Ep. 241- NHL! Nashville Predators DIRECTOR of Consumer Strategy: Lindsay Rutledge: Email Segmentation, Animated GIFs, and more!

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:39we are back for do this not that presented by marigold and we have an awesome guest here today who's here we have lindsey rutledge now lindsey is the director of consumer strategy and communication for the nashville predators come on that's cool all right now unless you're living under a rock you know that the nashville predators are one of the most fun teams in the national Hockey League. They are known for like their crazy fan base. They're known for Smashville. They're known for all of it. And beyond that, Lindsay has had this really incredible career in the world of sports and marketing, working in the NHL, the NCAA and the NFL.

1:18She really has some amazing experience. Today, we're gonna be digging into email marketing and segmentation, all things. Lindsay, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, this is going to be fun. So before we get into all things segmentation and email and all that stuff, how did you wind up in doing this NHL National Hockey League stuff? How did this all happen? Yeah, it's been a wild ride. It really started in college. I worked in the athletic department at Baylor for a couple years. That led to an internship at TCU, which then led to an internship with the Tennessee Titans here in Nashville.

1:55So I moved here about 21 years ago, didn't know anybody and spent a season with them in 2003. But spent the better part of about three years in athletics at Vanderbilt and then started with the Preds in July of 2009. Kind of started out in the PR space and that kind of has evolved into some stints in business strategy at the Preds, which incidentally is where our email marketing lived for a number of years. Um, and it just kind of, you know, over the course of several years, kind of snowballed into what I do today, which is oversee our email marketing communications. That's, that's super interesting that lived in one department.

2:34Now it lives in kind of its own universe. And I think for a lot of people here, they may not work in a major sports, uh, brand, but they do where, uh, this thing where they have multiple brands or multiple products they're trying to promote. And I kind of feel that's where you live as well, because you have the Nashville Predators, massive brand. But then you also have the Bridgestone Arena, the Ford Ice Centers, all this stuff. Can you talk a little bit about what you're actually responsible for marketing beyond just like the hockey game tickets? Sure, absolutely. We wear a lot of hats here at Bridgestone Arena.

3:12You know, my primary responsibility is marketing the hockey team. But we also have a team that markets all of our non-hockey events and family shows, concerts here at the arena. So there's a lot of cross collaboration with them and as well as our Ford Ice Centers, like you mentioned. Those are our community ice rinks. We also have a foundation that sends out communications as well. Kids club, corporate partnerships and premium seats. So we have an enterprise solution with Emma by Marigold. And, you know, we have probably 12 to 15 people that build and send emails regularly. Wow. So you've got people all in there setting stuff up.

3:51So how do you, I'm just curious, how do you handle that? Like is, is how do you, who decides what gets to be sent when for what brand? How do you not just keep sending to the same person? So they're getting 12 messages in one day. I feel like that might be hard to manage. Yeah, we keep a pretty extensive marketing calendar so that we kind of know So organizationally, what needs to be promoted? If there's hockey games that need help with ticket sales or concerts that need help with ticket sales or pertinent information, you know, a no before you go before a game or a concert, if there's a foundation drive going on.

4:28So we do a lot of collaboration interdepartmentally to help one another and help each other's departments and support each other. But that involves a pretty extensive marketing calendar. And it requires that we get eyeballs on all of our email proofs before we send them out. And making sure, like you said, that we're not sending the same email to different people from different sub accounts. And so we do a lot of audience segmentation depending on what we're promoting. If we're promoting a family pack, that email will likely go to people who've purchased a family pack in the past. Same with a value pack or a mini plan or somebody who bought a ticket to see Keith Urban might be interested in buying a ticket to see Luke Combs.

5:15So we do a lot of organizing our audiences on the Predator side by single game ticket sales, package sales, season ticket sales. And then similarly on the arena side, we segment by genre. What kind of tickets have they purchased in the past? And so they'll be targeted moving forward for other shows that we announce that maybe fall into a similar genre. So I think that's super interesting because for a lot of people, when they hear the word segmentation, they're looking at it at a very basic level, like, oh, this person is this age, they have this income, they live in this geography, and that is how they're doing segmentation.

5:52But it sounds like your segmentation is really based more on previous activity or almost some kind of a hand raiser where they're letting you know what they're actually interested in. Is that how you view segmentation internally? Yeah. And, you know, we've been, I think, pretty sophisticated segmenters from early on. And it kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier and that our email marketing lived in our business strategy department from the very beginning. And that's largely because the business strategy department were the people that could pull particular audience groups out of our ticketing software.

