“Matchnode always goes above and beyond for their clients. Their ability to strategize and implement all while streamlining communication is appreciated. Their creativity and innovation, as well as their willingness to try new things and think outside the box, sets them apart from their competitors.”
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United Center
| Industry | Location |
| Entertainment | Chicago, IL |
The United Center, home to the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bulls, is the largest arena in the United States. Since opening, the venue has hosted over 200 events each year, welcoming over 65 million guests.
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As the Senior Director of the United Center’s Premium Seating Operations, Valerie Tanaka saw it was time to adapt to industry trends and enhance the user experience by implementing new digital sales channels for the arena’s luxury suites.
Up until then, these premium tickets—which include food, drinks, and parking passes—were sold exclusively by their sales team over the phone.
Consumer trends are leaning more and more into online purchasing, including for large purchases. Adding the option for digital sales would help the United Center reach new customers and sell more suites for more events.
The premium seating team had no digital marketing expertise in-house. If they wanted to set their new ecommerce channels up for success, they would need help from experts.
Enter Matchnode.
“We were launching something brand new and wanted it to be a success. But we knew that in order for it to be successful,we really needed to expand our digital footprint with advertising.”
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The team’s VP had worked with Matchnode previously to set up digital advertising for the Chicago Bulls, with impressive results. He connected Valerie and her team with Matchnode, and they quickly began advertising their premium seating online.
Matchnode’s creativity and talent for experimentation impressed Valerie from the start. Through A/B testing, iteration, and analyzing the results, Matchnode made several small but important changes that had huge impacts on ROI:
“Matchnode has been really great about formulating hypotheses and testing out their ideas. Changing the ads to “all-inclusive suites” was so successful that we are now updating the name in some of our collateral. We really appreciate their creativity with things like that.”
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Since the premium seating team started working with Matchnode, they’ve accomplished their goal of reaching a new audience: new buyers account for 57% of online suite purchases.
They saw a 4x ROI after their initial four-month trial period, and the Harry Styles concert tickets brought in 7x ROI on nearly 60 transactions, in large part thanks to Matchnode’s testing and national ad targeting.
Without Matchnode, Valerie doubts whether her team would have ventured into paid ads, and they definitely wouldn’t have had the same success.
“Without Matchnode, I don’t even know if we would be doing paid ads. We would be relying on traffic to the teams’ websites and the United Center website. There’s no way we would have the success that we have had. I’m excited to see what else we can do.”
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Use digital marketing to sell premium seating and drive revenue for your entertainment venue.
