CoachHub links brands, coaches, parents

Millions of kids participate in sports every day. With the hassles of scheduling games, alerting players to rain-outs and carpooling, parents spend hours figuring out the logistics of managing or being part of sports teams. The staff at Barefoot Proximity, a Cincinnati-based global digital and eCRM agency, found a way to help parents score with a high-tech time-saving tool.

“Being a coach includes more than being just a coach,” says Troy Hitch, executive creative director at Barefoot Proximity. “Besides understanding the game, you have to deal with the players, their parents, friends and everyone else involved. It can be a lot of work.” That’s why BFP created CoachHub, a free website that connects coaches and parents who are involved on a sports team. Coaches can click one button to contact all parents at once, making last-minute schedule changes, rainouts and cancellations a lot less hassle. They can also remind parents about snack duty and even post pictures to share.

But Coachhub acts as more than a niche social media website. Imagine you’re a soccer mom driving to a game, when all of the sudden your phone beeps with more than a reminder from CoachHub that it’s your week to buy snacks. It also has a mobile coupon for Gatorade attached to the reminder.

You stop at the closest gas station, pick up Gatorade and scan your mobile coupon. Just like that, you have snacks and saved money. “The redemption rate of these coupons would be incredibly high,” says Hitch. “This is where we create partners with brands.” Hitch and his team plan on working on partnerships with brands like Gatorade and Dick’s Sporting Goods. “All of it helps the user, but it also creates meaningful intersections between the user and these brands,” Hitch says.

As people use CoachHub, the program collects super-rich consumer data that BFP can leverage to gain other partners. Dick’s could partner with BFP and sell one-click equipment packages to teams on CoachHub at a 10 percent discount.
“The idea is that a brand has the potential to create a self-liquidating market experience,” Hitch says. “Instead of throwing money into advertisement, they can actually create an asset that creates revenue and is meaningful to the consumer.”

By Evan Wallis