The Division of Athletics and Recreation at University of Denver is located within the Ritchie Center, a $100 million dollar campus athletics and recreation facility.

It operates on a yearly budget of $25 million and it caters to a variety of audiences spanning from Division I college sports fans to community and campus members of its 14,000 square feet fitness center and parents of kids enrolled in a myriad of youth recreational and competitive programs.

Until recently, the Division did not have an overarching strategic plan for its social media efforts and content was being created sporadically and without a cohesive direction. I created this plan based on the Division business strategy and extensive meetings with various stakeholders in sales, marketing, branding, PR and finance. This helped determine the communication goals and planning protocols that shaped the social media strategy for the entire Division. The plan has generated buy-in and support for social media throughout the organization.

Engagement, customer service and revenue generation are at the core of this plan. The key performance indicators provided help gauge the success of all interactive campaigns utilizing social media.

The plan’s development led to several interactive campaigns and ongoing communication efforts. A couple of these campaigns can be found below.

Role

Interactive Media Strategist, user research, Content Manager, Project Manager, Social Media Analyst

Examples

• Social Media Strategic Plan
• Interactive Campaign – Tickets
• Interactive Campaign – Traditions

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Overview

The University of Denver employs over 2,800 faculty and staff. There is a growing number of social media content managers and strategists on campus and we meet regularly to share new developments, trends and other social media best practices.

I started testing and researching user adoption of Foursquare for the Division of Athletics and Recreation early on in its initial stages. Our facility, the Daniel L. Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness, averages approximately 3,000 daily campus and community visitors. Other departments had heard about Foursquare, but were not yet convinced that it was a proven customer engagement and service tool.

My “Foursquare at DU” presentation explained the user and business features and reporting tools in a concise and relevant manner so that all attendees, no matter their technical expertise, could see the benefits of the social network and ways in which it could apply to their departments or schools.

As a result, the Newman Center for Performing Arts and other schools started testing or using Foursquare to interact with their visitors.

My team monitors check-in traffic and engages in daily conversations about our facilities on Foursquare. We received a very positive response from our customers and engagement has grown tremendously. Foursquare is now an integral part of the DU Athletics and Recreation Social Media Strategic Plan I wrote and implemented.

We reached 2,000 check-ins in less than a month in just one of the 11 venues I manage. We have since quadrupled check-in rates at our two stadiums, two ice arenas, fitness center, outdoor and indoor courts and at satellite apparel store locations.

Role

Writer, presenter, Social Media Strategist

Examples

• Foursquare at University of Denver – University Social Media Directors Presentation
• DU Athletics and Recreation Social Media Strategic Plan

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The Coors Fitness Center (CFC) is part of the overall Division of Athletics and Recreation at University of Denver. Located within the $100 million dollar campus athletics and recreation facility, it has always been a business unit of DU Recreation. Consequently, its web pages have been a part of the overall DU Recreation website. User research has shown that CFC customers would like a dedicated website focused solely on their needs.

Cross promotion of youth programs and adult sports will still be a priority, but the focus will be the fitness center customers. The new site will incorporate the majority of the University website template features and will allow for certain customization specific to CFC.

Role

Project Manager, user research, Lead User Experience Designer

Examples

• Wireframes
• Site maps
• Content management: copy, assets
• University communications content template customized to manage assets and other copy planning details

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Overview

The Division of Athletics and Recreation at University of Denver is located within the Ritchie Center, a $100 million dollar campus athletics and recreation facility.

The Coors Fitness Center (CFC) takes up more than 14,000 square feet of this facility with multiple levels, indoor basketball courts, six outdoor tennis courts and the only indoor Olympic-size pool in Denver. It is open to the public as well as to the campus.

I was tasked to search for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that worked well with the needs of the sales, marketing and management teams. I conducted needs assessments with each individual department, but I also brought them together as a cross-functional team to share their needs with each other so that I could assess the way they would work together in the system. I also assessed the needs of the customer as they would interact with the front end of the CRM on our websites. In order to find the best solution, I researched several systems and narrowed it down to two options in terms of the following criteria:

• Easy to use interface that is also web-based to eliminate installs, updates and access issues
• Easy to use customer facing interface and seamless integration with our websites
• CRM should track our customers from leads, through the sales process (opportunity, sales stages), complete with follow-up info
• Accountability – ability to assign leads to certain account managers
• Communication – keep track of emails, phone or marketing campaigns targeting potential customers (mass emailing, mailings, online ads)
• Integration – Outlook email, calendar, contacts integration; Website forms to CRM lead generation; Nice to have some Google Apps integration
• Cross department integration – Sales, Marketing, Membership
• Reporting – leads and sales activity. Real time reports and dashboards
• Cost – for about 5 to 10 users, no more than $5,000 per year ($40 or less/ per user / per month)
• Reliable Customer Service

Role

User research, vendor assessment and negotiation, developer (HTML, JavaScript, CSS)

Examples

• Vendor Assessment Report
• CRM Interface Customization and Website Integration

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Overview

The Division of Athletics and Recreation at University of Denver (DU) has various constituencies. They consist of:

• 30,000 fitness center campus and community households
• 20,000 front range alumni
• Over 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students
• Over 2,800 faculty and staff

As part of my interactive email communication strategy, I compile a monthly email that I send to 20,000 DU alumni. I usually code most of it by hand in HTML and CSS due to the custom nature of some of its features and due to the issues that arise from machine code when testing in Outlook. I optimize it according to the latest trends in email marketing, and I also optimize it for various interactive strategies such as:

• Social sharing – ready made tweets linked to buttons
• Planned hash tags for Twitter engagement
• Real-time tracking – bit.ly links created for each article
• Tracked links to easily identify leads in our CRM
• Strategically placed calls to action encouraging social following and sharing

Role

Interactive Marketing Strategist, HTML, CSS and copy editor

Examples

• Monthly Alumni Email pdf version
• Monthly Alumni Email html version
• Social Media Strategic Plan
• You may also want to see my DU Athletics and Recreation Social Media Strategy & Interactive Campaigns work example

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Thanks!

- Dragos