The Challenge
The New Zealand Rugby Foundation is a charitable trust set up in the 1980s by a group of former rugby players and administrators to assist players who have suffered life-altering injuries. Eligible players come from all levels of the game – from schoolboy to professional. Most of the injuries are spinal as a result of collapsed scrums.
The Foundation traditionally raised money from channels such as pre-match events and dinners, corporate donations, sponsorships, match tickets and merchandise sales. The Foundation had established a “fan club” called No8 where it could market events and drive revenue in exchange for prizes and various other membership benefits including access to some of the games legendary figures. No8 had a small following (around 1000 members) after the first 2 years. The existing website was very simple and didn’t offer anything different than the other rugby fan sites in the market. A change in strategy was required.
The new site had to pull on the heart strings of the “grassroots” New Zealand rugby fan. Its point of difference was to appeal to the fan that enjoyed the game in the good old days and was perhaps disillusioned with the current state of the game with its big money, marketing hype and lack of player loyalty. The new site would encourage tribalism via forums with categories where members could argue with each other about which school was the greatest, who had the hardest front row, who did the best Haka. It had to bring out the passion in the every-day rugby fan.
Ultimately, the Foundation would grow its revenue as the No8 member database increased. The goal was to hit 10,000 by July 2010 (after 1 year). The Foundation had also been given some free TV space to launch the new web site. It was up to Netfinity to design and build the new web site and produce the TVC (television commercial).
The Solution
Netfinity develops data-driven solutions with the user in mind. The term “user” means both admin and public user. Sitefinity is a CMS that truly has the user in mind. Its drag and drop architecture makes content management a breeze.
The new No8 site leverages off many of the built-in functions of Sitefinity including the forums. Netfinity extended the forums module to allow for avatars and the ability for the admin to sort/order each forums and threads. Video and Image libraries were essential to the success of the new site. Netfinity developed a module that works allows the admin to create YouTube video libraries. Each The end user opens the YouTube video inside a JQuery lightbox. Single video controls exist down the right-hand side of the page template featuring YouTube hosted TVCs, also produced by Netfinity. These feature some legends of the game and current TV personalities.
The new site was launched in July 2009 in conjunction with the TVC. Netfinity also executed a Spreadit (www.spreadit.co.nz) campaign which saw member numbers jump to 5,000 literally overnight. Spreadit is a product developed by Netfinity to generate buzz about new product on Facebook and Twitter. Users chat about the product and are automatically entered into an hourly prize draw. Prize winners are notified in real time as they are drawn. Prizes in this case included rugby merchandise, match tickets and the grand prize was a trip to watch the All Blacks play Australia in Sydney.
The Results
The new site offers so much more to the rugby fan than the old site. Content is fresh every day because No8 web master can easily update it and interact with other members via forum discussions. Polls can be set up in minutes to gauge opinions about topical subjects.
The proof is in the membership numbers. They didn’t meet their target of 10,000 but they are very close. To this day just under 9,000 members exist on the No8 database:
| Metric | Increase/Decrease |
| Visits | 746% increase |
| Pageviews | 1128% increase |
| Average Time on Site | 312% increase |
| Bounce Rate | 39% decrease |
| Memberships | 897% increase |