Paciolan taps Oracle Cloud to help college sports programs reconnect with fans

Paciolan’s white-label ticketing platform and related marketing, fundraising, and analytics services power the sale of about 120 million tickets a year to sporting events for over 150 US college programs, as well as events for more than 100 pro sports organizations and 75 performing arts venues. Paciolan acts as an agency for its clients, providing them with not only technology, but also data-based insights, services, and subject matter expertise.

Two major recent additions to that tech toolbox are Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation and Oracle Infinity Behavioral Intelligence, cloud applications Paciolan is deploying with its college sports clients to help them improve their connections with fans, especially important as people head back to stadiums and arenas amid the ups and downs of COVID-19. Clients can now customize their communications with fans based on a variety of first-party data, including fans’ purchase histories, preferences, location, and status with each client organization. They can also enrich that picture using third-party data collected by Paciolan on household income, home ownership, and other factors.

For example, say you’re a fan of Mississippi State University’s men’s basketball team, a Paciolan client, and you’ve agreed to receive information from the program by way of filling out an Oracle Eloqua form. That data helps the program understand your interests in order to give you targeted offers and information, from an initial email offer to buy tickets through post-event satisfaction surveys and at every key point in between.

The integrated Oracle Eloqua-Infinity platform, part of the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience suite, has richer functionality than Paciolan’s previous marketing automation solution. It also makes it much easier for Paciolan’s college sports clients to set up multichannel campaigns, and its drag-and-drop interface is easier to use.

That simplicity is vital for colleges and universities facing shortages of marketing, IT, and other key personnel, Paciolan CMO Craig Ricks says.

A sports program’s fan engagement campaign usually starts with your receiving a personalized email, based on your recent purchase history and other data, pointing you to the team’s event schedule or commerce page on its website or mobile app. Maybe you then peruse those pages but for one reason or another don’t buy a ticket.

Using Paciolan’s deployment of Oracle Infinity and its first-party tagging, the college sports program can get analytics on your browsing behavior: How long were you on its ticketing page, and where did you come from? Which games were you keying on? Which if any tickets did you move to the shopping cart but then abandoned?

By integrating Infinity with Oracle Eloqua’s marketing automation and Paciolan’s other ecommerce and data tools, the program can then automatically send you a personalized email offer, based on your recent behavior on its site or app, while that activity is still fresh in your mind.

Should you then buy a ticket, delivered electronically to your mobile phone, the Paciolan-powered, Oracle-augmented engagement doesn’t end there. Days before each game you’ll receive a “know before you go” email informing or reminding you of the latest venue-entry requirements (such as proof of vaccination or a clear bag for articles you’re carrying), and closer to the event an email or two alerting you to the best traffic routes and stadium parking areas given current conditions. Once you enter the arena or stadium, having scanned your mobile ticket and downloaded it to your mobile wallet, the venue welcomes you, triggering an email offer for discount food, beverages, and merchandise, as well as updates on tickets still available for upcoming games.

And because Paciolan’s technology and services are also integrated with the fundraising efforts of many of its college sports clients, your entry into the venue might trigger an email to an on-site university development officer alerting her that the patron in Gate C, Seat 45D is a loyal school supporter, prompting the officer to approach you for a friendly conversation with a hat, T-shirt, or other tchotchke in hand. Such communications continue post-event, in the form of a satisfaction survey.

As of February 2022, Paciolan was about halfway through its 12-month rollout of the integrated Oracle Eloqua-Infinity instances, having deployed them with 58 of 120 clients. It was still too early to quantify hard results from those early implementations, but “all of our clients that have made the transition are delighted by the intuitive power of the platform,” says Kyle Murphy, Paciolan director of marketing automation and CRM.