6:30So they could go into that ticketing software and say, hey, OK, these are the people that have purchased X, Y or Z. And so we were able to almost pre-segment before we even uploaded audience lists into Emma. So as we got more comfortable with the Emma software, we realized we can do a lot of that segmenting within the platform as well. So we kind of almost have two layers of it. And, you know, sometimes it is geographical. We do have a set number of games where we restrict the purchase of hockey tickets to people who live in our television viewing market. We call these gold games because we want the games to have, you know, a home crowd feel.

7:12So, you know, we're one of the few teams that implement that strategy and it works really well for us. So there are some times where we do, you know, kind of segment based on geography. But like you said, it's largely, you know, past behaviors. All right. Now I'm super curious about something because I've always wondered this about a major sports team. so you have a game and you guys win some in some sort of dramatic fashion okay do you then just do you see like a greater increase of people buying tickets immediately following that because something cool just happened or does the outcome of a particular i get it if you go to the stanley cop or whatever but the outcome of a particular game does that have any impact on like your marketing efforts what you're doing or sales you know it doesn't have you know an impact dramatically, we maybe will shift and pivot a little bit and kind of, you know, maybe send a follow-up email.

8:06We send a follow-up email to everybody that attended the most previous game with a survey about their experience and, you know, some ticket offers for upcoming games. We tend to see the heavier traffic come to our other digital assets, our social media platforms and our website. But, you know, winning absolutely has an impact on your ticket sales. I'm sure. I'm sure. And so when we get just one more thing about segmentation. So let's say I'm net new to your database because I did go to that concert, right? I went to that Luke Holmes concert and I'm net new. Is it – do you not send them a predator solicitation about, hey, you should also come to our hockey games because they're really kind of apples and oranges?

8:50Or you're like, hey, this person had a good experience. They're in our database. Like how do you cross those streams? Sure. Actually, a really good example is something we're doing right now. We're doing a Music City Hockey bobblehead series. And these bobbleheads are of famous country music artists that are Preds fans. Our first one is Tim McGraw. That's actually on Saturday. And so we will take a ticket offer for that game and we'll drop it into a Bridgestone Arena presale offer for, you know, whatever shows coming up next. So we and then we'll target additionally in a later communication to pass Tim McGraw buyers or, you know, pass country genre buyers and say, hey, you might be interested in this bobblehead night we have with Tim McGraw.

9:36The first 10 ,000 fans get a bobblehead. So, you know, we're really afforded a luxury being able to cross promote that way. That is cool. I would fall for that. I mean, I'd be very into that. So I like how creative you all are. And I've seen in your emails, they're not just this is just boring emails. You got a lot of stuff dancing around. You use a lot of, you know, animated GIFs and stuff. Is that intentional? Do you sit there and say we want our emails to be like really action oriented? Yeah, we, you know, people get so many emails every day and you have to make yourself stand out. You know, we're fighting for our lives out here, so to speak.

10:16And so you do have to do something that's going to catch people's attention. That can be a clever subject line just to get them to open it. And then when they open it, they've got an animated email header that we use with kind of a kind of an indication of what the topic is, whether it's on sale now. You're invited. thank you for coming, you know, that kind of messaging. And we've been doing that for a number of years. And it was an idea that I kind of borrowed from an email communication that I had been sent by Dick's Sporting Goods. And so I, you know, thought this is really cool. And luckily, our graphic design team had somebody that was able to kind of create these things for us.

10:54And we kind of keep evolving, you know, as we go. And now we're using, like you said, animations within the body of the email, whether that, for example, going back to the Tim McGraw bobblehead night, the animated image that we used had the head bobbling, which was really cute. And you know, it's, it's a little bit different. It's not, you know, it's not, we're not reinventing the wheel here, but we're just kind of doing some things. We're using some animated buttons that that team, that our graphic design team created for us. And we're going to kind of play around with using some animated stickers.

11:27So, you know, the fact that Emma has the capabilities to allow us to be creative in that way is awesome. Well, I think it's fantastic. Less than 5 % of all emails actually use animated GIFs in any way. And to your credit, it's such a great way to stand out. And I love the fact that you're doing it in the header portion, the top portion of your emails, because a lot of people actually do use animated GIFs, use it when somebody has to scroll down. So being intentional about it being up top is, I think, super smart. And look, you're in Nashville, You're competing against one of the most fun cities on the planet.

12:03So you have to stand out. So I'm curious in terms of your sending cadence and volume, I feel like you kind of have to send out a lot. And do you have a particular time of day? I mean, how do you look at the timing of things? Sure. That's a great question. You know, we we tend to steer towards from a timing standpoint where we see the most success with with open rates and click through rates. We tend to see that typically kind of a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But because we do send out a large number of emails each week, you know, Mondays and Fridays are good. You know, we don't send a lot of emails over the weekend unless we have a big event coming up or something that we really need to promote, you know, with some gusto.

