Auckland Rugby Membership Renewal

Background

The Auckland Rugby Football Union (ARFU) is the principal administrative body overseeing Auckland's NPC team, the Blues Super 12 Franchise, and the Auckland club rugby competition, The Gallagher Shield.

ARFU administers a strong membership base, with 3,400 members accounting for over 11,000 Eden Park seats at rugby and cricket fixtures. Memberhip renewal is a key business initiative, providing a lower cost form of capacity utilisation than the vagaries of event and gate sales. The revenue generated from Membership underpins financial performance of ARFU.

The 2004/2005 renewal process was not without its own challenges, requiring a combination of pack mail-out and phone-back to transact renewals and new seating requirements for 2005. The renewal was made even more complex by the need to offer members the right to purchase tickets to the British and Irish Lions matches to be held at Eden Park. The whole process placed heavy demands on back-office resources and fulfilment and was ripe for the introduction of automation. With that in mind agency Big Communications saw tremendous potential for introducing campaign management tools and integrating email and online renewal to facilitate the process.

Target Audience

• ARFU members

Channels

• Postal
• Web
• Email
• Phonel

Approach

2004 members received a personalised mail pack containing information about the year's upcoming Eden Park fixtures and existing seat membership. The communication for the first time introduced online membership renewal. To support this channel each member was allocated a unique access code, providing the opportunity to view online their existing membership seating arrangements. From there, members could self-select and transact their 2005 tickets and seating arrangements. Underlying website functionality supported the dynamic calculation of renewal prices; purchasing and automatic email confirmation; and individual ticket entitlements and prices for upcoming British and Irish Lions games at Eden Park.

Agency thinking

With a nose for simplicity, the agency took a broader view of customer management and deployed campaign management tools that made things easier for both ARFU members and the ARFU itself.

The number of permutations resulting from multiple seat categories, price schedules, and Lions test entitlements (which were also dependent on previous seating arrangements and membership) meant offer and acceptance was intrinsically complex. So the need for presenting a simple customer front-end experience to capture transactions that typically ranged from $500 - $2,000 was critical. Any confusion or difficulty would have torpedoed the whole self service initiative. Done right and self service would work as a strategic tool both in terms of operational effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Campaign management

The campaign idea was to integrate marketing, customer service and sales. The driver behind the approach was about both lowering the cost of transactions and providing a single dynamic view of the campaign, which laid the foundation for better targeted one-to-one communication.

Campaign management tools tracked the progress of each member through the renewal process - whether or not they had renewed, declined renewal or remained outstanding. By tracking fulfilment stages related to individual renewals, ARFU was able to send out email reminders to those who had not renewed at key points in the campaign, including post mail arrival and immediately prior to the commencement of outbound telemarketing. Real time reporting provided a summary of the status of membership renewal by channel and uptake of Lions seats entitlements.

Results And Outcomes

• Thirty percent of members renewed their seats through the web site, following the first time introduction of a web renewal option
• Over $1M in revenue was taken in online payments
• The level of web participation significantly reduced demands on phone helpdesk ticketing support and manual form processing

How Touchpoint Technology Helped

• Managed the renewal process across multiple channels
• Managed member database with a single dynamic view of member seat status
• Automated ticket price calculation, purchasing and Eden Park British Lions games ticket entitlements
• Managed automated email reminders and confirmation
  Key takeouts
• Good marketing is about providing solutions that make things easier for both clients and their customers
• Many customers want self-service, even if the transactions are complex. Web proved to be the ideal medium for calculating and processing what was a complex transaction
• Despite being a significantly complex transaction, the web was able to introduce a degree of automation that would be difficult to replicate in non-digital media
• Integrating direct mail with email, call centre and web provided a seamless customer experience
• The web provided ARFU with a dynamic view of the rate of ticket renewals