ECAL has partnered with US sports team management software company, AdminSports to help keep parents up-to-date and on-time for their kids’ weekend soccer commitments.

The Boston Area Youth Soccer (BAYS) league has launched ECAL’s dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology for 1,500+ teams across the league, at all levels of competition.

BAYS manage over 14,000 games for its 1,500+ teams, involving 23,000 girls and boys from 71 Massachusetts cities and towns. That’s a lot parents that need to know where to be, and at what time each weekend for soccer!

Coaches, players and parents can sync their specific team schedule straight to any personal calendar program on mobile or desktop, so they never miss a match. Game entries feature handy reminders, dynamic updates, game day information and links directly to stats, standings and even league policies.

This is a wonderful initiative by Admin Sports, in partnership with the team at ECAL to better serve community sports in the Boston area.

ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing solution, is proud to announce its partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Network, that delivers live streaming of high school sports and events across America.

Students, family members and fans can now sync live sports schedules from over 25 different sports across 23,000 High Schools, straight to their personal calendar for free. Fans will know exactly when their favorite sports are available for live stream, so they can tune-in and follow the action live.

For ECAL, this is yet another significant partnership with a major sports and entertainment provider. The NFHS serves 50 member state high school athletic associations, plus the District of Columbia, that reach 23,000 high schools and over 11 million students.

The NFHS Network live stream is a service powered by PlayOn! Sports, America’s leading high school sports media company, and official live stream partner of the NFHS.

The NFHS Network live streaming service is available to fans for as little as $9.95 /month, and ECAL’s technology is designed to provide an amazing service to paying customers, and convert more free subscribers to the paid streaming service.

The 2018/19 Chemist Warehouse WNBL Championship, Australia’s pre-eminent women’s basketball league has released its schedule for the 2018/19 Season, powered by ECAL.

Fans of the eight-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 Tickets, Membership, Online Shop and more, all just a click away

2018/19 is the beginning of a new and exciting era, with Australia’s longest running elite female competition celebrating its 38th year with a brand-new naming rights partner in Chemist Warehouse and broadcast partner in FOX SPORTS Australia.

The season will tip off on October 12 with the Chemist Warehouse Wellness Round, to be spread over both round one and two, a fun and exciting fan orientated activation that will take place across all teams opening home games. Also featured will be several double headers, the Adelaide Lighting and Brydens Sydney Uni Flames to play alongside their NBL counterparts.

FOX SPORTS Australia will again broadcast one live game per round, as well as every finals game.

You can follow your team throughout the 18/19 Season and join thousands of basketball fans who rely on ECAL to stay up-to-date and connected to the WNBL via their personal calendar. Sync your team fixture here.

The NBA has released its 2018/19 regular season schedule for what is sure to be another blockbuster year ahead, and ECAL is proud to play its part!

Fans of leading NBA teams including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers and Toronto Raptors can easily sync team games, broadcast details, ticket alerts and more, straight to their personal calendar. Powered by the world’s leading calendar communications service. With direct access to Tickets, Latest News, League Pass, Video, Team Shop and more, from the convenience of their calendar, fans will never miss moment of the action.

See here a selection of just some of the great launch promotion created by NBA teams using ECAL.

The 73rd NBA season will tip off on Tuesday 16th October 2018, with the 76’ers taking on the Celtics in Boston. The Indiana Pacers and Toronto Raptors are both tipped to contend for the Eastern Conference title, whilst new LA Laker, LeBron James, will return to play Cleveland on 21st November.

Follow the Pacers, Raptors or Cavs now, with the compliments of ECAL.

ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing platform, has extended its enterprise product for the ‘payments’ space, to set about solving serious issues affecting business today.

Right now there is a widening cash flow gap, which is negatively impacting small and large businesses alike, and their ability to make ends meet. In fact, a 2017 study reported that “62 percent of businesses would not survive more than three months if all invoices went unpaid”. Further, “at least half say being paid on time would reduce stress, avoid unnecessary debt and drive business growth”.

To address this issue, ECAL has launched a payment reminders service direct to calendar, designed to help customers better manage their payments, so business is paid on time.

In a recent trial project with National Australia Bank, banking customers received personalised ‘payment reminders’ for their specific credit card account, to see how calendar reminders performed against traditional SMS reminders in helping customers pay on-time.

The limited trial proved that calendar reminders by ECAL were the most effective communications method for customers, with ‘on-time’ payments increasing by 12%. This included a 37% ‘spike’ in payments made when an advanced reminder was served to calendar.

Whilst the report suggests that “reminder apps” will help with this growing problem, ECAL’s ‘calendar reminders’ technology appears to provide a much more sophisticated and effective billing reminder solution, as it is totally personalised to the user, and integrates directly with their native calendar!

The calendar entries include handy alerts (at the right time), specific amount due, and a direct link to ‘Pay Now’, amongst other features to inform and assist customers.

