The Kansas City Chiefs take their fan loyalty program, Chiefs Kingdom Rewards, to the next level with the improved user experience FanMaker provides. Since the re-launch, FanMaker has helped the Chiefs grow their Chiefs Kingdom Rewards member base to over 190,000.
“We had a number of years of experience managing a rewards program and had outgrown our previous vendor’s capabilities. We had a good idea of what our next loyalty provider needed to optimize the fan loyalty experience. After hearing stellar reviews of FanMaker from other sports industry contacts, we decided to reach out.” -Ty Fowler, Data Systems Analyst, Kansas City Chiefs
Previously partnered with Skidata, the Chiefs were looking for more reliability, new features, and greater capabilities with their FanMaker partnership.
“When we were considering a change in the loyalty space, one of the things we were looking for outside of additional technical capabilities, was a thought leader in the sports loyalty space. We have been very pleased with the amount of new ideas and knowledge sharing FanMaker has provided in order for us to constantly evolve the program and how we are able to engage with users.” -Ty Fowler
Chiefs Kingdom Rewards is a unique program that encompasses all fans, both season ticket members and the general public. FanMaker helps the Chiefs engage with their biggest fans by providing a one-of-a-kind experience. Fans earn points by attending home games, watching away games, purchasing tickets, concessions and merchandise, among other activities. Fans can turn these points into opportunities to win once in a lifetime experiences, autographed memorabilia, and other merchandise by entering sweepstakes or bidding on auctions.
“Chiefs Kingdom Rewards allows us to offer ‘money can’t buy’ opportunities and experiences to Chiefs fans from all over the country, whether that’s for a Season Ticket Member being able to participate in our pregame ceremonies as the teams take the field, or a fan living 2,000 miles away and winning a Patrick Mahomes signed jersey.” -Ty Fowler
FanMaker has provided more dependability and a better user experience through new features to Chiefs Kingdom Rewards users. Including awarding points for watching away games, presenting content through Stories and partner discounts through Offers. Over 28,000 fans earned points for watching Chiefs games this season.
“We’re still getting up and running with some of the new features FanMaker offers, but fans being able to earn points for watching the Chiefs on TV has been a really cool addition. Fans have also expressed their appreciation for the stability the program offers under FanMaker. We receive considerably less communication from fans indicating they didn’t receive the correct amount of points, or a feature was broken, etc., than we did prior to working with FanMaker.” -Ty Fowler
The FanMaker admin has also added new capabilities, giving the Chiefs a snapshot of all event data in one, convenient location.
“The Attendance dashboard within FanMaker’s admin console is something we have wanted for a long time, but never had. Because FanMaker is integrated directly with Ticketmaster, and our concession and merchandise systems, we have a real time view of everything transaction/ticket related on gameday in one place.” -Ty Fowler
This new partnership wasn’t only the start of a new beginning for the Chiefs, but also led to a new evolution for FanMaker, creating a software development kit (SDK) for the Chiefs to host Chiefs Kingdom Rewards within their team app. Like all FanMaker features, this is something that can now be developed for all clients.
“FanMaker went above and beyond in tailoring their solution to our specific needs. While certainly a challenging process given the multiple vendors/entities involved, now that the SDK is up and running within our team app, the rewards program is functioning exactly as intended.” -Ty Fowler
This SDK provides Chiefs fans with a great gameday experience. In order to receive season ticket member discounts and earn points for concession and merchandise purchases, users need to access their Chiefs Kingdom Rewards account to scan at checkout. The SDK provides fans the ability to scan from the same app they would use to access their game tickets. This scan applies their season ticket member discount, if one is available, and automatically awards the fan points for their purchase. This incentive has turned into over $1.5 million in concession and merchandise purchases from Chiefs Kingdom Rewards members this season.
“Keeping the entire fan experience contained within the Chiefs app was important to us. We know on game days that between mobile tickets, digital wallets, etc., it’s not convenient for the fan to have to continually switch between apps and log-ins to access everything they need. Working with FanMaker and our app provider we were able to implement a single sign on solution that allows the user to access everything they need for a great gameday experience within a single app and login.” -Ty Fowler
FanMaker’s tools continue to help our clients reliably engage with their biggest fans in ways they haven’t before. This engagement leads to reaching retention goals and program growth.
“We know there’s a correlation between the program’s engagement and our Season Ticket Member renewal rate. In the past, the feedback we heard was that our members really liked the program, but were frustrated with the user experience, it didn’t function that well. Now that the program is in a much better functional position, we expect the feedback to be largely more positive, which leads directly into our season ticket member retention efforts.” - Ty Fowler