How to Create a Customer Journey Map for Sports and Recreation Businesses
The article "How to Create a Customer Journey Map for Sports and Recreation Businesses" provides a focused guide on mapping the customer journey specifically for sports and recreation contexts, such as affiliate gyms and fitness centers. It highlights the importance of understanding how athletes or customers interact with the brand throughout their journey. Key elements include:
- Defining athlete personas through strategic surveys and research to understand motivations, goals, barriers, and behaviors.
- Documenting athlete touchpoints where customers interact with the business, including website, social media, email, local events, front desk, and group classes.
- Choosing the appropriate type of journey map based on the goal: Current State (actual experiences), Day in the Life (broader daily context), Future State (aspirational experiences), or Service Blueprint (including operational factors).
- Experiencing the journey firsthand via role play, participation, or external feedback to gain authentic insights.
Additionally, best practices from the sports and entertainment industry emphasize:
- Overlaying multiple data sources such as ticketing, website analytics, marketing automation, CRM, and fan interest data to create a comprehensive view.
- Sharing data across departments to align marketing, sales, content, and analytics teams.
- Understanding different fan paths and segmenting customers for targeted journey optimization.
- Going beyond purchase touchpoints to include pre- and post-purchase interactions to measure ongoing engagement and affinity.
- Utilizing machine learning-powered tools or customer data platforms to analyze journeys at scale and derive actionable insights.
This tailored approach ensures sports and recreation businesses can create actionable, data-driven customer journey maps that improve fan or athlete engagement, personalize experiences, and align with business goals.
Business Type
Sports and Recreation Businesses
Industry
Sports and Recreation
Key Stages of the Customer Journey
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Purchase/Booking
- Participation/Experience
- Post-Experience/Retention
Essential Touchpoints to Map
- Ticketing data (primary, secondary, attendance)
- Website interactions tracked by pixels and cookies
- Marketing automation engagement
- Digital advertising touchpoints
- CRM interactions
- Fan interest data from social media and surveys
- Mobile app usage
- E-commerce transactions
- Community events attendance
- Pre-ticket purchase behaviors (checking team standings, social media follows, secondary market checks, cart abandonment)
- Post-ticket purchase behaviors (email marketing interaction, merchandise purchases, in-stadium surveys, sentiment analysis, website return visits)
Common Pain Points
- Inadequate personalization
- Lack of engagement opportunities
- Poor communication
Target Audience
- Affiliate gym owners
- Fitness business owners
- Sports and recreation facility managers
- Coaches and trainers involved in customer experience
- Marketing professionals in sports and recreation businesses
Target Audience
- Affiliate gym owners
- Fitness business owners
- Sports and recreation facility managers
- Coaches and trainers involved in customer experience
- Marketing professionals in sports and recreation businesses
Recommended Tools for Journey Mapping
- StellarAlgo (fan analytics and customer data platform tailored for sports and entertainment)
- Tealium (customer data platform with strong integration and AI capabilities for sports and entertainment)
- Lucidchart (cloud-based diagramming tool with templates and real-time collaboration)
- Smaply (customer journey mapping tool supporting multiple persona journey maps)
- FigJam (real-time collaboration tool for visualizing and improving customer experiences)
- Totango (digital customer journey mapping platform)
Available Templates
- Current State Map
- Day in the Life Map
- Future State Map
- Service Blueprint Map
- Miro Customer Journey Map Template
- User Journey Map Template by Miro
Real-World Examples
A detailed real-world example of a customer journey map for sports and recreation businesses is provided by a study focused on the University of Wisconsin Badgers football games. This study created a customer journey map outlining the entire process a college-aged fan goes through when attending a home football game in the student section. The journey map covers all touchpoints before, during, and after the game. It identifies critical incidents that lead to sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction through personal interviews and surveys. The study uses this data to provide actionable recommendations to improve the fan experience and increase brand equity. Key touchpoints include fan engagement through social media, ticket purchasing, in-stadium experiences, merchandise buying, and post-game interactions such as surveys and follow-up marketing. The study highlights the importance of understanding the full fan journey to enhance customer experience and loyalty in sports and recreation contexts. (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Another example comes from StellarAlgo, which emphasizes best practices for customer journey mapping in sports and entertainment. They recommend integrating multiple data sources such as ticketing data, website analytics, marketing automation, and CRM to map fan journeys comprehensively. They stress the importance of sharing data across departments to optimize fan engagement and sales. The approach includes understanding pre-purchase and post-purchase touchpoints, such as social media engagement and merchandise purchases, to personalize fan experiences and increase lifetime value. They advocate using machine learning tools to analyze large datasets for actionable insights, enabling sports organizations to scale fan growth and revenue effectively. (StellarAlgo)
Best Practices
To create an effective customer journey map for sports and recreation businesses, follow these best practices:
- Overlay Your Data: Integrate multiple data sources such as ticketing data, website analytics (pixels and cookies), marketing automation, digital advertising, CRM, fan interest data (social media, surveys), mobile app usage, e-commerce, and community event attendance. This comprehensive data integration helps reveal detailed fan behaviors and interactions across channels.
- Democratize Data Across Departments: Share customer journey insights with all relevant teams including digital/content, marketing, sales, community engagement, and analytics. This cross-department collaboration ensures a unified understanding of fan interactions and enables coordinated efforts to optimize the customer experience.
- Know the Paths Your Different Fans Take: Segment your audience to identify distinct fan groups and their unique paths to conversion. Analyze the fastest and slowest paths and pinpoint friction points to tailor experiences and streamline the journey for each segment.
- Go Beyond Purchase Touchpoints: Map not only the steps leading to a purchase but also pre-purchase behaviors (e.g., checking team standings, social media engagement, secondary market browsing) and post-purchase activities (e.g., merchandise buying, surveys, repeat visits). This holistic view helps deepen fan understanding and enhances long-term engagement.
- Use Advanced Tools Anchored in Machine Learning: Employ customer data platforms and analytics tools that automate data consolidation and uncover patterns from large datasets. These tools empower both technical and non-technical teams to gain actionable insights and measure the impact of their efforts in real-time.
By applying these practices, sports and recreation businesses can personalize fan interactions, improve engagement, and increase customer lifetime value through well-informed, scalable customer journey mapping.
Tips for Aligning Journey Maps with Business Goals
To align customer journey maps with business goals and customer needs in sports and recreation businesses, start by defining clear athlete personas through strategic surveys to understand their goals, barriers, and motivations. Document all athlete touchpoints such as website, social media, email, local events, and in-person interactions to ensure consistent and strategic messaging. Choose the appropriate type of journey map (current state, day in the life, future state, or service blueprint) to visualize athlete experiences effectively. Experience the journey yourself through role play, participation, or hiring outsiders to gain authentic insights. This alignment ensures the journey map supports objectives like improving athlete acquisition, retention, satisfaction, and community engagement, ultimately driving sustainable growth and scaling of the business.