ECAL CEO, Patrick Barrett says “as a team we’re excited to uncover new and valuable use cases for our advanced calendar communications technology. As a business, we’re committed to helping solve real problems, with highly valuable, tangible benefits. With over 70% of adults relying on their digital calendar to manage life, and with the cost of collections and support such a major burden on business, we feel ECAL delivers a better performing and ultimately more cost effective solution for payment-related communications.”

If you would like to know more about ECAL’s billing reminder software, please contact us.

Premier League, the world’s most popular football league, has just released its 2018/2019 Fixture!

With the help of ECAL, the official ‘digital calendar’ service provider for the Premier League, football fans around the world receive a live and dynamic feed of game details, delivered straight to their personal calendar.

Over the last week, the Premier League fixture release campaign has been enormous!

Premier League have created splash pages, website banners, a dedicated email launch and Twitter and Facebook takeovers surrounding ECAL’s calendar syncing the fixture to fans calendars through ECAL’s service.

Our team has also been busy managing and supporting any queries with the calendar service, through online support and social media.

Fans can choose to receive fixtures of their favourite team(s), the complete season fixture, and even the Fantasy Premier League schedule of weekly trade deadlines.

The Premier League Digital Calendar is a truly global service, with displays in 30+ languages, and serves localised TV broadcast information to fans across 200+ countries, so fans never miss a moment of the action.

Match entries also include handy reminders, official game hashtags and direct access to Buy Tickets, Livestream, Match Centre, Online Shop and more.

Three new teams, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Cardiff City and Fulham, enter the Premier League competition for the 2018/19 season.

Follow your team throughout the 18/19 season and join the hundreds of thousands of football fans who rely on ECAL to stay up to date and connected to Premier League via their calendar!

ECAL has partnered with eSports giant Riot Games, to provide the official ‘sync to calendar’ service for the global phenomenon that is the ‘League of Legends’.

Gaming fans can sync their favourite League of Legends teams and tournament schedules straight to their personal digital calendar, so they can tune-in to live games and events from anywhere. Currently, League of Legends Championship series across Europe, North America, Korea, Taiwan, and China are available, with more leagues being added.

League of Legends events dynamically update in the calendar, and include handy alerts, broadcast information, and direct access to watch live, latest video, news and results.

League of Legends is the most played and watched video game in the world, with a reported 100m monthly players. It also has around 11m followers on Twitch, 15m Facebook fans, and over 9m YouTube subscribers. The 2017 World Championship final in China attracted 60 million viewers, up from 43 million in 2016.

Don’t miss a moment of League of Legends in your region. Don’t have a team yet? It’s time to choose, and sync to calendar here!

ECAL congratulates NHL client Washington Capitals on winning the Stanley Cup last week!

The Capitals are champions of The National Hockey League for the first time since their debut in 1974. The Capitals recorded a 4-3 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 of the finals series.

After a 44-year wait, the Washington Capitals will be celebrating a well-deserved win!

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

Mobile v Desktop v Paper: Gender

ECAL has released ‘Personal Events’, an exciting new feature that delivers totally personalised events to the calendar of a user.

Facilitated by ECAL’s enterprise API, Personal Events allows a ‘one-to-one’ connection with the user’s personal calendar, to deliver ‘rich’ and sophisticated information, such as membership renewals, bill payment reminders, travel bookings, itineraries, appointments, and more.

Personal Events have the power to solve some pretty major issues right now.

For banking and payments, there is a widening cash flow gap. ECAL personalised payment reminders can help a user better manage payments, so suppliers are paid on-time. In fact, in a recent project with National Australia Bank (see Case Study), ECAL payment reminders worked to increase ‘on-time’ payments by up to 12% over SMS!

According to Xero it is reported that “62 percent of businesses would not survive more than three months if all invoices went unpaid”. Further, “at least half say being paid on time would reduce stress, avoid unnecessary debt and drive business growth”.

Xero also suggests that “reminder apps” will help with this growing problem. ECAL’s calendar reminders provide an even better solution, as the service integrates directly with the user’s personal calendar!

With ECAL’s ‘Personal Events’ feature, you can also change the status of a calendar entry. So, if a user’s payment schedule should change, or the amount owing change, or a payment has been received, or becomes overdue, these changes will update in the calendar. Pretty cool, hey.

For sport, the arts and other member-based organisations, renewals are a lifeblood. ‘Personal Events’ can reduce ‘churn’ by delivering specific and timely information about an upcoming membership renewal. Perfect for annual memberships, flexi packages or monthly direct debit notices.

Personal Events is limited only by the information you have, and with the support of the ECAL integration team, almost anything is possible.

If you’d like to find out more about ECAL’s ‘Personal Events’ feature, please contact us via email, or use the Live Chat feature on our website.