The Goodwood Group

Making the magic of Goodwood Estate accessible to all

Renowned as England’s greatest sporting estate, Goodwood Estate is home to three of the biggest sporting events in the world: The Festival of Speed, The Qatar Goodwood Festival and The Goodwood Revival.

Both the racecourse and motor circuit play host to various meets and track days throughout the sporting calendar among other events. One feature of the motor circuit is the Goodwood Aerodrome, a historic airfield that was used extensively during WWII. Several historic aircraft continue to be housed at the Aerodrome, including two Spitfires and a Harvard. Goodwood's 12,000-acre estate is home to a 91-room hotel and an 18th century clubhouse among other buildings and spaces for hospitality and events.

Getting to grips with its audience

Goodwood has extensive information about the people that get involved in activities at the estate. From insightful data about customers visiting for a family day out all the way through to younger, tech-savvy visitors attending an event such as the FutureLab proposition with Festival of Speed.

As a premier events destination, Goodwood wanted to better understand the needs and requirements of those attending events at the estate, and tailor its communications and content to ensure their loyal customer base received relevant information specific to their needs and areas of interest. This involved fully understanding different aspects of the customer journey and mapping it to a single customer view - all in one place. This approach would lead to a deeper understanding of how the customer engages with the business and where and when they consume information. From a platform standpoint, it ensured the business, across many departments, could access and use the CMS without treading on each other’s toes.

A reason to stay committed to the brand

A key challenge Goodwood wanted to solve was giving their audience a reason to remain. With multiple events taking place, catering to different types of audiences, Goodwood needed to not only maintain, but grow their presence - and digital was going to be an immense part of the strategy.

Goodwood had previously operated on a smaller scale, legacy CMS that had become problematic. It required a lot of effort to get bespoke customizations. Goodwood needed a best-in-class content platform that would be able to handle a vast amount of traffic in a scalable fashion.

Optimizely’s Content Cloud hands Goodwood better insights about its audience, resulting in actionable insights of what the customer needs. The technology reduces churn, increase relevancy, and helps foster a customer-centric digital experience.

The platform includes several customisations central to Goodwood’s digital scope. This includes creating a multimedia gallery, rich with dynamic visuals and videos to encapsulate visitors. Goodwood editors can easily crop these assets, so they blend in with the sites aesthetics resulting in a fluid, sleek design. The site relies on Content Cloud’s stability to display vibrant auto-play motion graphics, connecting intuitively with video platforms such as Vimeo, youTube and Brightcove.

Goodwood can now profile ticket buyers to understand whether they are likely to enter into a membership, or not. The team can also keep a track of ongoing engagement, taking corrective action when it begins to pullback. Their customer-based approach has been elevated - constantly adapting to the dynamic behaviour of their audiences.