by Morwenna Jones
With the Masters Hockey World Cup 2018 in Spain this summer fast approaching, the Wales’ Masters Over 35’s Hockey Team are training hard. For the players, the internationally renowned tournament will be the culmination of months of practice, selection camps, and games against international level opposition.
However, not all preparations have been on the pitch. Alongside training, the team have also raised £750 to pay for a physio to travel to the World Cup with them, thanks to the supporters of their Ralloo campaign with FUEL10K. Over 9 days, the team managed to rally 215 members of their community to give up a few minutes of their time to support their campaign.
“I thought Ralloo was really easy to use”, says Dan Makaruk, the campaign’s coordinator. “I saw the advert for Ralloo initially on FB in my feed, filled out all of the contact information, included photos and wrote up a campaign reason”.
When the campaign launched, one of the many reasons for its success was the clever strategy that Dan devised to help the team reach the number of points they needed. “For us, 20,000 points meant an average of 50 points per person, which in turn meant that we needed 400 supporters, or for each of our players to rally 13 friends”, Dan explains.
The team then used a combination of social media platforms to rally their community.
“The platform we used the most was probably Facebook, as all of the thank-you’s were posted automatically from Ralloo to there, but communications with hockey teams were mainly done through WhatsApp” says Dan. He found that WhatsApp groups in particular were a useful tool for reaching lots of people during the campaign. “Most people today are members of lots of different WhatsApp groups, so we tried to use all of these different networks to expand the campaign’s reach”, he explains.
Dan’s plan even accounted for a lull in support after the Ralloo campaign had started. Once the initial take-up had begun to subside, he began to thank the people that had scored points on Facebook and tagged extra people or groups in each post in order to keep spreading the word.
“I did feel at times I was hassling a little” he recalls, “Once the initial take up was complete, I knew that the quickest way to get the required points would be to ask people to order the product and score us 250 points so we began to focus on this”. According to Dan, the team actually found this a little easier:
“Sending the first link was harder, especially if you just send a link, as most people will be reluctant to click on it! A few people also thought it was a spam message, a good tip is to make sure that you reiterate that you’re only asking for a few minutes of someone’s time- not money!”
But although it was a challenge at times, Dan says he still enjoyed running Wales Masters Over 35’s Ralloo campaign and that the £750 has taken a big burden off the players’ shoulders. For other Ralloo campaigners, Dan’s top tips are as follows:
- Plan your campaign beforehand and do the maths to calculate how many supporters you need to reach your goal.
- Use a variety of social media platforms to reach supporters. Make the most of all of the channels you have at your disposal.
- Be sure to reiterate that it’s not spam and that you’re asking for a few minutes of their time (not money!). A personal message is an excellent way to avoid this.
It’s now a month after the campaign and while FUEL10K products continue to be a big hit among the players, the team have also secured a physio who will be flying with them on what will hopefully be a very successful trip to Spain this summer!
