The NBL, Australia and New Zealand’s professional men’s basketball league is keeping fans connected with a suite of new (and old) digital content.

Video editors at League Headquarters have been busy cutting tape, putting together a host of online content to engage fans each week. From Monday to Friday, fans can get their daily fix of basketball classics.

With the help of ECAL, fans can relive the excitement of the 2020 NBL Competition and seasons past with ‘NBL Top 10’ and ‘NBL Rewind’, catch the latest off-season news with ‘NBL Overtime’ and listen to Adam Gibson’s ‘One on One’ podcast, all from the comfort of their couch.

ECAL subscribers receive notifications when the broadcast begins, with ‘Watch Now’ links providing one-click access to watch or listen on their preferred platform.

ECAL’s state-of-the-art digital calendar service delivers the NBL with a tremendous platform to ‘connect’, ‘engage’ and ‘activate’ its audience around the sport they love, during this unfortunate time of lockdown and social distancing.

Choose your NBL team here and keep up-to-date thanks to ECAL.

The Australian Ballet has launched a special ‘At Home with Ballet TV’ digital season to engage ballet lovers, during these unprecedented times of COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing.

With performances cancelled across the country, this internationally acclaimed ballet company will stream its most beloved and inspiring ballet productions to fans at home.

With the help of ECAL, fans can experience the magic of seasons past with cinema-quality recordings of full-length performances, such as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and more, beamed right to the comfort of their couch.

The Australian Ballet launched their new ‘digital season’ across various channels, including web, email, social and via owned and partner networks. With a strong drive to ‘Sync to Calendar’ and “be the first to know” fans were instantly connected, and receive advance warning of the latest performance releases – straight to their digital calendar.

ECAL subscribers receive notifications when new ballets are released on the platform with ‘Stream Now’ links providing one-click access to watch. With each performance available for a limited period of 2 weeks, timely ‘Last Chance to Watch’ events and reminders in calendar ensure fans never miss the opportiunity to view the performance!

On launch, the ‘digital season’ campaign saw a 25% increase in their ECAL subscriber audience alone. In addition, The Australian Ballet were able to leverage it’s large existing connected calendar audience to drive engagement and tune-in.

The Australian Ballet’s Digital Specialist, Maeve Ashby, was thrilled with the ‘digital season’ launch and with the engagement across all platforms, saying “It’s been a fantastic success – smashing our engagement stats out of the water – across email, web, social and calendar!”

The Australian Ballet are building on the initial success of their ‘digital season’ with other interesting video content pieces, and special collaborations designed to recreate a luxe cinematic experience at home – they have collaborated with Piccoliina Gelateria to create a bespoke ‘Sleeping Beauty’ inspired ice-cream flavour available for delivery via Uber Eats, complete with all the trimmings!

You can subscribe to The Australian Ballet’s 2020 Digital Calendar here and don’t forget the gelato!

ECAL event-based clients are on the front foot in keeping fans engaged with event disruptions, and creating new ways to engage.

ECAL’s dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology is a hugely beneficial tool for keeping fans engaged during this period of great uncertainty.

Major sports, ticketing and entertainment clients who have been forced to postpone or cancel their events have quickly updated entries in calendar, with the relevant status changes.

As the situation develops, and decisions are made about further delays or the recommencement of events, ECAL will be a quick and effective tool for publishers to reschedule their events in the daily lives of fans.

Opportunity knocks 
Given the uncertainty, and the rapidly changing situation, publishers are now encouraging fans to connect to their ECAL feature, to be the first to know when updates to their event scheduling is made.

Major conference clients are also recommending ECAL to their clients, to use ECAL ‘Sync to Calendar’ to help take their conferences and exhibitions online. By subscribing to the show agenda, keynote addresses and even your preferred conference ‘tracks’, virtual attendees know exactly when to tune-in, with a direct link to the web stream.

Above: Tottenham Hotspur FC splash page on site entry provides a solution for fans to stay up-to-date with the changing schedule of events.

At ECAL, we’re working closely with major sports around the world, to help manage important communications around event postponements, cancellations and announcements due to Coronavirus Disease.

Given ECAL’s rich and dynamic capabilities, and ease of management, event owners and publishers are able to deliver important announcements, and event status updates to their audience, at the right time with access to the right information.

