Joining every NRL club for season 2024 and comparing the member experience across all clubs has been a fascinating experience. As far as I know, it’s the first benchmarking exercise of its kind and was $1,083 well spent for the insights it continues to deliver.

In my first article (A fan’s journey joining all 17 NRL clubs), I documented my membership experience across four categories: pre-registration, checkout experience, membership packs, and post-registration. This sparked a lot of interest from clubs who have limited visibility over what happens at the other 16 clubs.

It’s now the end of the regular season and I’ve collected insights from across 30 data points. It’s time to examine one of the most important aspects of member experience - communication. Let’s take a look at how clubs have communicated with their members over the past 26 weeks.

Email

Even if we ignore the two non-communicating outliers (I’ll get to them in a moment), there are big differences in the number of emails sent to members throughout the season. The Raiders were the most prolific (135 emails/5.2 per week) while the Sea Eagles sent the least (22 emails/0.8 per week). I’ll be reaching out to clubs to ask about open and click rates to see if there’s any correlation between frequency and engagement.

Surprisingly, two clubs barely communicated with me at all. The Knights only sent two emails throughout the season. The first was ‘Your Round 19 Game Review’ (I don’t know what was special about Round 19) and the other was an invitation to become a member of Wests, the owners of the Knights.

My experience with the Panthers was unique. Apart from the emails I received in March to confirm my new membership, I didn’t hear from them at all during the season. The first email I received was in September with details about purchasing finals tickets. I contacted the Panthers to ask if there was an issue - they confirmed that my email address was correct and I confirmed that their emails weren’t going to my spam folder. I wonder how many other people are experiencing the same issue? 

SMS

SMS is one of the most effective communication channels because everyone has a mobile phone and it’s hard to ignore the ‘ding’ of a new message. Six clubs sent me an SMS during the season, but only two (Broncos and Titans) sent more than one message.

Quantity doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality, either. Six of the messages from the Broncos covered one theme - encouraging me to participate in a Charity Raffle. Of the four other clubs, SMS was essentially transactional (e.g. ‘Your membership pack is on its way’ or ‘Here’s your digital membership pass’).

Phone

The only time I received phone calls from clubs was when my credit card was expiring and they called to update my details and process the upcoming auto-renew of my membership. Update: there was one exception - see the ‘Birthday’ section below.

Member Survey

Ten clubs sent a survey throughout the season to learn more about my experience as a member. Getting responses to surveys is difficult, so offering an incentive is one way to increase the likelihood members will participate. All but one of these clubs (Rabbitohs) offered an incentive, for example:

• Win one of three $100 team store vouchers

• Win a 2024 signed jersey

• Receive a $25 shop voucher

• Win a game day experience (Warm Up and Guard of Honor)

• Be one of five members to receive your 2025 membership for free

While the Broncos flagged that they would be sending two surveys throughout the season, most clubs sent their survey towards the beginning of the season. This was surprising because at this early stage there’s not much to provide feedback on. An end of year survey (and perhaps this is coming) would provide more opportunities for more comprehensive feedback.

Social Media

This report doesn’t evaluate the use of social media by NRL clubs. While these are important channels, it’s not exclusive to members which is the focus of this research. It is worth noting, however, that no club was active in encouraging me to follow them on social media. 

Communication Preferences

A communication ‘preference centre’ is valuable for both club and member. It’s valuable for the member because they can choose the channels they want to be communicated with and the type of content they’re interested in receiving (and not receiving). It’s valuable for clubs because when members opt-in to their preferred communication it’s less likely they will unsubscribe from all communication.

Ten clubs provided a preference centre (see what these clubs are doing here), the best example being the Storm:

Interestingly, even though I gave permission to the Storm to communicate with me via SMS, I didn’t receive a message from them during the season.

Outside of the NRL, the most impressive example I’ve seen of a preference centre is for the Liverpool Football Club:

Contact details get out of date and I know from working with other member-based organisations how much effort is required to keep these details current. It was another surprise that only two clubs asked me to update my contact details throughout the season.

Responsiveness

In August I ran a quick experiment to measure the responsiveness of each club to email queries. I sent an email to each club with the question:

When will membership packages for next season be available?

The response rate from member services teams was impressive, with just over 70%  responding within 1 business day.

• Within 1 hour: 7 clubs

• Within 1 business day: 5 clubs

• Within 2 business days: 3 clubs

• Within 3 business days: 1 club

• Didn’t reply: 1 club

The only club to not reply was the Knights - who were also one of the two clubs that didn’t send emails throughout the season.

Birthday

When I registered at the start of the season, four clubs asked me for my birthday (Dragons, Knights, Rabbitohs, Tigers). While the first three clubs didn’t acknowledge my birthday, the Wests Tigers gave me a phone call and sent me an email.

Father’s Day

While birthdays were a missed engagement opportunity, Father’s Day was a missed opportunity to drive sales. Only six clubs emailed me with a Father’s Day promotion. Given that around 60% of NRL members are male and Father’s Day occurs just before the end of the regular season, this is a key moment to boost merchandise sales or even kick off membership sales for the next season.

Renewals

Is Father’s Day too early to start selling memberships? Six clubs had launched their 2025 membership packages by the end of the regular season (one week after Father’s Day), so this isn’t as far-fetched an idea as it sounds. I was impressed by the Raiders who had a membership renewals notice in my letterbox on 9 September, followed by the Knights one week later.

Conclusion

There is an irony in today’s communication environment - while there have never been so many channels to communicate on, it has never been more difficult to capture attention. The analysis of NRL club member communications reveals a landscape of varied approaches and missed opportunities.

Moving forward, clubs should consider:

1. Developing comprehensive, multi-channel communication strategies

2. Implementing and actively promoting preference centres

3. Leveraging data analytics to optimise communication timing and content

4. Taking proactive steps to promote membership renewals

5. Exploring personalised engagement opportunities throughout the season

By addressing these areas, NRL clubs can create more meaningful connections with their members and fostering loyalty and engagement throughout the season and into the next.

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This is Part 2 of an NRL membership experiment. Read Part 1 - The Membership Challenge: A fan’s journey joining all 17 NRL clubs.