Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | Cleveland Cavaliers Upping the Loyalty Game
As one of the NBA’s most recognized franchises, the Cleveland Cavaliers are deeply woven into the cultural and civic fabric of their city. Behind the high-octane action on the court is a strategic and increasingly sophisticated approach to fan engagement powered by the Cavaliers Marketing team. Central to the marketing team’s success is the role Jeremy Halek plays as the Senior Director of Consumer Marketing. With a background that blends data science and marketing strategy, Halek has helped the organization reshape how it defines and delivers value to fans, emphasizing emotional connection, personalized engagement, and long-term loyalty.
Few things ignite passion like professional sports. These aren't just games.
Speaker 1:They are shared experiences passed down through generations, whether it's wearing your parents' favorite jersey, sitting in packed stadiums or watching Demaryius Thomas Hall in that unforgettable pass from Tim Tebow, sports create emotional connections that shape identity and loyalty. Placebo sports create emotional connections that shape identity and loyalty, and few cities live and breathe that loyalty like Cleveland. While I didn't grow up rooting for Cleveland teams, I've always respected the city's unwavering devotion. The Browns, the Guardians and the Cavaliers aren't just franchises. They're the heart of the city, woven into its culture. Today we're shining a spotlight on the Cleveland Cavaliers and their fiercely loyal fan base.
Speaker 1:We're joined by Jeremy Halleck. He's the Senior Director of Consumer Marketing at the Cavs. He's going to dive into how the Cavs are driving fan engagement, redefining customer loyalty and fueling Cleveland pride every day. Jeremy, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. How are you Doing great? Doing great. How are you Doing well? Thank you very much. First off, for those who may not know and I'm sure everyone does can you give us a short introduction to the Cleveland Cavaliers organization? You know what's the backstory. When was the team?
Speaker 2:founded? Sure, so the team was founded in 1970, actually so quite a ways ago. So we're part of the National Basketball Association. We are part of Rock Entertainment Group, which is led by majority owner Dan Gilbert of Rocket Companies, and it's really a conglomerate of sports and entertainment properties Cleveland Monsters Cleveland Charge we help manage Rocket Arena events. Cleveland Charge we help manage Rocket Arena events. The team itself really is focused on fan experience, community, cleveland's vibrancy, helping rebuild the downtown metro area. We are located in Rocket Arena, which is in downtown Cleveland.
Speaker 1:Okay, a little bit more about your role in the organization. How did you get that position? What do you focus on in your role, and were there positions that kind of led you up to this role before your senior director of consumer marketing role at the Caps? Yeah, so I?
Speaker 2:have a kind of I'd say intricate journey. I started with the Cavaliers several several years ago, kind of lent into more CRM email database analyst jobs, landed or grew into a manager of database and CRM. I left there for a couple of years, helped implement sports specific software that attaches into CRMs. I came back into more of a data role so I helped build out a data operations team back with the Cavaliers about seven years ago and about two years ago I transitioned over to a smaller, newer role of consumer marketing that helps consumer growth, how we generate leads for different ticketing products, how we market those products, how we define and manage our customer journey on the web and other channels and really just responsible for helping educate those about the products that we try to sell and then ultimately creating the best path and user experience for customers and potential customers.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at kind of the macro, micro environment right now lots of challenges, potentially disruptions, but holistically marketing is something more opportune but also a little more challenging than it was maybe in the past. Lots of disparate technology. How do you look at data? How do you make actual insights and derive them from the data sets? You know, when you look at that holistically in your role, you know what keeps you up at night. What are the biggest challenges that you face or maybe even the opportunities that you face in your current position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think that always feeling like there's there's so much opportunity, I think that there's, there's constantly. You know, you're constantly trying to create engagements in multiple channels. You're constantly trying to create engagements in multiple channels, trying to understand where people want to be and meeting them there in a world where information is available at your fingertips. So what keeps me up at night is are there gaps in our customer journey? Are there people? Is there information that we're not serving them? How can we elicit information from folks to understand what their needs are, what their wants are within our product and then within the communication that they're receiving around it?
