Are you providing updates to your sponsors on a monthly basis? Are you sending out a newsletter? If you’re not then, you absolutely need to add this to your to-do list.
Communication is essential in any relationship, and the sponsor/rider one will certainly benefit from this action.
It’s a very simple process to implement and can be as basic or complicated as you want it to be.
In the most simple form. A personal email each month to the sponsorship director letting them know how you finished and what types of activation you did to promote their brand.
From there you can get more detailed up to developing a monthly newsletter. Using services like Constant Contact (Paid) or Mail Chimp (Free), you can design a newsletter using their templates to help with the overall look and feel.
Whatever method you choose to use, I recommend you put information aside throughout the month, so the task isn’t so daunting when it’s time to send it out. Using the templates, you can quickly add links to your social media accounts and website as well as highlight the results of your efforts that month.
Another thing that I recommend is including a picture of you with your bike and another of you without your wearing your helmet. The personal connection is something the is beneficial.
One last thing and this comes from the photographer in me. Don’t screenshot or include pictures with watermarks on them. Please spend a couple of bucks with your local photographer and buy the digital images. I recommend even going so far to find out their rules regarding reposting on social media and if they approve your sponsors using them as well. That type of information is valuable to your sponsor’s social media team as they are always looking for content to use in their efforts.
So sure, it takes some time to do all of this but time spent now will allow you to maintain those relationships well into your racing career.
As always the ideas expressed above are my own and I make no claims to the success or failure of implementing them. They are suggestions to make you think. Please vet all ideas against your personal goals before implementing them.
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