a click.

Ballet enthusiasts will never miss a moment, thanks to ECAL and the amazing team at Australian Ballet.

Melbourne United fans, get excited! The club has released its schedule for the 2017/18 season, powered by ECAL.

ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ feature provides United fans with the world’s best dynamic digital calendar service, so they can sync every match straight to their personal calendar program on mobile or desktop.

Basketball lovers will never miss a moment with match details updated dynamically throughout the season, with direct access to Ticketing, Latest News, Online Shop, Social Engagement and Broadcast information.

Melbourne United’s promotional campaign engaged fans across social platforms Twitter and Facebook, EDM, feature news story, home page ad display and ‘Sync to Calendar’ button on the Fixtures & Results page.

Follow Melbourne United throughout the 17/18 Season and join thousands of basketball fans who rely on ECAL to stay up-to-date and connected to their favorite team via the calendar!

Melbourne United kick starts its Championship quest with three away games and a trip to the US to play OKC, getting fans ready to roar the house down with our home game opener against The Breakers on Sunday 22 October.

Basketball is back, so don’t miss a moment and sync the fixture to your calendar now.

Pacers, Raptors and Wizards fans, get excited!  The NBA has released its schedule for the 2017/18 season.

Basketball fans can easily sync the complete schedule of the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors and new ECAL client the Washington Wizards, straight to their calendar of choice.

Basketball lovers will never miss a moment with match details updated dynamically throughout the season, with direct access to Ticketing, Latest News, Online Shop, Social Engagement and Broadcast information.

Big conference matchups, featuring stars in new places, dominate the first two nights of the world’s premier men’s professional basketball league.

The Wizards host the Philadelphia 76ers, with Australian No.1 draft pick Ben Simmons in action. The Pacers kick off the season at home to the Brooklyn Nets whilst the Chicago Bulls travel to Toronto to face the Raptors.

Follow the Pacers, Raptors or Wizards throughout the 17/18 Season and join thousands of NBA fans who rely on ECAL to stay up-to-date and connected to their favorite team via the calendar!

Fox Sports, the leader is sports broadcasting in Australia has launched it’s new ‘Add to Calendar’ feature, powered by ECAL. This is just one of a suite of feature upgrades as part of its new Score Centre, which provides fans with live scores, real-time results, latest updates and commentary on current events across all major sports.

ECAL’s ‘Add to Calendar’ feature provides fans with the world’s best dynamic digital calendar service, so they can sync the schedules of their favourite team(s), straight to their personal calendar program on mobile or desktop.

The feature is dynamic and keeps fans up-to-date, always. It drives tune-in with handy alerts, broadcast details and ‘direct links’ to live in-game information, including stats, video and fantasy sports scores, to enhance the live in-game experience.

AFL, NRL and Cricket fans can follow their team(s) fortunes throughout 17/18, with more major sports leagues rolling out soon!

English Football side Aston Villa has launched a clever pre-launch campaign, ahead of the 2017/18 Fixture release.

The ‘Get Prepared’ campaign promises fans first access to the fixtures as soon as it is released. By connecting their calendar ahead of time using ECAL, fans will be the first to receive the new season Villa fixtures straight to their personal calendar of choice.

There is standout creative used consistently across a variety of digital channels, including website, with dedicated splash page, feature article, facebook and twitter mastheads and feature social posts.

Fans calendars will be kept up-to-date with the latest game details, media information and direct access to Buy Tickets, Match Centre, Online Shop and more throughout the season.

ECAL is proud to be the official calendar provider of the Premier League and teams including Aston Villa.

Recognised as one of the world’s major international ballet companies, The Australian Ballet has launched its calendar-based community engagement, ticket sales and communications feature, powered by ECAL.

Launched in April 2017, ECAL’s ‘Add to Calendar’ enterprise technology is a key strategic initiative in the continued development of The Australian Ballet’s digital platform.

As well as being a wonderful service for season ticket holders, the feature also aims to better inform the more casual ballet enthusiasts, in order to drive stronger retail sales conversion.

