With 2.5 million tickets sold, Rugby World Cup 2015 was the UK’s biggest sporting event of that year. 

Building a database of engaged fans was one of the best marketing tools used in helping to achieve record ticket sales. 

Starting from zero

In 2013, despite multiple Rugby World Cup tournaments having been played around the world, an email database didn’t exist. So the first task for the marketing and comms team was to build one.

From running social media campaigns that targeted those watching live sporting events, to taking a ‘headless scrum machine’ to rugby events around the country, no opportunity to capture data was missed

Building excitement 

By the spring of 2014, the RWC database was well on its way towards 1 million members, but with less than four months to go until tickets went on sale, subscribers needed to start getting excited. 

As part of the database sign-up process, fans shared the team they would be supporting at the event and their postcode. This data would be used to shape the content of every email and to ensure it was relevant to every fan.

The email approach became simple; show fans exciting content that focused on their team or matches being played in their local area.

Hitting a 71% open rate

The approach was simple; delivering it was not.

In total, there were 20 teams taking part in the tournament and 13 venues being used all over England, so delivering relevant content to every fan would take some serious effort. 

And that is what happened.

The concern became less about click-through rates or driving web traffic, that was for later months, right now the aim would be to make sure a fan got some form of value from opening an RWC email.

So rather than sending 4 standard emails out every two weeks to the entire database, one great email was sent that had 20 different versions tailored to fans interests.

And it worked. When someone enjoyed reading a RWC email they made sure to open the next and then the one after that…

Soon enough, the combination of having an engaged audience and exciting content saw the email open rate peak at 71%. 

Record demand for rugby tickets 

In autumn 2014, and precisely a year to go until the first RWC2015 match would take place, tickets went on sale.

Now was the time that targets would switch to driving web traffic and purchases, but because of the hard work that had been carried out in making sure the database opened emails, all ticket targets were all easily smashed.

Demand was huge! 

Ultimately, it was the combined marketing and comms activity from the whole RWC2015 team that sold 2.5m tickets, including Charles Dance delivering a spine-tingling speech in a social video to breaking a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest scrum.

But it was the fans on the database who helped drive ticket demand and fear of missing out. Not only did they buy tickets in their thousands, but they also shared the videos, engaged with the content and helped to produce record ticket sales.

Learnings

RWC2015 set the blueprints of how big events now promote themselves and sell their tickets.

It also proved that putting effort into producing emails with content that is relevant to fans and based on the data they give you, achieves incredible results.

So if you find you need to improve your email results:

• Ask your subscribers what interests them
• Use that data
• Tailor your content as much as possible. Even if that means you produce 20 versions of one email! 

Stuart worked as part of the RWC marketing & comms team developing the digital strategy.

If you would like advice on running effective email campaigns contact [email protected]

Stuart