RFU to offer sponsors better ad targeting

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is offering sponsors such as BMW and O2 the chance to deliver more personalised branded online content.

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The RFU is offering sponsors more targeted opportunities to engage fans around the sport.

The governing body will use behavioural targeting algorithms to serve up content from around 38,000 webpages as part of a revamp of its online and social media offering. The project is expected to be completed over the next 12 to 18 months.

Visitors will be abe to access personalised content and location-based promotions from sponsors via a new online membership scheme. It will be underpinned by a CRM platform the RFU is developing alongside IBM that will offer a single customer view of rugby fans across the country for the first time.

Rugby chiefs say the strategy moves away from offering commercial partners “less-targeted and interactive” ways of re-enforcing brand awareness such as banners.

Head of digital for the RFU Nick Shaw told Marketing Week the refresh aims to help boost ROI across all its channels by offering a more “integrated user-experience” for sponsors to tap into.

He adds: “There’s so much RFU content online its hard for visitors to access what they want in a straightforward way. For sponsors, the new online framework will serve up content that allows them to get across how they are impacting rugby in a more engaging way because we can start to use techniques such as location-based content and video in a more relevant way.”

To support the digital drive, the governing body is considering apps as an area it can further invest in after hailing the success of its IBM-branded TryTracker, launched earlier this year (1 February). Additionally, it is planning to stream a rugby match live on Twitter this weekend (20 April) to test whether the micro-blogging platform is suitable for future broadcasts.

Are you interested in hearing more about how to maxmise commercial opportunities for your brand in tough economic times? Virgin Atlantic’s marketing director Simon Lloyd will be speaking about it at this year’s Marketing Week Live. Click here to find out more details.

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