Full House at National Sports Forum:

Ron Contorno and Dave Frey will be attending the National Sports Forum (http://www.sports-forum.com) January 26-28 in Phoenix/Glendale, Arizona. Ron will also be a panelist in a breakout session entitled "Selling in a Down Economy". This year's conference will be Ron's 9th beginning with Cleveland in January 2001. This will be Dave's first trip to the forum. They look forward to connecting with current and future clients as well as industry friends. Being from Chicago and Denver, a little warmth in January is always welcomed.

Kids Birthday Party Post Cards:

Full House is excited to have their first two full-service direct mail clients on board, The New York Islanders and Washington Capitals. In November, they targeted households that have a son with a December birthday. Full House used a specific radius from each of the arenas, minimum household income and an age range of 4-14 for the boy (turning 5-15). They then worked with each team to take a game action photo and make it personalized to each household. This was achieved by variably printing each post card with the child's surname on the back of one of the player's jerseys. On the flip side of the card was a cake with the child's last name in a frosting font along with contact details for booking the birthday party. Click here to see the Islanders piece. The Islanders and Capitals mailed 2,500 and 2,100 custom post cards. In early December, Full House did the same campaign targeting households that have a boy with a January Birthday.

"Kids birthday parties are excellent grass roots opportunities for sports teams and we've been providing birthday mailing lists for a number of years," says Ron Contorno, President of Full House. "We wanted to get more involved and take most of the busywork out of the team's hands, so we assembled partners that do great printing work and also handle project management. This way the team knows the postcards are hitting the market before the parent is making a decision on where to host the birthday party. The variable printing techniques make the post card a true 1-to-1 experience between the team and their prospects."

How to Capture the Anonymous Fan at Your Events:

Full House estimates that a team, venue or promoter only knows about 35% of their audience. Who is using the season tickets tonight? Who are their guests? Who bought the tickets off Craigslist, StubHub, etc.? We know the group leader but what about the other 50 members of the outing? Who is in the ABC Company suite today? All of these unknowns lead to a very high percentage of crowd mystery.

Full House is busy developing tools that help their clients capture information on unknown fans. Being able to identify and market to persons that have experienced your product is key to ticket sales growth. The best prospects for full and partial season tickets, group sales and premium seating are sitting in your venue right now.

One of the main culprits is people that walk up to your box office and purchase tickets with a credit card. You already have the person's name. Have your box office ask for and record their zip code. Customers are already conditioned to providing their home zip code to big box retailers as well as entering it at the gas pump. If you provide Full House with a list of names and zip codes, they have the ability to find that person over 70% of the time and deliver their full mailing address along with demographics (age, income, gender, etc.). Now you have a mailing list of known ticket buyers to market tickets and merchandise.