The ‘Add to Calendar’ feature is found in multiple locations across australianballet.com.au. In the ‘event discovery’ phase, users can sync the entire ballet season in their favourite city directly from the master ‘Calendar’ page. At the production level, you can choose to sync your favourite productions, across your preferred cities.

In the ‘post purchase’ phase, users can also easily sync the events that they have bought tickets for, straight to calendar.

The ECAL feature is live and dynamic, and keeps users up-to-date with production details, with handy reminders and links to drive sales and engagement, including a direct link to ‘Buy Tickets’, all from their personal calendar on mobile or desktop.

ECAL’s enterprise ‘Add to Calendar’ solution enables The Australian Ballet to:

• Better service season ticket holders
• Acquire new customers
• Drive casual retail ticket sales
• Improve online engagement
• Promote interest in other ballet products and features, like Ballet TV

ECAL has extended the release of its cool new ticket alerts feature for the NBA. NBA fans who sign up to Ticketmaster alerts can select to receive their favourite NBA team ticket alerts for ‘all games’, or ‘just home games’.

NBA fans who sync the ticket alerts to their calendar receive timely ticket sale reminders, with direct links to ‘Buy Tickets’, ‘Resale Tickets’ and more.

NBA fans will never miss out on a chance to purchase a ticket again!

Who doesn’t love emojis!

These tiny, colourful collection of icons and feelings can make your events stand out in the calendar.

You can incorporate emojis into your ECAL events

For MAC

1. Position the cursor in the field in which you’d like to insert the emoji (e.g. Match / Game Name)
2. Press the Command, Control Keys and Space Bar to launch the characters palette
3. Click on the Emoji icon in the palette you’d like to include.

If you use Windows 8 or Windows 10, please follow the steps below.

1. Activate the Touch Keyboard by clicking the keyboard icon in the lower-right corner of the taskbar.
2. Click on the smiley face on the on-screen keyboard: the emoji keyboard will replace the regular alphabetical keyboard.
3. Scroll through all the emojis using the left and right arrows on the left side of the keyboard, or clicking on the category buttons at the bottom of the keyboard. When you spot the right emoji, click on it and it will appear in your text field.

Published by Laurie Sullivan; MediaPost, 1st September 2016.

Organizers for COPA, the South American international men’s soccer tournament, wanted to catch the attention of soccer fans in the U.S., where the games were being held for the first time in the tourney’s 100-year history.

The global fan base also needed help tracking 32 matches across 10 cities with 16 teams, from June 3 through 26.

So COPA’s organizers used ECAL’s technology, which creates calendar-based digital marketing campaigns.

There are other calendar widgets, admits Patrick Barrett, CEO at ECAL, but he says his company provides data, targeting and tracking. “The calendar notification can completely bypass the email box,” he said.

The goal for COPA meant creating awareness and anticipation for the U.S. audience ahead of the Tournament Draw. It also was aimed at building a connected calendar audience of passionate fans, driving early and advanced ticket sales, and collecting profiled data for new fan acquisitions and conversations began in February 2016.

The campaigns required fans to opt in through a sync-to-calendar button on the brand’s Web site. The technology integrated across Facebook, Web sites, calendars, even email.

The consumer chose the tournament schedule, and the technology populated the fan’s personal calendar, alerting them when a Tournament Draw became available.

A tracking URL in each link followed the consumer through the purchase. ECAL knows how much consumers spent, when they made the purchase, and in which category it was purchased.

Before the tournament was announced, there were more than 53,000 calendar subscribers.

The campaign drove total registration of 91,470 consumers; opt-in rate of 73%; active users of 59,456; and an active user rate of 65%.

Overall, the campaign drove 17,201 click-throughs, at a 0.68% click-through rate.

The emerging channel drove $90,042.36 in sales, with an average order value of $441.38. COPA earned fan preferences in event times, ticket purchasing, merchandise, TV vs live attendance, interaction, opt-ins and more at an average CPM of $20 and cost per click of $5.

View the article here