Sports IP from the NBA, NFL, UFC, and LaLiga — drops moving at sports-calendar speed. iExcel ran the whole engine, for years, and beat the category medians doing it.
NBA Top Shot was exploding. NFL ALL DAY was about to launch. UFC Strike, LaLiga on Flow, Dapper VIP, and Dapper Flunks were right behind — every brand needing daily email, paid acquisition, and honest analytics, each on a different platform.
Dapper didn't need an agency that did one thing well. They needed one operator who could run it all, simultaneously.
Daily marketing operations across the full Dapper umbrella — flagship products, member tiers, cross-promotional drops, and the blockchain underneath.
NBA Top Shot's lifecycle program — an eight-figure quarterly send volume — didn't just generate opens. It generated purchases: 31.6% opens, 12.9% pack conversion, comfortably above consumer email medians.
New sign-ups don't automatically become buyers. We built the Customer.io onboarding flow for a six-figure cohort: 38% opened, 13.6% activated — and the activated cohort converted past 74%. It became the benchmark every later program chased.
"iExcel drove both output and strategy for Dapper's email marketing across NBA Top Shot, HubSpot, Customer.io, Dapper VIP, NFL × Dapper, and LaLiga on Flow."
By Q1 2022 the program ran at full portfolio scale: email output up 42% on the previous best quarter, open rates up 16.8% QoQ, click discipline intact. Scale without decay — growth that doesn't punish itself.
NFL ALL DAY's closed-beta emails: 55.3% opens, 36.6% clicks, 66.1% click-to-open. Numbers you don't get from blast volume — only from an audience that wanted to be there, and a program built to honor the moment.
We don't publish clients' raw numbers — we publish the beat. NFL ALL DAY's launch emails opened at roughly two-and-a-half times the category median.
A seven-figure quarterly media program across Meta, Google Search, Display, YouTube, and Twitter. The Kevin Durant YouTube launch delivered the lowest cost-per-lead of the entire test matrix. The pattern wasn't volume — it was testing message-channel fit until the cost fell out.
"Cost-per-acquisition improved 25% while we launched a new channel and a new campaign theme. The efficiency came from creative and targeting — not from cutting spend on what was working."
UFC Strike ran the Top Shot playbook — paid search to capture demand, incentive email to convert. 44.2% opens, 16.3% click-to-open, efficient launch-day economics. Nothing reinvented. Everything tuned.
In 2024 Dapper asked iExcel back: migrate NBA Top Shot and NFL ALL DAY off a legacy lifecycle platform onto Customer.io, and rebuild onboarding with the 2021 program as the bar. Five phases, audit to handoff. When it shipped, the legacy platform was retired.
One operator ran lifecycle email, automation, paid media, analytics, and a platform migration across a fast-moving multi-brand sports portfolio — for years. The work shipped. The marketplace bought. The client came back.
Lifecycle email, automation, paid media, analytics, and platform migrations — one quarterback, calibrated to how your buyer actually buys.
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