How WSW Put the Fans at the Heart of Everything
The ‘Western Sydney’ area is currently the third largest economy in Australia, behind Melbourne and Sydney CBD. The region is one of the fastest growing populations in Australia with an estimated resident population of over 2.3 Million. This represents an enormous opportunity and responsibility for the Western Sydney Wanderers. How to capture, nurture and build a fanbase amongst this area?
Western Sydney Wanderers has committed themselves to support their fanbase in the best way possible. Crafting personalised relationships with their fans to facilitate the best-in-class fan experience.
The first step was to organise and centralise all fan data into one single source of truth to create a 360-degree view of the fanbase. By setting up the correct Marketing Technology stack, WSW was able to develop a clear view on all of their fan data.
From here we’ve clustered the entire fanbase into valuable segments. This way WSW could diversify their communication to different fan segments. Segments for example are: loyal members, returning fans, prospects, active supporters, and multi-ticket buyers.
These segments have helped the Wanderers to week-in-week-out determine which content is being sent out to which segment. This more personalised and relevant communication has resulted into a significant increase of marketing KPI’s as open rate, click rate and conversion rate.
By nurturing the WSW fanbase properly for the last year, the opening round of the APL was the ultimate test; Can we sell out a stadium leaning solely on our fanbase and not spending any advertising money?
"We’ve embarked on this fanbase journey together with Sports Cloud Australia 2 years ago. We knew we were sitting on a ‘pot of gold’ with all of our fan data but our challenge was how to monetise all of this fan data. And to utilise it in a way both our fans, our partners and the club were benefitted from it. The result was even better than we hoped. We’ve broken our previous ticket sales records with 21% in the first game of the season, decreased our media spend significantly, increased our membership base and enhanced our fan engagement in so many ways. Even until the point we now are able to collaborate with our partners in developing new opportunities onto how we can deliver the best experiences for our fans. "
Sports Cloud Australia has helped WSW develop a state-of-the-art digital Webshop as well as implementing new point of sale systems for in stadium merchandise sales.
Features of this new Webshop amongst others include:
With the new Webshop the Western Sydney Wanderers are dedicated to seeing even more fans proudly represent the red and black colours!
The new point-of-sale systems in stadium have already delivered a record-breaking match day turnover. An increase of more then 50% as opposed to the last match day record.
What optimised features do this point-of-sales systems enable for the WSW?
With these new systems the efficiency for WSW staff during match day increased significantly and for fans it meant a massive reduction in waiting times in front of the shop. Even members were recognised in stadium and got their personalised discount codes.
"Seeing our fans represent the club colours is of utmost importance to us. That’s why we committed ourselves to start the season with a freshly optimised online shop and better in stadium merchandise experience to show our fans, it’s all about them. The result was even better than we hoped. We’ve not only broken records in ticket sales and merchandise revenue, but we’ve also created stronger, more meaningful connections with our fans".
Do you want more information about this Western Sydney Wanderers case? Feel free to contact Corey and Charlotte.
Operations & Business Development Manager
coreymiddleton@sportscloudaustralia.com
Digital Marketing Specialist
charlottevinecombe@sportscloudaustralia.com
