The Gold and Green Crowd (Crowd Racing’s community) is opening doors so that more people can enjoy horse racing from a deeper angle.
The Gold and Green Crowd (Crowd Racing’s community) is opening doors so that more people can enjoy horse racing from a deeper angle.
THE CHALLENGE
When Craig McKenna founded Crowd Racing 8 years ago, he had a clear vision of breathing new energy into racing as a sport, by making racehorse ownership accessible to wider audiences. Creating their own app was always part of that vision to engage new audiences and modernise aspects of how supporters can engage with the sport.
Over the years, the need for their own platform became more pressing. Facebook was wasting their members’ time and made it impossible to segregate premium content reserved for owners. Consequently, Craig was spending hours relying on disparate and inefficient communication streams, like Whatsapp and email, to engage different members.
Crowd Racing needed a digital space for their community to gather and share passion for the sport. They struggled to find a platform that could deliver the quality of user experience required to create the world-class racehorse ownership experience they strive to deliver. After an extensive search for the right software, Craig found the perfect solution with Disciple.
THE SOLUTION
Gold and Green Crowd’s Disciple-powered community app is the place where club members can stay up-to-date on horses’ progress, share photos, discuss the horses in the string and travel plans, engage in competitions and learn from the experts. Push notifications mean that club owners receive instant updates on race entries before anyone else. Additionally, the app is a brilliant way of organising different discussion groups and communicating seamlessly with all members according to their subscription level.
The app gives club members an unrivalled ownership experience that is exciting, educational and inspiring.
IMPACT
The club is achieving extraordinary engagement rates, showing that members are getting the exceptional racehorse ownership experience that the club strives to offer through the app. The success of the app has led Craig to change his business model, previously the Gold and Green Crowd community was a small part of Crowd Racing, now it’s the core product.
The club has plans to triple membership in the next year through a growth strategy including competitions, events and collaborations with influencers.
“The difference that Disciple has made to my company is not something I can calculate – it’s changed everything!”
SET UP
Craig has a background in crowdfunding software so he knew exactly what he wanted out of his app. The Disciple platform ticked all of his boxes, saving him hundreds of hours of tech development time and costs.
“I spoke to 7 different potential software providers but the cost was ridiculous and they just didn’t understand what I wanted the app to do. It was serendipity to find Disciple at just the right time. They got it right away and the software does exactly what I want!”
– Craig McKenna, founder of Crowd Racing
From the initial call with our knowledgeable Sales team, through to the app set up and community development process, Craig had the support he needed to make a success of the Gold and Green Crowd app:
“The Disciple team are great to work with. They achieve the perfect blend of openness, availability, friendliness, whilst always maintaining professionalism. The customer service has been outstanding and the tech set up went really smoothly.”
– Craig McKenna, founder of Crowd Racing
Since a successful launch in 2020, Gold and Green Crowd have used membership badges to great effect, driving brand loyalty and increased revenue. For example, every year Gold and Green Crowd welcome 100 new premium lifetime members who are granted an exclusive membership badge. This strategy has seen increased posting from lifetime members who enjoy showing off their membership status, as well as increased interest in the top tier subscription offering.
Related Community Stories
Luke Bryan
Global
Hari Ghotra
UK
La Reserva
Europe