Your LAVA season prep checklist

The start of a new season is the best time to make sure your member program is working as hard as it can. Our NFL clients are deep in preseason prep right now, so we've pulled together the checklist we run with them.

No matter which league you’re gearing up for—NFL, NBA, NHL, or another season entirely—this checklist is worth revisiting to keep your program driving engagement, brand loyalty, and revenue. 

Here's what we cover to prep for a new season:

1. Set your goals for the season

Start here: what do you want to accomplish? A few common goals we see:

• Grow your member base: turn more unknown customers into known, engaged members

• Create reasons for guests to stay and spend: Try more early-arrival and timed Moments

• Add more partner-sponsored Moments: prove ROI for sponsors and create new partnership opportunities

You don't need a formal plan. Even one new use case is progress, and your Customer Success Manager (CSM) can help you map goals to what's realistic this season.

2. Refresh your passes

With your goals in mind, your passes are the next thing to review. We start by refreshing what's already there — updating rewards, expiration dates, and designs for the new season.

This is also a natural moment to look for expansion opportunities. Most clients start with a pass or two, then add more season over season as they get more out of the platform. An employee pass or a new tier for Season Ticket Members are common next steps. If your program is growing, this is where that growth takes shape.

3. Plan your Moments

Our team loves helping you find new and creative ways to engage your fans, especially when they’re personalized for your team. Here are a few of the most popular Moment triggers:

• Ticket scans: send timely and targeted offers to members the moment they scan in. Incentivize early arrival to maximize spend and time on site.

• Purchases: follow a transaction with a reward, an offer, or a thank you.

• Live NFL/NBA game feed: one of our favorite features, and one worth turning on if you haven't. It lets you trigger Moments off live game events, like a themed reward when a player scores, an opponent fumbles, or your team hits a certain point threshold. 

These are the ones we see most, but they're a starting point, not a limit. Bring your goals to your CSM, and we'll help you build the Moments that fit them.

4. Map your Season Ticket Member price codes and default rewards

If Season Ticket Members get special benefits, make sure that logic is up to date for the new season, whether it's automated through ticketing or updated manually. Double-check that your default rewards reflect the new season.

5. Review and test your new activation configurations

Once we’ve planned your new Moments, our team can help you configure, review, and test them before they go live.

6. Take care of LAVA admin housekeeping

A quick pass through the essentials keeps everything running clean:

• User management: add or remove users in case of any staffing changes

• Reward management: create new and retire old rewards

• Service comp budgets: set and assign budgets for your staff

  
  

7. Handle any team-specific readiness items

Every team has a few of its own team-specific elements based on how your program is set up, such as a cash back program for your members or registration pages for sponsor campaigns and special events. Your CSM knows yours—flag anything unique to your program that we can help with. 

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Ready to run through it? Connect with our team to knock out your readiness items. Not sure who to contact? Reach out to customersuccess@lava.ai. And if there's one goal we'd point everyone toward this season, it's a simple one: get more out of LAVA.