University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Southern Miss Athletics Partners with ReplyBuy to Adopt a New, Innovative Text Messaging Platform
4/23/2019 2:58:00 PM | General
Athletic Department provides their sales and service representatives a progressive way to reach fans in an efficient and personalized manner
HATTIESBURG, Miss. – The University of Southern Mississippi's Athletic Department officially announced a partnership with ReplyBuy and the rollout of their new, one-to-one, text-messaging platform, ReplyBuy Messenger. Southern Miss' Ticket Sales team is utilizing the product to reach their fans with personalized conversations in an effective and scalable manner.
ReplyBuy Messenger's core capabilities allow the Southern Miss Ticket Sales team to text-enable office landlines and send customized, campaign-styled text messages to their fans and customers from a single dashboard. Built as a tool to complement the traditional use of cold calling and emailing, it also boasts the capability of allowing fans to text into the platform on their own to ask questions, confirm game day details or inquire about seat upgrades.
"The adoption of ReplyBuy Messenger has given our ticket sales team a versatile tool that allows us to spread a variety of information in a short amount of time," said Chris Condit, Assistant Athletic Director of Ticket Operations. "Whether it's reaching out to our baseball season ticket holders about game time change information, or football season ticket holders about renewing their season tickets before the upcoming deadline, ReplyBuy provides us with the ability to quickly and efficiently get our message out."
Though an older technology, SMS messaging has historically boasted high engagement and open rates, especially compared to email. Not only does the platform provide an innovative solution for Southern Miss fans to receive timely news and information, it also equips them with the power to reach the Southern Miss Ticket Sales representatives when they need assistance. "We are thrilled to provide our fans with a new avenue to communicate with our team," said Brad Smith, Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Relations. "Since the start of the year, we have seen engagement rates surpass 35%. It is outstanding to see how well received the service has been so far. We plan to expand how we use this platform moving forward."
The product seamlessly combines the CRM segmentation abilities of an email-marketing platform with the mobile messaging capabilities of SMS. When combining the two technologies together, the Southern Miss Ticket Sales team can have multiple, one-to-one texting conversations in an organized and manageable manner. This campaign-driven approach has proven to drive both fan engagement and overall revenue.
Southern Miss is one of 48 organizations to adopt the new technology in just the last few months and is the first client to represent Conference USA. To sign up to receive text message alerts from our Southern Miss Ticket Sales team, please click here.
About ReplyBuy
Based in Scottsdale, ReplyBuy has been a leader in the sports and entertainment technology space since 2014. At the beginning, the company was built on the original platform that allows fans to purchase game tickets with a simple reply text message. With 150+ professional and college clients utilizing the mobile-commerce service, ReplyBuy developed their Messenger product for sales, service and development reps as a natural extension to the core product. To learn more, visit www.replybuy.com.
