Ivy.ai is the NIL Help Every Athletic Department Needs

Last Updated on September 2, 2021

The following is a sponsored post.

For the past two months, I’ve been pitched a new company entering the name, image and likeness space virtually every day. There are marketplaces to help student athletes partner with brands, platforms to sell merchandise, compliance and education solutions and more. Some are innovative, and others are just reiterations of a dozen other companies filling my inbox with their press releases. Ivy.ai, a chatbot service, was one of the few who stood out to me immediately.

What makes Ivy.ai unique

Ivy.ai stood out in my inbox because it’s unique and because it focuses on helping athletic departments manage the long list of new work and issues landing in their laps. Already being used in higher education, Ivy.ai’s chatbot presents a solution for athletic departments that allows them to streamline and scale communication with student athletes around NIL (or any other topic).

How Ivy.ai will make athletic admins’ jobs easier

Part of what appealed to me about Ivy.ai is how it might allow departments with a smaller compliance staff to take some of the pressure off all the added workload of NIL. I’ve heard from so many of you who are taxed to your limits, and after previewing Ivy.ai for myself, I knew it was something I wanted to share with you all.

This is a tool that can go beyond the confines of the athletic department. For example, it could be set up for access by fans and boosters with questions around NIL to ensure consistent messaging and awareness of the school’s policy on NIL, in addition to NCAA rules and any applicable state laws.

How athletic departments can use Ivy.ai

Here are some of the things you can use Ivy.ai for:

• Answering commonly asked questions
• Communicating internal policies, state laws and other restrictions and any future changes
• Distributing trainings or quick tips
• Conducting surveys
• Taking users through an inbound or outbound campaign

I also like how Ivy.ai can be set up to work through various channels, depending on where you find your student athletes or other users are most active. It can be on an internal or external website, through Facebook messenger, SMS texting or even through an Amazon Alexa command.

Ivy.ai even has an email solution that allows you to use their automated AI to analyze incoming emails and send automated responses to those questions the bot is confident it can answer. All other emails will be routed to your Email Center within Ivy.ai, where multiple team members can collaborate and you can easily see which inquiries have been handled and which still need attention.

There are an endless number of questions you could set up the Ivy.ai bot to answer. After speaking with a number of folks in compliance, here are some of the most common things they tell me they’re answering over and over again:

• How do I find NIL opportunities?
• How do I grow my following on [insert social media platform]?
• Can I use/wear the school’s logo?

These are all questions that would be easy to answer with a chat bot, pointing student athletes toward partners with education platforms, internal trainings and institutional policies or forms. Questions on things like financial aid or international visa issues could have designated replies and then be assigned to the appropriate university departments for follow-up.

For more complex questions that require a more individualized response, the chatbot can streamline communications and allow admins to answer in an organized fashion where everyone with backend access can see the question, who answered it and what information was provided.

If this sounds like something your department could use, you can set up a 15-minute consultation or an hour-long demonstration to see the chatbot in action.

This is a sponsored post—that’s not something I’m trying to hide. However, it’s worth noting this is the only NIL-related company I’ve chosen to partner with on any of my platforms so far. That’s because I’ve put in a significant amount of time vetting the companies that have pitched me, and this is the only one I’ve been willing to work with to date because I view sponsored posts as a personal endorsement of sorts. I have demo’d this product and genuinely think athletic departments need to know about it.