By Max Dickman, Lead Consultant, Two Circles.
Horse
racing is a sport that captures the Irish public’s imagination. However,
there remains a big opportunity to increase the sport’s footprint and grow the
number of people who experience racing across the country - building on the
foundations of its long and celebrated history.
From March to September last year, HRI worked with Two
Circles on a pilot project.
We are a data-driven sports marketing agency, headquartered in London that helps
sports organisations build better relationships with their audiences and
partners.
Two Circles and HRI set out specific
goals for this project,
these were to harness the power of data to better understand who HRI’s customers
are; to build insight-led marketing strategies that grew the number of advance,
and consequently total, tickets sold; and to create a dialogue with customers
to improve their raceday experience and, as a direct result, get customers
coming back more.
One year on,
we’re happy to share the early results and some new insights into racing in
Ireland.
1) Raceday
Experience
A better understanding
of what customers like, dislike and value is helping improve the raceday
experience – and data shows racing continues to be one of the best sporting
experiences in the UK and Ireland.
Surveying
customers attending racedays in 2018 at Ballinrobe (McHale Day), The Curragh
(The Irish Derby and Longines Irish Champions weekends) and Leopardstown (Longines Irish Champions
Weekend), we started diagnosing what was great and what needs improving.
From
“game-changer” factors (such as atmosphere and view) to “money-makers” (food,
drink, betting) and “game-breakers” (toilets, queues), we recommended that HRI apply the insight to
optimise customer experience in 2019. But what was fantastic to see
already is the advocacy of the Irish racing customers, with Net Promoter Scores
(NPS)* as high as +64, compared to a UK sports industry benchmark of +50.
2) Returning
Racegoers
Organisations
thrive when their customers come back again and again. Knowing who is coming
back and why is fundamental to Irish racing’s growth, and retention-focused
marketing efforts have yielded good early results.
A
focus for 2018 was unlocking the potential of “known” databases; customers that
have previously transacted with a racecourse, who are both hot prospects to
return and can be communicated with for little-to-no cost.
For
Longines Irish Champions Weekend, part of the marketing strategy focused on
addressing this audience via email and social media. In so doing, we drove an
increase in the number of advance ticket purchasers and increased the 2017/18
retention number by 4% compared to 2016/17. Increasing retention will be a key objective for the
growth of LICW in 2019.
3) Growing
Relationships
More advance
ticket sales and more data-capture activities create more contactable customer
records. Our focus on this in 2018 has led to bigger databases and therefore a
better platform to communicate with racing customers going forward.
Customers
signing up to hear from an organisation is a value exchange. A pure love of – and
desire to hear from – a racecourse can be supplemented by offers of exclusive
content, early bird ticket access, and competition prizes.
More
racing customers than ever signed up to hear from the LICW, with database growth of 143% across the 2018 season. This enabled us to grow
engagement with these Irish racing fans, to both keep them informed of news and
offers, but also execute more targeted marketing communications that drove
ticket sales.
Outside
of LICW, there was also success in Ballinrobe. By growing the
marketable database – in addition to data-driven initiatives that increased
email engagement with Ballinrobe’s customers and improved the impact of paid marketing
decisions – the course posted a total attendance increase of 19% year-on-year at
the 2018 McHale Day.
We
have loved working with HRI, Ballinrobe, The Curragh and Leopardstown, and are excited to see how Irish
racing will grow in 2019.
*Net Promoter Scores measure the
willingness of customers or fans to recommend an organisation’s products,
services or events to others