A winning digital game plan.

Kicking sports marketing to the next level

Real Madrid is more than a football club. It has been home to some of the game’s most talented players, and with a record 15 UEFA Champions League titles and 26 European and world football trophies, winning is part of the club’s DNA. But what truly sets the member-owned club apart is its passionate and loyal fan base.

“Real Madrid is the best club in the world with more than 600 million fans,” says Israel García, director of digital strategy. “But with such a large and diverse fanbase, it’s challenging to understand what fans need and how to start a conversation with each individual fan.”

Chief Technology Officer, José Manuel Peña, recognised the potential of digital technology to revolutionise how Real Madrid approaches conversations with fans. He and García led the charge on a three-year digital transformation powered by Adobe. Real Madrid now uses Adobe solutions to drive its personalisation strategy, acquiring data around fans and leveraging it to start a dialogue.

“The connections we build, the passions we chase, and the moments we share are what set the Real Madrid community apart,” says Peña. “With Adobe, we can inspire our fans to be part of something bigger than themselves on and off the pitch.”

Unifying fan data on one platform

Fans today want to feel like they’re a part of the game whether they’re enjoying matches in person at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, via televisions around the world, or while watching digitally. They also want to stay engaged with the team and favourite players outside of the match, enjoying more behind the scenes content such as interviews, training footage, and analysis to fuel their passion.

Peña and García think of this as a need to provide a unified customer or fan experience - both agree that data is the key pillar supporting Real Madrid’s digital strategy as marketers can only start a compelling conversation when they know what fans want to hear. Faced with a growing number of fans and channels, Real Madrid needed to consolidate and organise data to truly understand what content fans want and what channels they want to engage on.

Real Madrid now brings together information from every touchpoint, including turnstiles and concessions at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, email, web, and the Real Madrid app, into a single unified data platform using Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP). Coupled with real-time insights from Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, marketing, growth, and data teams at Real Madrid can understand what each fan wants throughout the entire customer lifecycle across multiple channels, not only one touchpoint.

By understanding that behaviour and tracking omnichannel customer journeys, marketers can segment the global fan base much more effectively and use actionable insights to better inform their decision making and fan engagement programs. For example, using rich, real-time data, teams can understand the right time and channel to suggest a ticket offer or highlight a deal at the club store, increasing the likelihood of engagements and ultimately conversions. To further enhance the in-person experience for fans in the stadium, Real Madrid are working on new capabilities, such as sending text messages or push notifications with personalised concession offers when a fan passes through the turnstiles before a match.

Peña highlights how Adobe also provides invaluable privacy and cybersecurity capabilities that help keep fans’ data safe. The built-in consent management in Adobe Experience Platform, for instance, helps manage private data in compliance with regional data protection regulations.

“Adobe helps us handle billions of pieces of personal information correctly and securely, protecting both our fans and the Real Madrid brand,” says Peña.

Shots on target: tailored messages across email, SMS, and app

With Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform providing a single source for managing unified profiles, García brought in Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Target to focus on personalisation and to further optimise its acquisition funnel. Real Madrid typically sends hundreds of millions of emails every year. In the past, every fan typically saw the same email, regardless of their interests. With unified customer profiles driving more granular segmentation, marketers now send 500 million emails through 800 campaigns, with fans only receiving messages that are relevant to them.

For example, while anyone can sign up for a free Madridista loyalty membership account, Target identifies behaviours, such as high consumption of free digital content, that indicate members might be ready to upgrade to a premium membership. The result is record user acquisition with higher community satisfaction.

Real Madrid’s marketers aren’t limited to approaching fans through email alone. Journey Optimizer also enables them to coordinate campaigns across SMS or mobile app push notifications. Fans now receive messages tailored to their interests on their preferred channel.

Keeping up with match day updates

García also oversaw an overhaul of the Real Madrid website to deliver a best-in-class experience for both fans and digital teams. The club sped up time to market with web and app content centralised and correctly categorised on a single platform by taking a headless approach and using Experience Fragments within Adobe Experience Manager Sites. Digital teams can create personalised experiences by rearranging content for different fans depending on their interests, with auto-translation helping to reach more fans globally with content in their native languages.

The new content management system is also very easy to use, allowing authors to quickly deliver new content such as pre-and post-match commentary, real-time statistics and images, and player interviews — a must on match days when fans are constantly checking in for updates, highlights, and behind the scenes content. With Experience Manager Sites and Assets as a Cloud Service, the website also scales easily, operating without a glitch even when receiving millions of visits during a match.

“Fans now know that they can come to our website during the game and get the latest news as it happens,” says García. “This encourages them to visit us more frequently, consume more content, and become more engaged Madridistas.”

Bringing fans closer to the game

Real Madrid worked closely with Adobe throughout its digital transformation to get the most out of Adobe’s technology. “Change wouldn’t have been possible without the Adobe Ultimate Success team,” says García. “When undergoing such a large transformation, it’s valuable to have people who are experts in each solution and understand the best way to approach implementation.”

With the foundation of the digital transformation in place, Real Madrid plans to focus on continuous development with greater personalisation across every touchpoint. “Our next step is to fine-tune our personalisation strategy, localising more content for every country, market, and user,” says García. “I see a great opportunity for generative AI technology here, as it will allow us to amplify our global content with more variations that serve audiences in their native languages.”

By continuously evolving its marketing strategies and embracing digital transformation, Real Madrid sets a new standard for how football clubs can and should engage with its fans, providing a blueprint for the future of sports marketing.