Speaker 2:So you know, I told you I came from more of a more of a data person than a marketer, which has actually helped me in my role, because I really started in a place where you know, knowing that we need data in a usable format to help drive personalization and help create deeper engagement and try to innovate the fan experience. So I really think that you know those are the opportunities of you can't just collect data, but you need to activate it and there's almost endless ways to activate it. But if you try to hone in on really what are your goals? What are your? What products are you trying to educate and really break it down? It helps you figure out how you trying to educate and really break it down. It helps you figure out how you want to use that data.
Speaker 1:Excellent. You know, sports fans loyalty can be quite deep, maybe irrational. I'm a pretty big Denver Broncos fan. My wife would say probably some of the worst experiences in her life have something to do with me at a football game, them losing and she being there. So definitely a rational loyalty rabid fans. When you look at the loyalty you have for the Cavs, loyalty to Cleveland sports teams runs very deep. Right, living in Cincinnati, I'm not a Cincinnati fan, but they don't seem to have the affinity that the Cleveland fans do. They're very loyal, sell-off to all of them, right. But when you look at the emotional loyalty customer loyalty to the Cavs you have a Cavs United membership program as well. How does that fit into the overall customer loyalty of the organization?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, cavs United, that is our official season ticket member program. I think you'll see, it's really an industry term where season tickets is moving towards more holistic annual membership programs. So we really focus on the tangible, intangible benefits that we can create. But it's basically a tiered program that helps reward our most loyal and invested fans. There's benefits and perks that increase as your investment and tenure increases. We offer things like exclusive access, premium experiences.
Speaker 2:But there's also a lot of intangible things that people express to us when we research about how they think about the product, how they think about our organization, and Cleveland is not a very transient city. So we're lucky to have extremely loyal, lucky to be in a city and industry where people express such a love. They talk about other fans like family. These are the words they use in research that we do, and they were just lucky. But the programs that we create, especially Cavs United, is really designed to lean into that, to customize the experience for individuals that find different value in different things, but also, through our messaging, helping them feel like they're part of a family, that they can express the pride and legacy through generational membership and they're helping contribute to the civic vibrancy of downtown. So all those things are one we bake into the program but two we feel like just is returned to us and we try to drive that through loyalty with them.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we'll look at it holistically. What does customer loyalty mean to you and to the Cavs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I think you know it's really the cornerstone of our fan strategy. I think you know it's to us it's really the deep emotional connection, this feeling that you're belonging to something bigger than yourself as a shared identity that you feel valued through the things that we help create. We see a lot of support through thick and thin of just team performance. You know we try to create things where you will value. Even if the team is not doing well, you'll value everything that we try to provide along with it and really everything that you do is what we try to establish through long term relationships. We prioritize significant resources internally, cross-departmentally, through staff, through events, all sorts of things to help everyone feel like your investment is appreciated and we bake that back into the fan experience through every game. That is an exciting thing to be a part of.
Speaker 1:And you talked about a little bit baking into the organization. There is a significant amount of discussion right now within our community the brand community around customer loyalty, how it's prioritized, how it should be focused on. Is it a cost center, Is it an investment? You touched on it a little bit. How is customer loyalty prioritized within your organization?
Speaker 2:It's really we look at ourselves as leaders and fan experience and the number one thing we continue to invest in from Dan on down is, just when you come to an event here, a game, it's an experience like no other and we want to keep it that way.
Speaker 2:We want to keep it fresh, engaging, exciting. You know it's a bit difficult to measure some of the subjective opinions on what's more valuable than the others or some of the intangible feelings that come along that people express. But more in terms of measurement, I think the things that we look at, we try to have goals for touch points with members that are different with investment. We look at satisfaction surveys. We look at member tenure, renewal rates, event participation. We do a lot of qualitative feedback through testimonials, surveys, all of our referral activities. So all of those things are baked into how we understand, or try to understand as best we can to how folks are feeling about not just the experience when you come to an event but our membership platform as a whole, and we place significant internal resources across sales, across our data teams, across our marketing teams that consistently help understand what's driving value and measure that year over year to try to provide the best experience. We can that, year over year, to try to provide the best experience we can.
