Whilst fully aware this forum does not need to convert the already converted I often feel that WTW misses out on opportunities to promote season tickets, lottery etc and wonder if others feel the same.

My intention is not to teach anyone how to suck eggs but as now is possibly(again) the most important time to get the brass in here are a few niggles that I have:

Ridings shop - I am a frequent visitor as I buy plenty of the TShirts, club shirts and merchandise. When at the till i have NEVER once been asked if I am in the lottery or have a season ticket. As there is a laptop behind the counter surely this is a prime time to show off the new online sign up facility for both ST and lottery & the easyfundraising sign up site. The club may even get some technophobes(such as my parents) to sign up there and then.
The atmosphere could also be improved particularly on weekends with WTW balloons for kids and face painting and the odd player to sign merchandise.

Renewals - Our family all renewed in the first week and got a poxy till receipt in the post. No mention of forthcoming shirt launch, other ways to help or nothing. Then hey presto 2 weeks later we got 5 separate letters to advise us to renew!

Mail outs - I can't stand cold calls and not many people do so wouldn't like the manpower to go down that path. However an email can never offend particularly if it is made to look personal to the recipient. The correlation between those signed for ST and those for lottery should be studied(maybe it has) with emails pushing these and the easyfundraising site link. Also those that bought last year needs a personal push(by email/FB or twitter)

Countdown to Christmas - Rumour has it that lots of people buy season tickets for Christmas presents. In 2 weeks the prices are gonna rise again. Push it now daily with a countdown to end of the month with the cost increase at the forefront. Surely people can put them away for a little while if they know money that is to be saved.

Hate to be negative so here are a few of the positives I see:

Commercial bloke seems to be grafting hard to pull in the sponsors and has the respect of the business community.

Lottery website massive improvement with the weekly emails, tweets and on the ball if you have any issues.

First shoots of in house events such as Halloween party and plans to show world cup.


Over to you.......

What you're talking about is largely the job of a marketing professional, and I don't think we have one; it also requires a rather more sophisticated computer based CRM system, again, which I don't think we have.

I've been saying for the past few years that the best investment we could make would be a marketing specialist who could produce a plan, execute that plan and analyse what works and what doesn't so that the effort is directed into those things that provide the best return. Unfortunately, as in most companies during tough times, the marketing budget is the first to be hit when the accountants are wielding the red pen.

John Wanamaker, considered to be the father of modern marketing, said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half."

Most certainly agree, marketing at the club is and has been poor...Hope this changes under the new regime (like the guys on the field back office need targets).

The Halloween Party is a good idea but with two weeks lead in time and no advertising I'm not too sure what the success will be. My office is in Cas and I have been seeing their bonfire night bash adverts for weeks.

Again the half a season ticket which went on sale last year had no lead in time and no marketing.

If the club want to run events they need to allow plenty of leading time and market to whole district e.g. if they are planning anything over the xmas period the time is now, not the 12 December.

With regards to IT systems haven't got a clue but we have integrated cross selling on our websites for very little money and our marketing emails cost penny's...So yes I believe this can be done and yes it would be beneficial.

I agree. A proper database, with someone who know how to manage it is paramount to getting your busines running smoothly when you're dealing with memberships or 'account holders'. Over contacting your customers is often worse than not contacting them at all so it needs to be managed properly.

I've worked in marketing for 10+ years (analysing campaigns/ customer response to offers, what to improve, what to not do again etc), admittedly in a different sector, and knowing your customer is the best place to start with your marketing plan, getting the offers/ events out and publicised at the right time etc.

For niggles, I have one about spelling. My husband won a prize on the 1873 lottery this week, and the wrong sort of your is used in the letter, simple things like that can give a bad impression. Although, now I've typed that I've likely spelt something in here completely wrong.

If there was specific events that they're wanting to publicise it could be worth asking for volunteers to help out with it. I know I'd be willing to put in a bit of time to help plan a proper campaign, and come up with some conclusions at the end to help the company build from what they've learnt and improve in the future.

There you go a bit of free marketing...It's exactly what we could do with.

Well done guy,s at last some positives on here.

Hi Bicket2,

Thanks for pointing out the spelling mistake on your winners letter earlier. I've now corrected this. Without feedback we are nothing. It's as simple as that. I take all of it on board however big or small.

If any of you have any feedback, ideas etc for Club 1873 please feel free to leave a message on here, PM me, ring me at the club or even ring my mobile. If you receive our weekly results emails my mobile is listed on there.

Cheers
Ant

Also, I'd like it if one of the moderators could kindly remove the lovely black X you have against all of my posts. Someone kindly declares any thread I've replied to as 'OLD' as soon I've posted. Most annoying.

I'm not on here to push sales all the time as you've just seen in the previous post.

Cheers

All post are declared OLD after you've posted or read them, thats how it works for all topics.

My boards showing OLD on every topic.

