March Madness is coming to an end and it’s down to: Auburn, Virginia, Michigan State, and Texas Tech. Texas Tech and Auburn will be battling for the first time in school history since the tournament was first established in 1939.
Mobile Tech Is Where It’s At
Fast-forward nearly eighty years and the era of digital technology – specifically mobile – has made an unyielding impact across every industry, and that includes the sports segment. Today, it’s no coincidence that almost one-third of all NCAA tournament teams are now using the same emerging technology behind the scenes.
ReplyBuy is a broad-based business platform that is designed for mobile engagement, customer communications, CRM and instant purchases, and it does all of this with a quick text message. This company is looking to disrupt the status quo of simply emailing, cold calling customers and hoping for the best to engage via social media or paid placements online. Rapidly growing across various market segments, ReplyBuy also now has a dominant presence within professional sports and collegiate athletics.
“Our partnership has been incredible and ReplyBuy’s platform is unlike anything else from a technology standpoint,” said Brent Fletcher, Associate Athletics Director at Texas Tech University. “Being able to cut through the noise, quickly engage thousands of customers on a personalized level and enabling them to instantly purchase and complete sales transactions with a quick text message is amazing. It’s completely frictionless and a big win for everyone.”
Establishing Partnerships
These major athletic programs are established partners with ReplyBuy and are continually pushing to deliver a world-class experience to engage and communicate with their most valued customers. Auburn for instance, has been using ReplyBuy since the mid-2016’s to engage their fans, Virginia, Michigan State and Texas Tech have quickly followed suit in late 2017.
“We are absolutely thrilled that this year’s Final Four are completely represented by four of our partners, and that 16 of our other tremendous NCAA clients made the tournament this year,” said Joshua Manley, ReplyBuy Founder & CEO. “Each of these partners has had an incredible season and it’s an honor to see ReplyBuy embraced as a part of their overall strategy. As an organization, we’d like to wish each of our Final Four partners the best of luck this weekend.”
The University of Virginia is leading the way with ReplyBuy to quickly embrace a robust new peer-to-peer messaging capability. Released earlier this year, the company’s new addition empowers individual team members from service, sales, and marketing departments to send and receive personalized text messages right from their computer.
“ReplyBuy has been a really valuable asset to our team,” said Corbin Hunt, Associate Athletics Director, Ticket Sales and Operations at the University of Virginia. “The inherent simplicity of the platform allows our fans to easily engage and purchase on the channel that they use the most. This unique approach has been paramount.”
Managing Critical Metrics
Customers such as Virginia across a wide array of industries, can now easily manage a large number of customized, individual text conversations in a scalable and efficient manner. They are also able to track the results from a single dashboard along with other critical business metrics. ReplyBuy’s new business peer-to-peer messaging also integrates directly with commonly used CRM solutions such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and others.
“Customers are already reaching audience engagement rates as high as 60 percent, which far surpasses the traditional use of cold calls and emails. We’re constantly adding new platform capabilities that create value to delight our customers. It’s core to our DNA and who we are as a company. We’ve been thrilled with the response,” Manley said.
The company has been rapidly embraced across multiple industry segments, which include the sports segment, having 100+ customers across the NBA, NHL, MLS and NFL, as well as working with major universities including: LSU, Florida State, Michigan and Kentucky.
“The kind of innovation ReplyBuy delivers, along with their partnership and dedication, is precisely why we had an official Kentucky team jersey made for them. Their results are unmatched and we feel their solution is destined to succeed not only within professional and college athletics but all other industries as well based on what we’ve seen. We knew early on we wanted to be part of that success in blazing new trails as one of their first customers to engage with Big Blue Nation in new and innovative ways,” said Taylor Stapleton, Associate Director of Ticketing Strategy & Analytics.
Virginia and Auburn are set to tip-off at 6:09 ET on Saturday, and Michigan State and Texas Tech will be following at 8:49 ET. The Championship game will be played on Monday, April 8th at U.S Bank Stadium.
Virginia and Auburn will tip-off at 6:09 ET on Saturday, and Michigan State and Texas Tech will be following at 8:49 ET. The Championship game will be played at 9:00 ET on Monday, April 8 at U.S. Bank Stadium.
