Partner
Cause + Effect Strategy
Industry
Advertising & Marketing
Objective
Drive ticket sales at the 2019 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club through advanced data analytics.
Approach
Econometrics
Advanced Statistics and Data Analytics
Machine Learning
The Opportunity
Local marketing analytics firm Cause + Effect Strategy (CES) was contracted by PGA of America to provide targeted marketing for the 2019 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. CES partnered with RDSC in order to bring a data-driven approach to its goal of substantially increasing ticket sales
The Challenge
To deliver exceptional ticket sales for the PGA event, RDSC had to first obtain a deep understanding of the customer through historical ticket buying patterns. Who are the people that buy the tickets? What motivates them to buy them? When do they buy them and where do the attendees typically live? With the thorough understanding of the ticket buyers for the event, CES could maximize return on PGA of America’s advertising dollars by targeting its campaign to those most likely to buy tickets.
“Our goal was not only to get a good read on who buys tickets for a specific golf event, but to learn about the 2019 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship’s customer base and what they enjoy. The analysis we did for the 2019 event provides a foundation for marketing future KitchenAid Senior PGA events.”
The Solution
RDSC scientists worked closely with CES to gather and analyze a large range of datasets, incorporating customer sales data, socioeconomic metrics, weather records, and geographical data. They applied econometric analysis, advanced statistical and data analysis, and supervised and unsupervised learning to reach detailed insights.
Some of the key findings included the following:
- Clubhouse ticket purchasers represented a different customer segment from golf enthusiasts.
- An analysis of ticket buying times revealed opportunities for timing ads and promotions to increase ticket sales.
- The data identified untapped geographical areas of potential ticket buyers with the right customer profile.
- Rain has a direct impact on daily ticket sales volume. Temperature, however, does not have a statistically significant effect.
Results
With RDSC’s analytics, CES designed a locally customized marketing campaign for PGA of America. According to Tournament Director Bryan Karns, the 2019 event was the “best alltime Senior PGAs ever,” outperforming every metric from corporate sponsorship, to volunteers, to ticket sales.
