Goodwood doubles race weekend ticket sales with AI-generated SMS campaign

Goodwood is England’s greatest sporting estate and home of the Dukes of Richmond since 1697. Renowned for creating exceptional experiences, the estate hosts a number of world-renowned events including the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, the Goodwood Revival and horseracing at its spectacular racecourse which is set against the backdrop of the South Downs. Each year, Goodwood Racecourse hosts 19 days of racing with the world-famous Qatar Goodwood Festival or ‘Glorious Goodwood’ taking pride of place as the highlight of the British flat racing season.

Reaching racegoers through targeted SMS to drive advanced ticket sales

With a day out at Goodwood racecourse competing with other local events, coupled with the unpredictable British weather and the increasing cost of living, it can be challenging to encourage casual and regular racegoers to book tickets early for upcoming meets. Goodwood has found sending timely and engaging SMS messages a great way to keep customers updated about upcoming events and drive advanced online ticket sales in a market where the email inbox can become cluttered.

Ahead of its August Bank Holiday race meeting, the team at Goodwood decided to run an SMS campaign, as Taylor Bryant at Goodwood explains: “The objective was to engage with as many customers as possible through SMS marketing and boost last-minute ticket sales.”

The team faced a challenge familiar to many other organisations that want to use SMS as a communication and marketing tool – how to convey a compelling message in just 160 characters. Taylor Bryant adds: “It is important to find the correct wording for the right people. We wanted to get the messaging right and with limited time there was no room for error.”

To make the campaign even more challenging, the August event appeals to a wide audience that includes both families and seasoned racegoers.

Using Generative AI to automatically create personable SMS marketing communications

The problem was solved by the generative artificial intelligence (AI) solution – WinstonAI – from Dotdigital.

The team used WinstonAI to create and recommend compelling and concise messages, focused on different selling points for different audiences, such as ‘kids go free’ tickets or free activities. These messages were A/B tested to measure engagement and then one week before the race meeting, the campaign of four different SMSs was sent to 8,618 people identified from the relevant segments of the Goodwood customer database as the most likely to convert for this kind of race day.

The campaign proved to be a great success for the event. Taylor Bryant comments: “We saw a significant increase in ticket sales.” In addition to using SMS to drive ticket sales, Goodwood has also worked with Dotdigital to transform its approach to gathering feedback from visitors to its events. In time for Glorious Goodwood, the team replaced its general post-event email survey with more targeted and timely SMS requests for feedback. “We saw a staggering spike in click rate and survey response rate for this SMS, and a survey completion rate of nearly 25%, compared with only 10% in 2023. This enabled us to make a more in-depth analysis that can be used to inform our marketing plans for future events.”

Together, Goodwood and Dotdigital are demonstrating the power of SMS for customer engagement, retention and direct sales.