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Bristol Rugby - A sell-out success

At the start of the 2006-7 Rugby Union season, Bristol Rugby club were facing some touch challenges both on and off the field. Challenging to stay at the top of the Guinness Premiership league, they were facing some big matches at the Memorial Ground, but their online ticket sales were handled through a basic email form. Heavy on administration to process the bookings and credit card transactions, the system was not giving good customer service to the fans desperate to get tickets to see their team play.

Taking pressure off the box office

Steve Gray, Ticket Sales Manager at Bristol Rugby comments, ‘We needed a solution that would give our customers a better online ticket booking experience and take some of the pressure off the box office. We have a lower than average percentage of season tickets so have to make sure we sell more to keep gate attendances up, adding more pressure to the box office. ts Advance has given us that solution, with a fast web sales interface linked in to our website and real time payment processing, our fans are getting a top class service. It’s great to come in to the office in the morning and see from an email report how many sales have been made overnight rather than to face an inbox full of ticket requests needing to be processed.’

‘And we have the flexibility to use the call centre to cope with overflow demand for tickets, taking even more   pressure off our administrative staff, but still keeping in control through daily reporting.’ Steve continues. 

Getting to know your customers
The ts Advance solution also means that Bristol Rugby is able to capture comprehensive customer data and use this to boost their marketing plans. Their existing customer data lists have been cleaned and new data gets now gets added as ticket sales take place. This has enabled Bristol Rugby to target their marketing efforts, sending out well-designed email campaigns to their fans, with great success. Each email contains links to take fans directly to the online ticket sales interface for the specific games being promoted. These links are tracked through the ts Advance reporting function, demonstrating how effective each email campaign has been. 

Achieving record sell-out
This marketing success was demonstrated recently when it was decided to move a local derby match to nearby Ashton Gate Stadium. ‘We were aware that the capacity of our Memorial Ground wasn’t going to be enough for the Christmas game against Bath Rugby and moved to Ashton Gate Stadium, increasing our capacity from 12,000 to 21,000 tickets,’ Steve explains.

‘An email marketing campaign was then launched to promote the match with outstanding results. With four weeks still to go before the match, we had sold out the initial allocation of tickets and had to release some contingency tickets, also selling out within days. We achieved the highest ever attendance for an English league game. Post match analysis of the campaign showed that over 80% of tickets were sold online. Success all round as we also won the match!’ smiled Steve. 

Market research has recently been carried out to ask the fans how they want to receive communication from the Club with 81% now saying they would like to receive an email update.

Looking forward to the future

Ticket distribution has also been extended through a trackable link direct from the Guinness Premiership website to Bristol Rugby online ticket sales. ‘We are delighted with the success of our online sales this season, 53% of our ticket sales are now made online through ts Advance and we have enjoyed several more sell-out matches. We are looking forward to our next challenge at Ashton Gate Stadium in April, planning our email campaigns already, and hope that it will be another sell-out success for Bristol Rugby - with a result on the field to match.’ Steve concludes.