There’s never been a better time to stay in touch with Aston Villa. The Club is pushing hard for a Champions League spot and has hopes of success in this season’s UEFA and FA Cup. Fan support at all games is fundamental to Villa's success and with so many games on sale, Aston Villa has to be proactive in order to fill seats. That's why Aston Villa turned to Relay Station to broadcast messages to the mobiles of opt-in fans, calling for their support.
"In order to maximise attendance, we wanted to make buying one-off tickets a really simple process, particularly for our most loyal fans. At the same time, we wanted to engage fans by utilising new technology," says Russell Jones, Aston Villa's Head of Marketing. "Fans really appreciated the free call back service and we were delighted with the response. As a result of the phenomenal results, we are planning a series of other campaigns utilising Relay Station's RelayReact service. "
SMS is an accepted technology and many premier and championship clubs like Blackburn Rovers, Manchester City, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Coventry and Stoke City already use Relay Station's text and voice services to engage with their fans. But Relay Station's new RelayReact service takes interaction with the fans to a new level enabling reply SMS's to trigger a voice message and for fans to be connected immediately with the ticket office.
Text and voice broadcasting are now proven communications tools for sports clubs to interact with supporters and to boost ticket sales at key matches. All that clubs need do to use Relay Station's RelayReact service is to record a message from the manager or a key player on an MP3, copy the telephone numbers of fans from a database to a spreadsheet, and send both to Relay Station with instructions when to broadcast.
The personalised message is sent to the mobiles or landlines of all fans simultaneously (or spread out over a number of hours to avoid overloading ticket office staff) and they have the option to opt-out from future broadcasts in the unlikely event they do not wish to receive personalised messages from their club.