Speaker 1:And I think you touched on a very unique point as well is that you know, understanding what the drivers for me or for you or for your disparate audiences can be very challenging, right? So making sure you have the right kind of offerings you're listening to and responding, because many brands are challenged with truly listening to and understanding their customers. And I think you mentioned too, which is a salient point, is that different people have different expectations of brands and sometimes you may not necessarily be able to meet all those expectations right, because everyone probably wants to meet and greet, they all want more potentially experiential type opportunities, but you may not be able to do that. So how do you take all that data in and decide what you should action on and then maybe, if things you don't action on, how do you look at those opportunities?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things where we've tried to take the program and one is just really asking them at the beginning of their membership what are the things you value? What type of membership do you utilize? Is it more for clients? Corporate clients are using this to drive your business forward. Are using this for time with your family, time with your kids. All of that is collected at the beginning of your membership. To help activate everything that we offer you. We have internal consultants that are really educated on helping you get the value, whether, again, you have goals around your investment as a business, to drive conversations or help client relationships. If you have families, you're going to be more invited to the moments, events at the Cleveland Zoo or youth camps, those types of things. So everything that we collect, we analyze, try to activate on and then drive that into the experience that you're going to get for the rest of your membership.
Speaker 1:Okay, we talked about emotional loyalty, right, kind of a deep connection individuals have with brands, and sport franchises is obviously one of them. A lot of that is based on this nostalgia. You know family memories. Your grandfather may have liked a team, your mom might have liked a team, or you may even root for a team because your mom liked a team, a different team, right. So when you look at that unique bond that you have, a brand, you know sports franchises have the opportunity to create. You know how do they do that and what does emotional loyalty mean to you and the Cavs more holistically?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. This is something since I've started my role. We really haven't talked about enough because we hear it and it's much more anecdotal of people responding on social media or you know, a positive or negative, you know a negative comment is not the worst thing in the world. It's more apathy that we try to avoid. If someone's passionate, that's where we want to be, but I think from us, and my job specifically, is trying to harness that, capture it in a way that we can repurpose it back to other prospective members to try to communicate, because we can't even talk about really the emotional drivers that people are experiencing.
Speaker 2:Moment, or how would you describe your membership? And the number one word wasn't basketball, wasn't win-loss, it was family and that's how people described their relationship with others. That's how they described. It's the one thing their family has in common, the one thing I can utilize to spend time with my child, and we need to use that in storytelling. We need to use that in content for our different channels and our website. So these are things we're starting to do, but we're lucky that people describe our product this way and we just need to activate on it more and that's what's really driving a lot of our recent storytelling and a recent campaign content over the past year.
Speaker 1:Ok, and I'm not sure we talked about this, but how long has the Cavs United Membership program been out?
Speaker 2:So Cavs United Membership has been a membership platform, I would say in the last 10 years we've rebranded into more of a membership type product.
Speaker 2:I think season tickets obviously have been around since the beginning of you know as long back as I can remember as a product that we sell, but it's turned into more of a annual activation, I would say within the last 10 years. You'll see that across the industry. We do have Cavs Rewards as well, which is a brand new loyalty platform. That's separate, but our goal is to integrate it with cabs united memberships in the future. But that's more of um getting access to special uh events and arena perks, more for folks that you know you can access without becoming a cabs united member. Uh, and you earn points by uh spending um, by creating transactions at arena partners, um that you can, you know, trade in for, like I said, digital achievements, vip experiences, tickets, those types of things. So that's that's our attempt to, to widen our, our loyalty out to to folks that aren't uh purchasing memberships, and something we're excited about moving forward okay, and and how long has that program been involved?
Speaker 1:A bit of-. Yeah, it launched this year, so it's brand new. It launched this year, yep, perfect. So when you look at your customer loyalty CX strategy, you know how is it evolving. You talked about, you know, the first program being around for about 10 years focused on kind of that re-engagement, re-upping of the membership and some of the benefit that goes along with that. How do you meld in the new program potentially to enhance your customer experience, customer loyalty efforts?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's really what I think is sports industry Sports industry and sports organizations. Try to look at growth. I think the growth is the 99% of people that are never going to step foot within the arena. And how do we create products or how do we engage those folks and potentially help monetize or create services that they would want to be engaged in? So Chaos Rewards is really our first attempt to say, hey, here's an offering, here's a type of engagement model, here's a way you can do that that's not directly tied to your engagement or your purchase or your transaction within the arena. I think our challenge is putting all of these things together into one seamless platform that will be clear and consistent to all our consumers, and then expanding this potentially globally. So right now, these retailers are located generally in the geographical area.