Already suggested some of the legwork mentioned above on other thread....no reply received from Daddy Cool yet. Re: Easy fundraising.org -Pass the Word & Sign Up Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:34 pm asmadasa Daddycool wrote: Yes we've emailed them today because I had a donation confirmed and the running total was up to 80 odd quid They say it can take up to 30 days to go on the fund from some companies but there is an audit trail for proof, as National Lottery should be putting £1.50 on from 2 weeks ago. Daddy Cool I apologise for going on about this easy fund raising initiative but if it is really driven at this time of year I think it will easily raise quite a few thousand pounds. Xmas then holiday booking through the website..... Why can't all season ticket holders be given a direct referral like below to sign up so then when each of the 1500 Fans or so raise £10 easyfundraising have to give another £5 donation? Every fan that buys a season ticket or is a member of 1873 should receive a direct invite to sign up. What about corporate sponsors being invited to use the business link on the website...their purchasing would rocket the funds. Why can't the club push it more on Facebook with 10,000 followers and twitter? Get started now – www.easyfundraising.org.uk/invite/2JV9KP/ Ask for volunteers to put flyers in letter boxes, posters in shop windows,supermarket notice boards, community centres, libraries etc etc?

Already suggested some of the legwork mentioned above on other thread....no reply received from Daddy Cool yet. Re: Easy fundraising.org -Pass the Word & Sign Up Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:34 pm asmadasa Daddycool wrote: Yes we've emailed them today because I had a donation confirmed and the running total was up to 80 odd quid They say it can take up to 30 days to go on the fund from some companies but there is an audit trail for proof, as National Lottery should be putting £1.50 on from 2 weeks ago. Daddy Cool I apologise for going on about this easy fund raising initiative but if it is really driven at this time of year I think it will easily raise quite a few thousand pounds. Xmas then holiday booking through the website..... Why can't all season ticket holders be given a direct referral like below to sign up so then when each of the 1500 Fans or so raise £10 easyfundraising have to give another £5 donation? Every fan that buys a season ticket or is a member of 1873 should receive a direct invite to sign up. What about corporate sponsors being invited to use the business link on the website...their purchasing would rocket the funds. Why can't the club push it more on Facebook with 10,000 followers and twitter? Get started now – www.easyfundraising.org.uk/invite/2JV9KP/ Ask for volunteers to put flyers in letter boxes, posters in shop windows,supermarket notice boards, community centres, libraries etc etc?

With respect to the above initiative, which is very definitely a useful potboiler, it's not marketing; it's something that could be marketed, which a professional marketer would likely include in a marketing plan, but it's not the topic we're discussing.

At risk of coming over all Agent 13/JE, there is a possibility that we're taking something of a Con-Dem approach to austerity that may damage us in the long term; just like the government should be spending on infrastructure to kickstart growth, maybe the club should be spending some money to make some money - we don't have to save 400k in the immediate term do we? Under-capitalisation is different to debt isn't it? As I understand it, we have to create 400k of additional income to get through next season, not make it in 8 weeks to pay off creditors. As has been amply demonstrated on the world stage, prophecies of doom, relentless bad news and swingeing cuts scares off investment and chokes recovery.

In short - spend some brass on a marketing professional and get all these potential income streams into some kind of manageable, measurable order!

I think that the problem is that we have no brass whatsoever and the 400k was needed to get us through to the busy Christmas period and then into pre season etc.

Having said that, you are absolutely right in what you are saying and the mind-set that takes over when you are trying to spend nothing can mean that one becomes blinkered and therefore miss certain opportunities.

On the point of marketing, our lack of marketing personnel has come as something of a surprise as the club has, over a period of time, advertised for sales and marketing people.
Does this mean that we never had any or, the people that we had are no longer employed.

Awesome, thankyou. I had meant to e-mail to let you know, but I completely forgot to do it yesterday (the letter only arrived on Tuesday). Sorry if it came across as very negative, I didn't mean it to be.

It's not the topic you're discussing but it's the topic that was originally raised on the thread about the culture of not taking every opportunity to 'Push the Sales'..."Whilst fully aware this forum does not need to convert the already converted I often feel that WTW misses out on opportunities to promote season tickets, lottery etc and wonder if others feel the same."

It takes very little effort to put a procedure in place which captures a high percentage of the ST holders/Club 1873/Club shop sales into other revenue making schemes. It's disappointing to hear only 136 are signed up to easyfundraising when we have sold 1600 ST, have 10000 followers on Facebook, 1020 followers on twitter and WTW Club shop footfall. I'm not sure a marketing professional is needed to put that link in, there are experienced business people at the helm aren't there?

I would have thought those figures bear out the fact that it *does* require some marketing expertise to get these kind of things rolled out. It also requires similar expertise to make a judgement on whether it's worth the bother - the lottery is a no-brainer, but this one is never likely to make any significant money for the club without reaching some kind of critical mass, which seems unlikely.

I'm not evangelising about this, but it is frustrating to see the missed opportunities; for example, the marketing of the current ST deals is not exactly setting Wakefield alight and as pointed out by someone else, the shops are not pushing lottery and such to those people who are buying ST's.