What’s the best way to manage these event disruptions? We make the following suggestions and recommendations, to help our publishers manage these important communications in the right way.

Postponing events 
If you are postponing events, we recommend updating (not deleting!) the event as follows:

• Edit the event name to insert “(Postponed)” prominently at the beginning of the event name;
• Insert an emoji ⚠️ in the event name, bringing attention to the changed status of the event;
• Update the event details with your official statement regarding the postponement;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add / retain other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Online Store’ and so on.

Cancelling events
If you are cancelling events, we recommend updating (not deleting!) the event as follows:

• Edit the event name to insert “(Cancelled)” prominently at the beginning of the event name;
• Insert an emoji ❗️in the event name, bringing attention to the changed status of the event;
• Update the event details with your official statement regarding the cancellation;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add / retain other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Online Store’ and so on.

Official Announcement as a new event
If you have made the decision to postpone or cancel events, we recommend the following:

• Create a new event in the user calendar, specifically for the “Official Announcement” itself. This is an important event, and your audience needs to know;
• Insert an emoji ⚠️or ❗️in the event name, that mirrors the one you will use for the postponed or cancelled events;
• Add a short term alert, such as 15 mins prior, to bring this event front of screen on the user’s mobile or desktop;
• In the event details, include a brief summary of your official statement;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’ and so on.

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.

ECAL, the world’s leading calendar marketing solution, is proud to announce its partnership with the International Cricket Council (ICC), the governing body of cricket globally.

Cricket lovers throughout the world can now sync their favourite Men’s and Women’s fixtures straight to their personal calendar, so they know what’s on and when, wherever they are. With handy alerts and direct access to the ICC live Match Centre, Tickets, Latest News, Social Media and more, cricket fans will never miss a moment of the action.

For ECAL, this is yet another significant partnership with a major global sport. With an enormous audience, particularly within the Indian subcontinent, this partnership takes the ECAL service to millions of new users.

Big business, across many industries, are a perfect fit for the ECAL’s enterprise solution. With a need for high security, high levels of customisation, preferential API’s and in-depth data analysis, ECAL is the ‘go-to’ solution for enterprise business.

At ECAL, we’re pleased to announce the release of our Ultimate ‘next generation’ widget display, now live and available in your admin!

Designed for even greater customisation, more marketing power and smarter data insights, this widget comes with some pretty cool, game-changing features (note that all existing widgets will be auto upgraded shortly).

Here’s a few of our favourite things!

Category Selector

Filter schedules via categories. Users can browse through Schedules across different categories, via a simple ‘Browse” drop-down list.

Geo-detection

Uncover the location of your users, right down to post / zip code level!

Google & Outlook.com OAuth

Direct API connection to the ‘master’ calendar of users, plus fast, real-time updates and communications.

Returning User Recognition

Our system instantly recognises verified ECAL users (across clients), and their preferred calendar, for a very slick, ‘one-click’ subscription process.

CSS Styling

Override the look and feel of the standard widget options, by uploading custom CSS for a totally unique, on-brand design.

Facebook Pixel ID

Track ECAL conversions from your Facebook ad campaigns.

Social Sharing

Customise the social sharing message that appears for users following subscription, to increase viral spread.

Sports fans are interested in more than just your season schedule. Sure, that is the number one reason why fans will subscribe to your ‘digital calendar’, however you best not stop there!

The average sports client on the ECAL platform promotes around 5-6 ‘schedules’ of content, and that can offer a nice broad selection of content – including various game schedules, broadcast schedules, corporate events, community program events, and events for special interest groups (eg: Women’s networking, cheerleaders or coteries).

Additionally, as fans choose their schedule preferences, they effectively self-profile. This will help you develop a 360-degree view of the customer, and help fuel a more ‘dynamic CRM’ framework. It will ensure any further communications you send to a customer is tailored to meet their specific interests.

Leading sports brands like Tottenham Hotspur FC and Washington Redskins have as much as a dozen schedule choices, with good reason.

By offering a selection of great content, you allow your audience to keep up-to-date with events that specifically interest them – events they likely didn’t know existed in the first place. These top brands are also using content schedules to prompt sales interest, with schedules for ‘Ticket On-Sale Dates’ proving hugely effective.

