Swans praised for doubling supporter database

Swansea City has earned rave reviews for its data collection after doubling its supporter database.
Business magazine fcbusiness, which covers topics within the British football industry, has hailed the club in its latest publication for enhancing its ticketing and marketing communications via a new CRM and data management system.
The new system has enabled the Swans, who have worked alongside data management specialists Sports Alliance, to double its fan database within the last six months.
"We had a database but it was pretty small and we didn't really know a great deal about the people on it," explained Swans Marketing and Communications Manager Hannah Eames. "When we spoke to Sports Alliance, they recognised that we needed growth and for that we had to manage our data better.
"We all knew what we wanted to achieve and since then it's been all systems go and I can't believe how much we have achieved so much in so little time.
"We've even launched our first personal season ticket campaign. Each of our 16,500 season ticket holders have their own personalised website page and we had 6,500 renewals in December alone, which was a big improvement for the same period last year. Numbers were also up in January and February, so it's looking good for the end of the campaign.
"Importantly, we also know more about our lapsed supporters. Last year if a supporter didn't renew we didn't really know who they were or why they didn't renew. Now we can use the information to improve our communication with them to try and bring them back.
"We can now also tailor and personalise our messages to each supporter and service their needs better. ''
Sports Alliance Account Manager, Matt Everett, added: "This is certainly the fastest we've ever had a client come on board from an initial meeting and go fully into it.
"We transferred all their previous ticketing data into the new system, taking all of their historic ticketing transactions, old memberships, and all accounts and putting them into our central database so that Swansea's staff had one view of all their customers.
"In the six months since introducing the marketing console they've really embraced the 'single customer view' across the club.
"They're a really good example of a club that's gone from virtually nothing at our first meeting to where they are now. They've really embraced it."