Measuring an Activation: Get the Name Before They Walk Away

A busy day at the track feels like a success. The table was crowded, the samples ran out and fans lined up for photos. But when the sponsor asks what came of it, "it was busy" isn't an answer. An activation that leaves no names, no numbers and no follow-up is hard to defend when budgets get reviewed, no matter how good it looked on Saturday.

Measuring an activation doesn't take a data science team. It takes deciding, before the event, what you're going to count, and building a way to count it into whatever you hand out, give away or set up.

The gut-feel era is over

Kevin Miller, then president and CEO of USAC, remembers when motorsports marketing ran on instinct. Back when he managed the Mopar brand, he said, "we didn't have measurement tools. The old story was, well, how do you know you're getting your payback in motorsports? You don't, it's a gut feel. Today, it's all about measurement. So brands are sitting there measuring. They're not just measuring how many followers you have. They're measuring how many engaged followers you have." ▶ Watch Kevin Miller on this

The marketing managers you pitch today have to justify every dollar to someone above them. Give them numbers and they can.

Know what every activation costs

Matt Martelli, CEO of the Mint 400, starts from the brand's expenses. "Jumping out of the digital world into the physical world, we always have to justify all the expenses," he told the Motorsports Sponsorship Summit. "Like, okay, you come to the Mint, it's X amount for a booth. You've got $10,000 in traveling your people and hotels and food and all that stuff. So it adds up very quickly. So lead generation is really important one. We are very big on pushing for data because we know that once you engage with those people, you're going to convert them, at least convert a percentage of them."

His biggest data tool is a contest. Every year the Mint 400 and BFGoodrich run a VIP-experience giveaway. "We get 40, 50, 60, 70,000 people that enter into that contest and we gather all their data," Martelli said. ▶ Watch Matt Martelli on lead generation

That's the model in miniature: offer something people want, and make entering mean leaving their contact information.

Trade something of value for the information

When a summit attendee asked how to capture fans' information at events, Martelli was specific. "Really physically that's the best way is so you have some sort of value that you're offering them and you're asking them to either enter their information or you're entering their information for them," he said. "I find it's better for them to enter their information because it's also creating this connection, right? So they're now entered to win X, right? And you've got their email and cell phone."

Miller answered with an example from USAC's long partnership with Amsoil. Fans at the track enter a drawing, and the winner and a guest watch the feature from inside the dirt-track oval. "Kind of like the VIP seats at a hockey game. So it really, really does work for the data collection that we're looking to do," he said, adding that "outside of that data collection at the event, digital is so easy to collect lots more data for that brand, so the combination of both are very powerful." ▶ See the full answer

Martelli made the same point about an autograph session the Rugged Radios brand runs at his events. "The other key to this that I can't stress more is collecting data. So they collect everybody's email, phone number, address, et cetera, so that they can follow up with emails and convert these into sales." ▶ Watch the clip

Follow up while they still remember you

A lead is only useful if somebody calls it. I learned that as a customer. At a desert race in Johnson Valley, my son and I test-drove UTVs from two different companies. The day we got home, a local dealer for one of them called to see if we wanted more information. We never heard from the other one.

When I told that story to Andre Jackson of Toyota on Meet the Sponsors, he explained how Toyota's trackside display is built to make that call happen. "That's our Toyota Racing Experience display, that's what it's designed to do. When you come in... you register and then there's questions like, okay, are you currently in the market? Are you three months out? Are you six months out? That type of thing," he said. The answers go "directly to our dealer database," so local dealers near each race get the leads, "and in many cases, yeah, within a day or two" they reach out. ▶ Watch Andre Jackson explain it

DC Shoes taught me the long version of the same lesson. At a Supercross years ago, their booth photographed me with my kids and emailed us a small JPEG that day. A year later they emailed the high-resolution photo, with a coupon attached. I was still in their database, and it worked on me. A racer can do the same thing on a smaller scale: take the photo, get the email, and give the sponsor a list it can use for months.

Build the tracking into what you hand out

Travis Shoemake turned his hero cards into a measuring tool during a short Sheetz program on his dragster. Sheetz wanted fans to download and use its app, so he put a trackable QR code on the cards. "My hero card is just a giant QR code that tracks, right? Because I need, just as Megan Meyer has taught me, I need to show them those deliverables and those trackable things," he told the Drag Racing Sponsorship Summit.

The numbers made his case for him. He said he went through about 1,500 cards across 18 days between the Reading and Charlotte races, in Sheetz territory, compared with 32 at Pomona when he wasn't running Sheetz colors. "When you have a loyal fan base and you're in the right region and you know how to activate and you know what they want, they wanna get people to use their app." ▶ Watch Travis Shoemake on this

Megan Meyer, the two-time NHRA world champion he credits, collects information between events too. "One thing that I really like to do with our sponsors is send them free products, and the way how they get to sign up for that is to either fill out a survey or just sign up for my newsletter list," she said. A survey asking "what are the tools that you like to use or what products do you use on your daily driver, stuff like that, that's really important information that I can share with the sponsor." ▶ Watch Megan Meyer on surveys

Use the numbers to change what you do

Measuring isn't only for the year-end report. It tells you where to put your effort next time. Martelli said measurement changed how the Mint 400 spends its own marketing money. Before using the analytics company Hookit, "we'd spend a lot of our dollars post-event talking about how great the event was and doing highlight reels and doing a lot of video content post-event. And what we discovered through the measurement and the tool of Hookit is that that's not where our money was best spent. Our money was best spent prior to the event and during the event." ▶ Watch the interview

A racer can learn the same way. If the QR code on your table got more scans than the one on your hero card, move it. If a contest brought in a hundred emails and a giveaway brought in ten, run more contests. Then show the sponsor what you changed and why.

The takeaway

• Before each event, agree with the sponsor on what you'll count: emails, scans, entries, samples, sales.
• Offer something worth having in exchange for contact information, and let fans enter it themselves.
• Put a trackable QR code or code on everything you hand out.
• Get leads to the sponsor fast so it can follow up within a day or two.
• Compare results across events and change what you do based on what worked.