Sports Authority was looking to establish an integrated social media presence to develop customer relationships and provide expertise. They overhauled their social channels and developed a content strategy around sports and promotions. Targeted campaigns on Facebook and Twitter helped grow their audience significantly and test effective strategies. This allowed Sports Authority to engage customers, provide service, share coupons, and track offline store visits, improving their business.

1. Developing Sports Authority’s Social “Playbook” An Affinitive Case Study

2. Overview Sports Authority is one of the largest sporting goods retailers in the United States, operating over 460 stores in 45 states. Faced with a previously disjointed online/offline experience and some customer service sensitivities to overcome, Sports Authority waslooking to establish an integrated social media presence to develop 1-to-1 relationships with their customers while providing product “authority” and customer service in ways they’d never done before.

3. Establishing a “Social Footprint” The first task at hand was evaluating Sports Authority’s existing social marketing initiatives, then overhauling and bringing up to date their key social touchpoints (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). A content and engagement strategy built around holidays, sports seasons and other promotions/traditional campaigns was developed.

5. Daily Twitter Giveaways

6. Seasonal/specific sport-themed sweepstakes

7. “Fan and Win” Facebook sweepstakes

9. “12 Days of SA” Contest Additionally, for the holiday season, a “12 Days of SA” contest was launched that bridged consumers between Facebook and Twitter. Each day, a new prize would be announced on Facebook, and for a chance to win, consumers needed to follow @SportsAuthority on Twitter and retweet the daily contest tweet (using the hashtag #12DaysOfSA).

10. “Like and Win” Facebook Sweepstakes Affinitive developed a Facebook sweepstakes platform that has allowed Sports Authority to run more than a dozen different sweepstakes to date, built around different sports themes (World Cup Soccer, Father’s Day/golf, Lacrosse, etc.). In order to enter the sweepstakes, consumers must first become a “Fan” of (aka “Like”) Sports Authority’s Facebook page, which “unlocks” the sweepstakes entry form. Additionally, Sports Authority benefits from significant opt-ins for future communications and the ability to link promotional consumer data with their internal CRM system.

11. Targeted Facebook Ad Campaigns By creating a series of highly targeted ads (by demographics, schools, interests, etc.) and A/B ad unit testing, Sports Authority was able to quickly grow their audience, and with several campaigns worth of data could then accurately predict future fan acquisition and CPL (cost per “Like”) rates.

13. 100 comments/likes per post

14. Ongoing customer service and post moderation

16. Customer Service 2.0 Customer service issues can be properly routed and escalated, in real-time and in a public way that allows happy customers to share their satisfaction and, in turn, become evangelists.

17. Location, Location, Location! As the mainstream consumer adoption of Location-Based Services (LBS) continues to grow, Sports Authority is developing strategies to deliver geo-targeted promotions and reward their most loyal customers (those who most frequently visit their stores).

19. 10,000,000+ Facebook Impressions

20. 5,000,000+ Twitter Impressions

21. Thousands of consumer database opt-ins

22. Thousands of coupons shared/redeemed (online/in-store)

23. “Social Referrals” key traffic driver to SportsAuthority.com

24. Customer service/call center savings* Through June 2010

25. Thanks! New York (Headquarters): 135 West 26th Street 8th Floor New York, NY 10001 p: (212) 684-9100 California: 612 Howard Street Suite 100 San Francisco, CA 94105 p: (415) 278-9700 www.beaffinitive.com