Racing giant NASCAR is getting creative with how they personalize their marketing campaigns. With COVID concerns causing many consumers to feel cautious about live events and the phaseout of third-party cookies on the horizon, the brand is discovering new ways to stoke loyalty in current fans and acquire new customers.
Lindsay Hall, NASCAR’s Senior Director of Track Marketing, sat down with SheerID CMO Sai Koppala for an interactive webinar. They discussed how the entertainment monolith is using identity marketing to reach the consumer communities that matter most to their brand—such as military members and students—with personalized campaigns and exclusive discounts.
How NASCAR is Personalizing Marketing Campaigns
Sai Koppala
Let’s start at the top. Who are your core audiences?
Lindsay Hall
The people that gravitate towards NASCAR really enjoy sports, speed, and the unpredictable thrills that our races offer. There are the folks that come back to the events year after year, and then we can’t ignore the attempt to funnel in new fans. We’ve had some challenges with needing to rebuild the fan base with the pandemic.
Sai Koppala
Tell us about NASCAR and the brand’s engagement with the military community.
Lindsay Hall
Supporting the military and their families is ingrained into the fabric and culture at NASCAR. We host military service members and their families almost every weekend event. We donate tickets to the military through a number of different platforms as well. One of my favorite programs is the NASCAR Salutes—a program we run in May where we really celebrate and recognize military members throughout all of our marketing efforts.
But for folks who don’t have access to those opportunities, we also have a military offer that we have out in the marketplace.
Sai Koppala
What are you doing to acquire the next generation audience?
Lindsay Hall
Value is very important to our younger fans, so we want to get them in the doors and then hopefully convert them to long time ticket holders. We create relationships with student government organizations and fraternities and sororities to build brand awareness.
What we know about students is that having a good seat in the venue is less important than having a sense of community and togetherness with friends. So, those offers might include access to a tailgate area or special parking, but they might also be more general admission tickets where there’s not a specific seat tied to them, which gives them the ability to move around and sit next to friends rather than being confined to one space.
Sai Koppala
You mentioned that you’re also looking at other audiences. Can you talk a bit about those?
Lindsay Hall
NASCAR also participates and exists in the eRacing and iRacing gaming side of the industry.
Sai Koppala
How do get the fans who attend live races to engage in those online games?
Lindsay Hall
We’ll set up displays and opportunities for them to extend that interest in playing the games.
Sai Koppala
What about encouraging online racing enthusiasts to attend live events?
Lindsay Hall
For that, we are just communicating through the channels we have to get them to transition their love to the on-track action.
Sai Koppala
What are the key takeaways from the campaigns you’ve done so far?
Lindsay Hall
At a high level, I’d say we learned how important it is to be true to your brand. The outreach and the effort that we’re putting into the military space and the student offers is an authentic expression of NASCAR’s brand mission and strategy. We’ve seen success, and we will continue to explore these different segments and what’s next beyond military and students.
Specifically we learned that the experience we offer students and the military is key. If they enjoy it, they’re going to tell their friends and they’re going to want to come back—and that’s ultimately what’s important to us.
And operationally, our number one goal is to see that customers make it through the full purchase process. But if they don’t, we have data that we can then reuse for retargeting campaigns or use in campaigns later on as we get closer to the events. We’re excited about the season and continuing to experiment with these offers.
Ready to Engage Consumer Communities?
Implementing targeted campaigns like NASCAR’s starts with identifying relevant consumer communities. SheerID’s Verification Platform helps brands gather critical zero-party data and implement exclusive offers. Fast, seamless verification ensures that customers belong to the right group when they apply for an exclusive discount. You can use identity marketing to effectively target and engage consumer communities such as the military and students.