Speaker 1:How do we?
Speaker 2:expand that to other countries where we know we have lots of saturation of fans Brazil, the UK, the Philippines. So these are areas where we see just massive growth. I don't think we understand yet what types of products they would be interested in, but those are the areas where we see it evolving and we're going to be investing in in the future that makes perfect sense Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And when you look at that, when you merge two programs you talked about kind of looking at surveys that you conduct with your members understand what they like, what they potentially would like how do you meld that all together? Because technology is evolving very rapidly right with AI and neural networks and others, but even just from a MarTech perspective, there's tens of thousands of different platforms you can use or potentially use. Do they work together? Do they not work together? When you look at supporting technology, how do you look at that? Maybe the opportunity there to bring all of that together? How do you evaluate or how do you use technology to bolster that emotional connection you have or the customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:I don't want to pretend I have it all figured out, but that's the biggest challenge for us. I think we've done a good job in the past few years of investing in a data warehouse, investing in technology solutions like Salesforce, Salesforce Marketing Cloud that sit on top of that app providers that we can help activate in. We're doing some cool things through our data to help understand, when people arrive to the arena, what food and beverage do they constantly order that we could get out ahead of and create meaningful engagements for members or prospects. So some of it is, you know, trying to create, using the technology to understand how we can create those small special moments, and the other is, you know, rounding it out with progressive profiling of our members to help create the experiences I talked earlier about within Cavs United, and then really researching what the future of the program should look like.
Speaker 2:So, what should membership be in three to five years? What would it look like for younger fans potentially? You know how do we create products that would reach out to different target segments that typically purchase our product today, target segments that typically purchase our product today. So, but yeah, the the we we try not to be, you know, have a vendor soup where we have, you know, 15 or 20 different platforms. So I think, with what we have now with Cavs or Rogers is powered by up top. It's baking that into our current technology stack and trying to see how we expand into other consumers?
Speaker 1:Okay, you touched on a little bit engaging younger generations. You know they partake in media differently. They have a different experience and expectations. Many brands are kind of struggling with getting them involved in kind of a customer loyalty or customer experience programs. But when they do they find that they invariably can be very advantageous to the brand right. They can be very engaged. What are you seeing with regard to kind of engaging a younger generation with the fan base? Are they, are they involved in the program? Do they like to come to the stadium? You know how may they be different than than other audiences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's obviously a big, big opportunity for us. So I think and you're right about how they think about the world differently, just from you know outside the sports industry how they have different behaviors, how they like to engage communication than actually team focus that's one thing that's interesting to us. But really our social platforms are the place that we engage a lot of folks. We have 36 million followers across eight platforms. A large percentage of those are under the age of 30, obviously, and we really have a brand strategy within social to help create things that are engaging to those folks. So we try to blur the line between culture and basketball. We try to stay relevant with connecting what we're doing with viral concepts or the meme of the week, and those do really really well when we go out with them. We try to humanize our players. So we try to do things like, uh, you know, buzzfeed style quizzes we actually launched one today uh, that talks a little bit about who they are and what they like. And uh, we use visual storytelling, high quality content production, um and uh. So that's more of how we we generally engage folks younger I think for for actual ticketing products, we've done uh, more of the products like standing room only tickets, monthly plans.
Speaker 2:We have a really robust youth camp program that's really designed to engage folks and their children at a very young age, obviously to get them to be fans at the start and fans for life. We have really family-friendly perks for members I talked about. You know, if you really utilize this with your family, we're going to really curate events and VIP experiences. When their kid gets to hold the flag at the National Anthem, parents are over the moon about those types of experiences, just watching their kids do these things, giving high-fives to players. We do unique merch collaborations. We're starting to partner with brands like Lululemon and travis matthew more golf, more athleisure type so those are popular with younger folks. So, um, very expensive but popular with younger folks um, but overall, we see a huge opportunity. We we need to do more with, with with younger folks around curating, but that gives you an idea of some of the things we do. That that is engaging.