12:48So, you know, the cadence is typically mid-morning, middle of the week when we can. We do find that mid-morning emails tend to perform a little bit better than, you know, maybe lunchtime or afternoon emails. But, you know, part of working in sports is that circumstances change fast and frequently and you have to be able to pivot and, you know, knock out an email really quickly, whether that's in the evening or on a holiday. So that's just the nature of sports. And so you do have to be flexible. But, you know, from a cadence standpoint, it goes back to having a marketing calendar and being organized about what you're sending and when.

13:26So just one thing about that marketing calendar I'm curious about, because, you know, you sound like you started out in the PR side of things or all that. And especially for sports teams, social is such a big component of what's going on. You're putting out so much on social. Is there like an overarching calendar for all of marketing? Like, are you trying to piggyback, okay, social is going heavy with this. We're going to use similar creative for this. Or is it you're all kind of siloed doing your own things? No, we're definitely not siloed. Everybody, including our sponsorship teams, our foundation teams, they all have access to the marketing calendar and they can contribute to that calendar.

14:05So we work obviously very, very closely with our social and digital teams. And that includes our PR teams. If there's player movement or, you know, something to that effect that is, again, something that comes down the pike very quickly, social has to be able to pivot. And so there's a really open line of communication, you know, across departments so that we can all be prepared to promote the same thing. And there's consistency in the messaging. First of all, it sounds like a super cool environment because not only do you have like this cohesive atmosphere, everyone's kind of like working towards the same goals.

14:38but you tell me if I'm wrong, it sounds like there's also this environment where you're allowed to test. You're encouraged to test new things in your creative, in your design, and not everything's going to be a home run or a goal for that matter. Is that the vibe? I mean, how do you have this test-like first environment? Absolutely. And credit to our executive leadership team. They are so open to new ideas and trying new things. And if it works, great. And if it doesn't, you move on and you try something else. And, you know, we're really, really lucky that our leadership team is supportive of that kind of mind frame.

15:15It's allowed us to do some really cool things. And, you know, like you said, we don't we don't succeed at everything. Sometimes things just don't work or the timings off. But, you know, we're really lucky in that sense that organizationally, we have some really creative people that work here. And, you know, we're not afraid to try things. And, you know, if you have an idea, you run with it. And, you know, it's really nice to feel supported in that way. I love that. All right. Before we wrap up, I need to know something about the catfish situation. First of all, when are people allowed to throw a catfish onto the ice?

15:51Well, technically never, but it does happen. And it is a tradition here in Smashville. You know, it kind of leans into the octopus that they throw on the ice in Detroit. and we thought we have a little bit of a southern flair we can throw on this. And so we do, from time to time, get a catfish thrown on the ice, and it's certainly not encouraged, but the fans seem to love it, and it's kind of become a secondary mascot for us, so to speak. We have a catfish tank, in fact, in our customer service area. So the fans really love it, and we love it as a staff too. So wait a minute. Does somebody like show up, a fan shows up and they have a catfish like down their hoodie or something?

16:34And they're sitting there waiting with a piece of fish like in their hoodie. Is that basically what's going on? Yeah, that's yes. You nailed it. And usually we ask if if somebody is going to do that, we ask that they do gut the fish before they throw it on the ice to make the cleanup a little bit easier because it does stop the clock and it kind of disrupts the game flow. But, you know, it's a fun tradition that, you know, I don't even really know when it started. But, you know, it's certainly something that we embrace. Does the team from the marking team, are they responsible for going out and picking the catfish up off the ice?

17:09Is that part of the role that you all have? No. Luckily, we leave that to our ice crew. Oh, okay. The tools to kind of, you know, it's ice. So things that get onto the ice sometimes can freeze pretty quickly. So they've got the tools they need to clean up. I love all these catfish policies and things. It's amazing. I don't have any of that in our HR handbook. Well, you're awesome. And I can't thank you enough for being here. Everybody should follow Lindsay on LinkedIn and everywhere else. Lindsay Rutledge. We're going to put it all in the show notes. Lindsay, what else? How should everybody follow the Preds?

17:45Like, what should we do? Yeah, absolutely. Our social media handles are typically at Preds NHL. You can follow us on Facebook or Instagram, X, most of your major social channels, and especially LinkedIn. And we would be happy to have you and have you out to a game in Smashville. Love it. All right. Lindsay Rutledge, we're going to put her in the show notes, follow her everywhere. Can't thank you enough. And go Pretz. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers.

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