Indianapolis Colts – Creating the Ultimate Data-Driven Fan Experience

Company Size

501 - 1,000 emp

Industry

Sports Entertainment

Headquarters

Indianapolis, IN

The Indianapolis Colts partnered with Sercante l Trilliad to create an integrated data foundation using their customer data platform and Snowflake, transforming millions of fan data into activated, real-time, targeted sales efforts, intelligent insights, and personalized journeys that treat every fan like an MVP.

The
Challenge

A vision for sophisticated fan engagements that needed a scalable data foundation

The Indianapolis Colts, a National Football League team, are on a mission to deliver unforgettable sports and entertainment experiences to their fans. With a loyal fan base and a top-ranking home stadium attendance average of over 65,000 spectators on game day, the Colts team aims to deliver personalized, high-touch engagements that deliver an MVP experience.

To engage their substantial fan base, the Colts were using several technology systems, such as Ticketmaster, Snowflake, their CRM, and a marketing automation platform. However, the structure needed a cohesive data layer that connected them all, creating silos of millions of fans, causing limited data visibility, manual workarounds, and roadblocks to the goals their marketing and sales teams desired to achieve.

Marketing had a vision to power sophisticated nurture journeys that were personalized based on persona, guiding fans through the process from ticket purchase to game day, that also accounted for complex ticket ownership scenarios such as resale and gifted tickets. However, the data needed to power this was not automatically flowing into their marketing automation system.
Marketing needed to coordinate with a data engineer for manual data reconciliation, making it difficult to power real-time, tailored communications.
Meanwhile, the sales team needed access to instant fan insights to effectively prioritize efforts, as they attempted outreach up to twelve times per fan.
Leadership also desired greater insight into ticket purchase history to gain a singular view of their fans for smarter decision-making.

The Colts needed a scalable solution that would unlock the flow of data across their systems, so that they could activate it to deliver personalized engagements across the fan experience, effectively optimize sales efforts, and gain access to intelligent insights.

The Partnership

Teaming up with an expert partner to unlock new levels of data connectivity

Seeking a way to integrate their system data and accomplish their vision, the Colts team met with their CRM account team and was introduced to Sercante l Trilliad. The Colts shared their goals and how they desired to engage their fans. They decided to move forward as they felt Sercante l Trilliad understood their business requirements and had the data architecture and design expertise to effectively partner to enhance their marketing and sales operations with structured data connectivity and power their goal for advanced, personalized fan experiences.

Client feedback

With Agentforce and Sercante, we were able to stand up an AI-powered support experience that truly reflects the innovation our customers love from the Scosche brand. It was surprisingly easy to implement compared to our previous web chat setup, and the real-time order tracking functionality has been a game-changer, pulling exactly what customers need. We’re now delivering faster, smarter support, and our team is free to focus on more complex inquiries where it matters most.

Michael Amaladhas

Scosche Industries

The
Solution

Prioritized data strategy and design that puts the fans first

Sercante l Trilliad embedded themself directly into the Colts’ operations, as a part of their team, to serve as a dedicated strategic advocate. The duo collaborated to implement a fan-first strategy that blueprinted the entire journey from the initial ticket purchase to the stadium experience and beyond.

The focus was on identifying nuanced ticket ownership scenarios, such as primary buyers, resales, and gifted tickets, to ensure that every communication is tailored to the recipient’s specific role in the game day experience.
After gaining a deep understanding of the fan’s journey, Sercante l Trilliad provided their strategic expertise to identify high-impact use cases and develop a prioritized integration plan that applied data governance best practices and ensured consumption of their customer data platform would be optimized, guiding the Colts team with a clear path forward for scalable success.
Grounded in this fan-centric approach, the solution designed would connect data across ticket purchasing, marketing engagement, and sales outreach to deliver customized experiences and create a singular fan view.

Building a connected data foundation to power personalized engagements and intelligent insights

The team configured and optimized Snowflake for zero-copy integration with Ticketmaster and a customer data platform (CDP) to maximize data processing consumption.
Sercante l Trilliad used the CDP to harmonize the fan data, resolve identities, create segments, and calculate insights.
The data was activated in the marketing automation platform for automated entry into the relevant nurture journeys based on fan segment membership to fuel their vision of persona-based messaging, without the need for manual data reconciliation.
The data connection continued into the CRM, where the sales team could easily gain access to real-time insights and gather meaningful context to maximize engagements.

The Result

Unlocking a seamless fan experience and transforming operations with a scalable, integrated data layer

As a result of establishing a connected data layer across the fan’s journey, Colts fans are now seamlessly guided from their ticket purchase to game day and beyond, through sophisticated communications that even account for the times when they can’t make it to a game and need to sell their tickets or when they gift tickets to a fellow fan.

In addition, the Colts’ sales and marketing teams have fundamentally transformed their operations and fan engagement capabilities:

Real-time visibility for smarter engagements: The team can now instantly gain access to data across millions of fans to power connected engagements across marketing and sales.
Streamlined Operations: With automated data connectivity, the solution eliminated the need for manual workarounds such as data reconciliation for smooth scalability.
Sales Optimization: As sellers tap into real-time fan engagement data, they can prioritize outreach to engage the right fan at the right time for more effective results.
Rich Insights: Meanwhile, leadership can now access intelligent insights, including Lifetime Ticket Value, with a singular fan view to track exactly how much a customer has spent over their lifetime with the franchise to inform smarter business decision-making.

The Indianapolis Colts’ partnership with Sercante l Trilliad created a scalable data foundation that enables their team to power smarter and more personalized fan experiences now and for the future to continue to build lasting loyalty that creates fans for life.