Skip to main content

Utilising Facebook Messenger To Entice UFC Fans

28 May 2020

The mixed martial arts organisation used a personalised experience utilising Facebook Messenger to entice UFC fans. Giving their global fans local information about its upcoming events. 

Mixed martial arts for the masses


With more than 318 million fans and 80 million social media followers, UFC is the world’s premier mixed martial arts (MMA) organisation. Headquartered in Las Vegas and hosting more than 40 live events throughout the world every year. 
UFC uses Messenger to answer fan and customer questions about its upcoming events, pay-per-views and Flight Pass subscriptions around the globe. With this campaign, the organisation wanted to use Messenger as a way to reach and engage prospective customers. Especially those who were aware of UFC 244, but still in the consideration phase.

Utilizing Facebook messenger 


Messenger helps to create a personable experience for each fan. Exciting and educated and removing friction. Together with its media partner Media33, UFC used the inGenious AI platform to custom-build an experience. Having created similar experiences for past events, UFC made sure to include more detailed answers. Through a combination of automated FAQs, quick replies, photo and video content and internal links, the organisation made it fast and simple for people to get the answers they needed.

Enticing audiences 


With a global audience in nearly every time zone, UFC’s customers have different view times and ways to access events. With Messenger, the organisation created region-specific content about UFC 244—giving people a personalized experience for when and how they could view the event. By providing region-specific information, UFC easily increased its conversion rate from consideration to purchases. UFC used ads that click to Messenger targeted to a broad audience to attract new, potential viewers into Messenger to start a conversation. UFC also targeted ads to lookalike audiences based on people who had had previous Messenger interactions, interest-based audiences and affinity audiences.
Using the right creative
To make sure more qualified potential viewers engaged with the experience, UFC set expectations for it within the ad creative. The organisation showed the Messenger flow in the ads and tailored the headline and body copy to showcase its value. The company also designed the creative to work well on mobile and make it seamless to click through.
UFC and Media33 used a combination of products to track the success of their experience. The team used Ads Manager and Facebook pixel standard event data and worked with analytics company Mixpanel to determine how well the experience performed.

The success 


By creating a personalised experience for its global audience, optimising its ads for mobile, and providing all the details that people were looking for, the UFC Messenger presence was a knockout:

    • 15% lift in return on ad spend compared to previous campaigns

 

    • 2.1X higher conversion rate from message to purchase compared to previous campaigns

 

    • 25% higher conversion rate from interest to purchase compared to previous campaigns



This blog was originally from Facebook. If you enjoyed this blog take a look at more like this on the blog section of our website.