Fiesta Bowl Accredits $1.5M in Sponsorship to CRM Software

Is sponsorship sales a new foothold in the broader battle between contact management companies? Salesforce competitor, Sage, is making a play for its share of the industry. Organizers of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl have been using Sage ACT! contact, customer management, and e-marketing solutions in their lead-up to this year's game, which will serve as the 2011 BCS National Championship. The Fiesta Bowl organization, which began using the CRM solution earlier this year, attributes an additional $1.5 million in sponsorships generated to its use.

"Prior to implementing Sage ACT!, we had no formal infrastructure in our sales and fundraising environment," explained Nick Underwood, senior account executive for Fiesta Bowl sponsorship development. "We were literally using spreadsheets and sticky notes. Sage ACT! has certainly cleaned up our work environment, saving our team time and improving efficiency."

Sage ACT! serves as the Fiesta Bowl organization's centralized database for customer and sponsor information including approximately 7,000 account records. Phone numbers, emails, meeting notes, and documents are easily organized, stored and updated within Sage ACT!. Sage E-marketing for ACT! is a cloud-based connected service used by the Fiesta Bowl organization and 175 committee members to design, automate and track email campaigns that support its sponsorship sales efforts.

"Sage ACT! has allowed our sales and development team to spend a significantly larger portion of each work day on the phone or in the field interacting with our customers," said Underwood.