Customer case study:

The challenge

Newcastle United is one of best-known premiership football clubs, with a 52,000-capacity stadium and a famously passionate supporter base. Keeping in touch with those supporters is a big challenge, with so many events and announcements to communicate over the course of the year. NUFC wanted a way to send non-premium text messages to their members and season ticket holders to alert them to the latest home and away team information, as well as final scores as soon as the match finished.

The answer

We began by evaluating the sources of the live information and developing a strategy to bring that information together in one place. The result was a bespoke automated system that takes feeds from both the Press Association and NUFC’s own customer relationship management system. Supporters received three separate messages per game: one with the home team line-up, another with the away team information, and one with the final score.

The difference

The solution was complex to develop but beautifully simple for supporters to enjoy. They are now able to keep in touch with events as they happen, even when they are far away from the match itself. On a typical match day, we now deliver approximately 30,000 messages.

The next step

This initial success led NUFC to implement SMS messaging across a wide range of other services. Their Academy now sends SMS alerts about training times and venues. Their security team uses SMS to confirm attendance and relay important information to stewards. SMS has also become a vital part of the mix across all external marketing, as well as internal communications. And Newcastle is just one example. We work with over 65% of Premiership clubs on services including fan messages, man of the match awards, car park updates, corporate entertainment and security arrangements.