Speaker 1:That's yeah it makes perfect sense and and those very high-end experience rewards can be great drivers, sweepstakes, a way to engage the audience as well they have some points accrued and to keep them actively involved in the brand too, especially, as you mentioned, those who may not be coming to the stadium, right. So getting a way to understand kind of their preferences and interests and then getting involved and coming to the stadium is kind of an end goal I would assume that you want for all of the 35 million, 38 million people across all channels, correct, yeah, yeah. What's the next big thing for customer loyalty, customer experience for the Cavs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we have a lot of data. It's really how we activate that. So, how can we hyper-personalize communications? How can we create better digital experiences for our members? I think seamlessly integrating the digital and the physical experience of when you come to the arena what type of experiences are in our app that are complimentary to your experience, that you could also experience if you don't come to the arena I think AR, vr are huge opportunities for monetization and really immersive experiences moving forward.
Speaker 2:You know, data-driven journey optimization for season ticket memberships are typically things that many believe could not be sold online. I differ with that opinion. And trying to drive different online mechanisms for driving higher priced products I think it's an opportunity. Self-service UIs for customer service. How we integrate AI agents into that. So, and then then you know, personalized content. I talked to rary at the beginning about hyper personalization, but you know the content that you want, uh, within the channel you want. So all things we're thinking about and trying to centralize within our data platform, but those are the things we're we're focused on, definitely over the next three to five years what are two or three things that you're most proud of for your programs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think with Cabs United membership, it's been a staple of our ticketing business. It helps run and contribute through. We've had high renewal rates through low demand years. I think this year I'm most excited about using our brand and our storytelling around emotional marketing and dipping our toe into that and doing more of it With Tabular Wars. It's really launching the platform. We've hit a lot of our user acquisition goals. We're driving value for some partners locally and we have a foundation to build from and it's been recognized as a league best practice and something that we're really excited about. How we can build that in the future.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what can Loapy360 do to help you and your team and your customer with the journey? Yeah, I think industry best practices, benchmarks, are helpful. Obviously, you all create a platform to connect with peers and shared learning, obviously, awareness for new technologies and strategies, how to think about ROI and measurements and just insights into potential evolving consumer behavior. So a lot of those things I know you all focus on, but I think just more of that is is is helpful. Okay perfect.
Speaker 1:Well, now we have the wonderful quick fire round questions. They are a series of questions that we like to keep short, so you know, one word or short phrase answer is great, and we're gonna start with what is your least favorite word that others use my least favorite word that others use.
Speaker 2:word that others use Can't.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite food item at Rocket Arena?
Speaker 2:Rocket Arena. The pizza they have some good New York-style pizza here. What excites you at work? Innovation and building business processes.
Speaker 1:Excellent. What do you find tiresomeome, either at work or at home?
Speaker 2:I'm tiresome. Kids YouTube on my, on my TV it's, it's, that's, that's tiresome to me.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there a book that you read, or you read that you like, that you maybe recommend to friends or colleagues?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Peter Fader has three books on customer centricity. They're really really good and they're a great place to start if you don't really know where to start. I'd recommend them tremendously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've had Peter on a few times. He's led a couple of loyalty university sessions for our audience around some things that they're doing at Wharton, but also more holistically, how they're looking at the market. So, yeah, it's Love to meet him. Yeah, he's a great guy. What profession other than the one you currently work in would you like to attempt?
Speaker 2:Other profession PGA golfer.
Speaker 1:Okay, Is there something that you enjoy doing that you often don't get the time to do? I mean because you're busier than before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, with little kids. I'd love to exercise more. I don't get enough of that. I try my best, but I think that centers me. I'd love to exercise more. I don't get enough of that. I try my best, but I think that centers me.
Speaker 1:I'd love to do more of it who inspired you to become the person you are today.
Speaker 2:I have a few mentors, but I would say Kevin O'Toole. He's our VP of business intelligence here and he's been a mentor and someone I look up to tremendously.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:That I cared about them and I showed up to them.
Speaker 1:Excellent, perfect, well, thank you very much, jeremy, for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great getting to know you and you know obviously more about the Cavs and the kind of customer loyalty efforts they have Very intriguing. We look forward to hearing more from you and the team in the upcoming years about how the program evolves.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you, everyone else, for taking the time to join us for our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. Make sure you join us back every Thursday for another edition and until then, have a wonderful day.