A German soccer club on its way to fan engagement.

It’s not enough to win games. Fans expect their team to entertain them on their phones all year round. So how do you win them over, both on the court and online? Interactive content is a perfect way to build deeper connections and engage your fans.

Our partner FC 08 Homburg knows the challenge of keeping their audience engaged all too well. The Saarland soccer club is constantly trying to do new things for its fans, using various channels to unite supporters even more.  

FC 08 Homburg (FCH) is a soccer club with a history in the German Bundesliga and is currently active in the Regionalliga Südwest. As part of their plans to improve fan engagement, FCH and Riddle have joined forces. With its flexible interactive content formats, Riddle provides a new approach to creating immersive experiences for the regional league team.   

The club’s primary goal was providing new forms of content for its fans to keep them engaged and coming back for more.  
And Riddle has helped deliver results.

First, quizzes and polls, in particular, have proved promising, as they have a higher interaction rate compared to static content. Between-match-day and off-season content also plays a vital role: Providing content for their fans is key to improving Fan Loyalty. 

Second, Riddle’s platform will provide FC Homburg with valuable insights into its fan base. The data collected from the quizzes, polls, and surveys will help the club better understand its fans’ interests and preferences. This information allows FC Homburg to tailor its content and marketing strategies to better meet the needs of its fans.

Third, by integrating lead forms into its quizzes and polls, the club has been able to collect contact information from interested fans. This, in turn, can be used to follow up with fans and promote the club’s products and services.

Riddle’s interactive approaches:

After careful consideration and consultation, the following approach was agreed upon: Riddles are created regularly to keep fans continuously fueled with fresh content. Prior to match days, score predictors and knowledge-based quizzes about the opposing team will be offered to the audience. This is considered an encouraging way to liven up and inform the fans ahead of the game. After the matches, the fans can express their opinions or views via polls or surveys.

The leading indicators were defined as the number of quiz starts, the quiz completion rate, as well as the resulting lead generation rate. These can be used to statistically determine if the impact of using Riddle can be considered a success.

Creating Quizzes and Sharing on Socials

Before Riddle was used, quizzes were only played directly on Instagram. The problem with this, however, is that it was impossible to attach forms or carry out any engaging call-to-action campaigns, plus the insights weren’t being used to their full potential.

With Riddle providing the tools for generating surveys, predictors, and quizzes, FCH can now create content before match days to rouse fan interest, shared via social media channels. Fans are redirected to the club’s homepage, where each quiz is embedded by simply sharing a link in an Instagram story or via Twitter.

Have a look at this example of how FCH created a matchday quiz to engage fans in the run-up to the match:

Using DOI-Forms and CTA-Buttons

Another important point that FCH has emphasized is the data protection-compliant handling of data while generating leads. To remain GDPR-compliant, Riddle offers forms with DOI (double opt-in), which are placed just before the quiz results are displayed. The quiz takers were asked to enter their data, including name, and email address, as well as to confirm the privacy policy. With Riddle, it is possible to request and collect fans’ data while remaining fully compliant with data protection regulations.

Additionally, integrating Call-to-Action buttons (CTA) on the result pages (e.g. ‘Buy FC Homburg’s newest jerseys’) has proved to be highly valuable since they provide more traffic to the club’s homepage and shop.

And the results are in…

FC Homburg’s partnership with Riddle has achieved impressive results. In the process, FC Homburg gained valuable insights into its fan base and generated a significant number of leads. 

The attempt to get fans to sign up for the newsletter with the help of a quiz led to an average sign-up rate of 19.73% among fans who answered the quiz right to the end. In addition, using the CTA-button led to a click rate of 28.2% of those users who completed the form. By agreeing to subscribe to the newsletter, the club can contact its fans directly by email and send them news and promotions.

Sharing the link via Instagram increased the interaction rate with FC Homburg’s content by almost 500%, which is a huge lift. Furthermore, engaging with interactive quizzes and other Riddles is five times higher than those with conventional content. The same immense results can be found with the interaction with the Riddle score predictor: An average of 21.3% of those who started the predictor shared their result on social media.

By using quizzes and polls, the club fires up their fans’ interest and gives them new ways to provide their email and other information, achieving a much higher sign-up rate.