FIBA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster, expand, and promote the exciting sport of basketball. Like many other sports and media organizations, FIBA uses advertisements on its website, mobile app, and YouTube live streams to generate revenues on its digital and social media channels.
Since FIBA's business is highly seasonal, we are talking to Jonathan Gisiger, Digital Product Manager, during the off-season to learn how the FIBA team increases engagement and brings people back to their product.
Challenge: Winning the 🏀 competition
The sports media landscape is extremely competitive, with both international and local media covering sporting events. To stand out in the area and position itself as the primary source of information about basketball competitions, FIBA's digital team has turned to Pushwoosh.
Solution 1: Delivering scores faster than everyone else
“We use real-time automated push notifications for game-related activities. Basketball is highly competitive, so we want to be as close as possible to real time when sending live scores or game reminders,” admits Gisiger.
The team communicates with the audience as much as possible before and after games. They noticed that when relevant information is delivered fast, it brings more people into the app.
Solution 2: Curated content for a higher open rate
The team uses Pushwoosh segmentation to create segments based on users’ favorite teams or players.
Based on these segments, the team is able to send tailored notifications based on users’ favorite players and teams.
“We’ve noticed that editorial push notifications enable us to deliver a customized experience and lead to higher engagement. At the same time, we’re not bombarding users with irrelevant content and too many notifications,” shares Gisiger.
The team has noticed that notifications with curated content have a higher open rate—up to 9%—compared to non-targeted notifications.
Solution 3: Geo-based real-time notifications
Another Pushwoosh’s feature that allows the team to stand out is geo-based notifications.
During the World Cup last year, the team decided to send exclusive push notifications to journalists about upcoming press conferences or flash interviews. They would choose a location, such as a stadium and its surroundings, and notify the segment of media people that, for example, a press conference would start in 30 minutes.
“This has been very useful for our major events,” says Gisiger.
Results
The team uses Pushwoosh dashboards to better understand their audience and adjust their messaging strategy. Among the key metrics they track, Gisiger highlights DAU, MAU, delivery, and open rates.
“This is a pretty beneficial addition to the Pushwoosh offering because it gives us a high-level overview of our product. We leverage it as the main source of information for our mobile apps.”
As a result of these communication activities, the FIBA team sends 6M real-time push notifications during their event season and maintains a push open rate of up to 6.45% even during the off-season.
