In a year where Mets ownership is looking to get the fans back, the team is sitting in first place in early May, and there is a buzz at Citi Field that has never been seen with such regularity before. But are the Mets are making a big blunder when it comes to their premium promotions in 2015?
Last night was Jacob deGrom Gnome Night. The first 15,000 fans received the giveaway. There was just one problem… the official attendance was 39,730.
The team was promoting the giveaway pretty heavily for nearly a month. It was everywhere, a dozen promos per broadcast, popup ads on Mets.com, Twitter and Facebook campaigns, and several emails as well. And after all that heavy pushing, they weren’t even available for half the fans at the game.
In recent years, the Mets have cut their giveaways for premium items such as bobble-heads significantly from 25,000 to 20,000 in 2014, and now down to 15,000 for this season, despite attendance increasing the last two seasons.
Lines were long to get into the game before the gates opened, and I’m hearing from others on social media that the giveaways were long gone, even though they were in the park early.
Hey Mets – you’ve been trying to win the fans back. Don’t leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people you’re trying to get back. I understand that by limiting the number of items, you’re encouraging people to arrive early and thus spend extra money at the park, but you’re also creating negative goodwill instead of positive.
Think of the kid that was hoping to get the gnome, but his parents didn’t arrive early enough… the parents had to hear it all game long and they may not bring their kid back because they don’t want to hear the complaining again. You want to get the next generation at the ballpark early and often.
There are a couple of other premium giveaways coming up this season. I understand that it may be too late to order extras in time for some of the other giveaways, but you can still make up for it.
Prior to the game, announce that additional items are being ordered if you didn’t get a giveaway through the gate, or that you can get a rain check and pick it up at the park at another game. You create the positive goodwill and guess what…you’ll get someone back at another game if they want the item bad enough.
But what do I know?
If you were at the game last night, what was your experience?
