Try, convert, win for a record-breaking year

Rugby Union has deep roots in the Scottish Borders – the birthplace of Sevens and Scotland’s only rugby-first region. Peebles is also home to Scotland’s foremost e-commerce rugby shop – Rugbystore.

When new ownership took the reins in 2020, it marked a fresh chapter. Big ambitions. Bigger potential. But just as the new era began, the world threw two major tackles. First, COVID-19: professional seasons wiped out, calendars in chaos. Then, the Rugby World Cup cycle: bringing its usual commercial slowdown the following ‘hangover’ year.

Bruised from these two hits, Rugbystore and Lane Media entered 2024 planning with determination.

To ensure Rugbystore remained the go-to destination for rugby fans worldwide, we agreed three key strategic pillars for our 2024 digital strategy – maximise customer retention (of buyers acquired via the RWC), drive new customer acquisition (CAQ) and ensure revenue diversification.

With the rugby calendar returning to ‘business as usual,’ we aligned paid and organic strategies around key moments — from the Six Nations and Rugby Championship to domestic leagues and even early buzz around the British Lions tour.

We built a detailed marketing calendar to keep engagement high and purchases flowing year-round, supported by a summer site refresh and a refined CRM strategy. Smarter segmentation and hyper-personalised comms drove up lifetime value and repeat orders.

A key strategic hook in many executions was free personalisation – a unique offer in the rugby retail space. With larger competitors all using heavy discounting as their price strategy, Rugbystore opted for retention through customer loyalty, ensuring competitiveness without eroding margins or brand equity.

To maintain dominance in organic and paid search visibility in a highly competitive market, we implemented a highly strategic Google Search approach (replicated across Bing) to drive core category growth and promotional agility. In Google Shopping, we used a structured ‘Campaign Bucketing’ approach — segmenting by product data points, newness, and category value.

Our Paid Social prospecting strategy leveraged Lookalike Audiences (LALs), interest-based strategies, and dynamic creative tailored to Rugbystore’s marketing calendar. A retargeting strategy focused on 30-day intent-based segments, including those who had initiated checkout (IC), viewed content (VC), or those we classed as highly engaged users, also ensured efficiency in bottom of funnel (BOF) conversion.

With women’s rugby booming, we ramped up investment in this area — increasing spend significantly across Google and Meta to capture growing interest and drive strong commercial returns.

Stability on our primary channel Google was a huge win with revenue increasing YOY against all expectations. Allied with 45% growth on Meta it all added up to a Grand Slam year for Rugbystore with our biggest ever return from paid ad revenue.

No Bloody Marys needed as we sidestepping the typical RWC ‘hangover’ — Rugbystore smashed its goals, to stay on track for long-term, sustainable growth.