How the Oklahoma City Thunder Doubled Their SMS Fanbase and Increased Digital Fan Engagement

Challenge

The Oklahoma City Thunder continuously seeks ways to deepen connections with a diverse and growing fanbase without losing authenticity. With a wide range of fan personas, from families attending free events to die-hard season ticket holders, one-size-fits-all messaging wasn’t going to cut it.

"We have a big emphasis on every fan having a unique journey," said Tanner Moulton, Manager of Thunder Innovations at the Oklahoma City Thunder. "Understanding the different types of fans and making sure the right people get the right message is focus.”

Solution

The OKC Thunder chose Community as their primary SMS fan engagement solution because it was easy to use and seamlessly integrated with their segmentation and data workflows. It quickly became an essential part of their fan strategy, allowing for precision outreach and agile campaign deployment.

“Community enables us to be authentic with our fans through mobile SMS in a reliable manner,” Moulton explained. “We’ve been able to build the trust component, where the fans know if they’re getting a text from us, it’s relevant to them and their specific interests.”

Some of the creative initiatives led by the club include:

• College Offers: To engage a high-value, hard-to-reach audience, the team built a campaign that offered a way for users to self-identify as college students in exchange for flash sale alerts for same-day tickets.
• Playoff Mobilization: The Thunder built a subcommunity of 15,000+ fans to coordinate playoff participation, including local pop-up events across Oklahoma where fans showed up to support the team.
• Blue Friday (because in OKC land it’s not Black Friday) Campaign: The team offered early access to retail deals to engaged fans with high retail interest. This limited offer resulted in high CTR and conversion, out performing larger retail campaign channels.

Results

The impact of Community has been clear and increasingly evident across departments:

• 2X Subscriber Growth: SMS audience grew from 25K to 50K over the course of the NBA season
• 50%+ CTR: Hyper-targeted campaigns drove record engagement
• Insight-driven Engagement: Fans who opt in to communications or take similar actions score roughly 2x as high in fan engagement.

“Community gave us an efficient and reliable way to connect with fans directly to the palm of their hand. It allowed messaging to extend beyond transaction objectives and drive two-way communication engagement with our fanbase. This communication channel feels authentic and connected to our brand in a unique way.”

–Tanner Moulton, Manager of Thunder Innovation