Wolverhampton Wanderers Awarded Best Marketing Campaign at Football Business Awards

Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club has triumphed at The Football Business Awards by winning the award for best marketing campaign.

This celebrates the success of its ‘My Wolves’ initiative, a new seasonal membership scheme operated by a new rewards module, specifically developed for the club by IRIS Ticketing to integrate with its ticketing system, TALENT Sport. This means Wolverhampton Wanderers can automatically ‘reward’ benefits to fans signed up to ‘My Wolves’ when booking tickets or purchasing merchandise. The scheme has resulted in significant increases in ticket sales, season tickets upgrades and merchandise sales, overall adding an estimated £600,000 of additional revenue to the club since its inception.

‘My Wolves’, which offers a variety of creative and generous benefits to an identified group of fans who cannot commit to a season ticket but want to commit to the club, was the brainchild of six staff at Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. For £20, ‘My Wolves’ offers a range of  ‘virtual cash’ incentives and rewards, discounts, smartcards and a loyalty points scheme for priority tickets. All incentives and rewards keep the spend recycled within the club, thereby disbursing significant value to the supporter whilst simultaneously generating increased profit for the club.

“We are incredibly proud to win this award. The whole team is passionate about making sure our fans realise how much we appreciate their support and loyalty, as well as the important role they play in making sure our club is a success, which is how the idea came about in the first instance. Working with IRIS Ticketing means the reward scheme is easy for fans to use and benefit from, which has played a large role in the success of the scheme,” says Kerri Davies, Membership Manager at Wolverhampton Wanderers.

By using IRIS Ticketing’s reward module, the rewards scheme is completely automated for all fans signed up to the scheme. This means that every time they bought a ticket for a match, on average £40, they are given 10% back as a loyalty reward to spend the next time they purchased a ticket. In the same way, each time an item of merchandise is bought, the fan receives 10% back to spend on their next merchandise purchase. Each fan soon recoops the initial £20, gaining additional value such as having first access to priority tickets. Despite a very disappointing season for the team, the club was able to demonstrate that ‘My Wolves’ members increased their average match attendance by 42% versus an overall trend over the last year of supporters decreasing their match attendance by 15%.

Feedback from the Football Business Awards judges said: “Superb integrated campaign resulting in a fantastic ROI. A shining example of a marketing programme with pizazz and lasting effect.”

“Fans are the lifeblood of every football club and we work hard to deliver them a great experience and reward loyalty with exciting new schemes such as ‘My Wolves’. To see the industry recognising innovation from Wolverhampton Wanderers is exciting for all of us and a great endorsement of the work we do together,” commented Mark Dewell, Managing Director at IRIS Ticketing.