To demonstrate the point, here below are the schedules offered by an ECAL football client, and the percentage of users who subscribe to each schedule. There are a total of 38,000 subscriptions in total at the time.

As you can see, 29% of users subscribe to ‘Bronze’ category ticket dates, 23% to ‘Member’ ticket dates and 28% to ‘General Public’ ticket dates. Additionally, 20% are interested in ‘Events & Offers’.

Now let’s look at exactly how these ticket on-sale dates stimulate click-throughs and purchase intent straight from the calendar.

You can see distinct ‘click-through’ peaks generated specifically by the ‘Bronze’ and ‘Member’ ticket on-sale entries appearing in the fans’ calendar.

These ticket on-sale date entries let fans know exactly when they can purchase tickets for upcoming games, with instant and direct access to purchase tickets via embedded links. Timely reminders are set beforehand, so the fan has time to consider and prepare to engage, and purchase.

As you can see, fans are interested in so much more than just the games! The calendar is a very powerful channel to stimulate buying intent for tickets, and for other high value sales like season tickets, merchandise / team gear, online video subscriptions, Christmas gift ideas and more.

It is often asked, around our office at least…”if it’s not in my calendar, does it even exist at all?” Indeed we hear the same sentiment from ECAL users time and time again.

So, the benefits of communicating to the calendar seem to make great sense, right? Avoid the inbox chaos, deliver your message to users, at the ‘right time’, in the ‘right place’. Makes total sense.

And we know that the modern consumer is increasingly mobile, they are always connected to the internet, they are forever “busy”…so “busy”, and managing life is hard enough!

So how does the modern consumer keep on top of it all? Exactly to what extent do they rely upon their ‘digital calendar’ to manage “life”. Exactly how many manage life via their personal digital calendar, compared to say, keeping a wall calendar, a diary or journal?

Well, we have the answers!

We surveyed 1,000 people (aged 18-64) in each of the US, UK and Australia. The sample was representative of the population.

The Question: What do you rely upon most to manage your daily schedule?

United States

United Kingdom

Australia

Some further insights reveal that:
* In UK, over 62% of 18-14 year-olds use their mobile calendar
* In Australia, 25-34 (59.5%) and 18-24 (57.7%) year-olds are most likely to use their mobile calendar
* In US, 63% of 55-64 year-olds use a digital calendar (mobile or desktop) rather than paper (37%)
* Women use paper diaries / journals / planners more than men

By Chris Smith, Forbes, June 10, 2016

Next week the Premier League will at long last unveil its 2016-17 league schedule. It’s a much-anticipated occasion, which is perhaps best highlighted by the number of rumored schedule leaks (and the flood of accompanying headlines) that have hit the internet in recent weeks. But what’s truly different this time around is that the English league will be putting a new twist on its schedule reveal: Thanks to a new partnership with ECAL, an interactive calendar marketing platform, fans will now be able to add the fixtures to their calendars with just a few clicks.

“We started to think about the personal calendar space as a new communications channel,” says ECAL founder and CEO Patrick Barrett, “and what we’ve found is it’s an incredibly effective method of communication.”

What does that mean for fans? ECAL’s technology will allow soccer fans to instantly sync the Premier League’s schedule with their personal calendars, no matter whether they use Outlook, Google GOOGL -1.27% or mobile calendars fromApple AAPL -1.06% and Android. In addition to adding game dates to their calendars, fans will also be able to schedule league events, important dates and even buy game tickets. Barrett notes that bypassing the inbox provides “100% delivery,” and the content is totally relevant – “the content choice is in the hands of the consumer.”

Though next week’s schedule reveal will mark the start of ECAL’s league partnership, it won’t be the company’s first step into English soccer. Last season Tottenham Hotspur partnered with the company, and that relationship offers a good idea of what Premier League fans will have in store. Go to the London team’s schedule page and you’ll find the option to sync to your calendar:

Clicking that button offers nine different schedules to add to your calendar, ranging from match days to ticket on-sale dates to even an “On This Day” option. Barrett notes that while game dates are obviously the most subscribed to, those other options are surprisingly popular. Last year ticket on-sale dates were subscribed to by 40% of users, while club events garnered around 30%.