CGI helps Racing Victoria conduct collaborative marketing campaigns by developing a custom marketing cloud database and shared scheduling platform.

Summary:

  • Data engineering and platform development
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) integration and consulting
  • Data cleaning, reorganisation and subscriber management
  • LIVE shared calendar scheduling
  • Capability to conduct collaborative events and marketing campaigns

The challenge

The Victorian horse racing industry is made up of 69 metropolitan and country tracks and five clubs, hosting over 500 race meetings a year. Every race is regulated by Victoria’s state regulator Racing Victoria.

However, each club independently host race meetings, manage their own members and run independent marketing campaigns using siloed customer data sets.

Consequently, clubs would promote events and race meetings to owners and customers over the same period resulting in scheduling clashes.

Race meeting overlap leads to three distinct challenges for clubs, namely:

  • Attendees are split between race meetings resulting in lost revenue. 
  • Wasted media spend due to prospects receiving marketing communications for multiple racing meetings scheduled on the same weekend. 
  • The best horses are split across race meetings resulting in lower quality horse talent. 

The solution

Racing Victoria recognised that a lack of visibility across race schedules and customer databases was a significant barrier to effective collaboration between clubs. They needed a way to unify their customer data and event scheduling without violating data privacy. 

Racing Victoria’s annual All-Star Mile, an interclub fan voted race meeting, presented the perfect opportunity for Racing Victoria to partner with CGI to develop a multi-club database and live shared scheduling module. 

The solution is powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud  business units and comprises of: 

  • Shared customer database comprising of five linked salesforce marketing cloud business units , one for each club and regulator.  
  • Local and shared data extensions allowing for layered access to shared customer data sets for marketing campaigns – information includes name, email, postcode, and category (owner, trainer, member etc.). 
  • Hierarchical data structure with a single master control over local data sharing permissions. 
  • Subscription management – enabling club members to opt-in and out of specific marketing email communications depending on preferences. 
  • A custom preference centre allowing users to choose which clubs they want to receive email communications from, as well as opt-in to specific campaigns of interest such as dining events or race meetings.  
  • A custom unsubscribe function that ensures unsubscribed contacts are removed from all lists. 
  • A data cleansing and deduplication tool for subscriber management that automates the removal of older and redundant contacts, reducing costs. 
  • A live multi-club shared calendar accessible to all salesforce marketing cloud business units. 
  • Construction and automation of customer journeys for the annual race meeting calendar for Victoria. 

Racing Victoria’s new multi-club database improved club coordination by enabling collaborative events and marketing campaigns. 

The platform has helped Victorian horse racing clubs and tracks work better together, advancing the interest of Australian racing and creating a partnership mindset across the state.  

This solution has a highly accurate database, adheres to high standards of customer privacy and security, and boosted Racing Victoria’s revenue potential through parallel marketing streams. 

The project referenced in this case study was delivered by Unico, which CGI acquired in March 2022.