The LA Galaxyis one of the foremost soccer clubs in the United States. Home of David Beckham and Landon Donovan, LA Galaxy supports a large and committed fan base.

THE CHALLENGE: List Growth and Season Ticket Sales

Like many sports teams, the marketing team measures it's success by the number of season and game day tickets sold. LA Galaxy had long used email as a mechanism to communicate through newsletters and alerts to fan. They have all of the traditional collection and lead generation techniques in play across their websites, social networks and regular contests and special offers. LA Galaxy needed a new way to find and engage their most important fans.

THE SOLUTION: Live Capture through iPad App

The FanMail team, led by Josh York, introduced LA Galaxy to the idea of live fan collection using iPads. The idea was simple enough: arm a team of interns with LA Galaxy iPads to scour the stands during game days, looking for the most ardent and passionate fans. Offer these fans a great incentive to sign up on the spot and watch the fan list grow. FanMail technical architects quickly set to work on engineering the app. With a limited budget and the season just around the corner, FanMail needed a solution that was quick, lite, effective and scalable. Since the iPads needed to work on the Los Angeles 3G network (which is sketchy at the best of times), data transfer was an issue so the app needed to be able to work with as little data draw as possible. In addition, it needed to look good. It needed to represent the brand and draw fans into the experience when they saw it. Using ExactTarget Microsite Technology, Smart Capture and HTML5, the FanMail team produced a powerful fan collection tool for the iPad. Branded for LA Galaxy and never having to leave a single page, the app collects name, email and phone number in a very efficient and elegant experience. See a video of the function here: http://www.screencast.com/t/Z5cHHCe7

THE RESULTS: 1000 New Fans and Program ROI in 3 Games

“The iPad is still very new and fans like to play with it and enter their information on the spot,” said Bryan Arguello, database coordinator of the LA Galaxy. “Because the fans enter the information themselves, it’s more accurate and we get better results and higher engagement from our fans.” In just its first three home games, the team secured more than enough new season ticket holders to pay for the cost of the iPads and added nearly 1,000 new fans to its database. "The LA Galaxy averages about 350 new subscribers per game, as interns scour the stadium and parking lots armed with the five iPads," Arguello said. "With 13 more home dates through October, the team hopes to add more than 4,000 new fans by the end of the season."