NRL Digital Best Practices: Newcastle Knights Let You Email Players

If you've been following this blog for awhile (thanks!), you may have come across a best practice I discussed from the NBA World Champion Dallas Mavericks. They created a way for fans to email the players (revisit that one here). It was a great thing because it just felt personal -- like you could reach out to anyone you wanted.

That was the only example I've seen of this.... until I saw what the Newcastle Knights were doing.

Hit the Newcastle Home Page and hover over "Fans." As you can (hopefully) see below, this will reveal the option to "Email the Players." Let's move in...

Clicking ahead takes you here, to a simple screen with a drop down menu. You are asked to "Send the players your messages of support" and you simply provide your name, email, and message.

I like the execution because it is extremely intuitive and has almost no barriers to participation. And, like the Mavericks example, the concept of emailing a player feels personal -- especially in this era of Facebook & Twitter.

All that said, how could this be better? You'll note in the image above the phrase "Support Wall". I'd love to make this space feel more emotional. Perhaps it is showing past emails (that people submitted and agreed to publish publicly) and responses. I've seen this in action in local grocery stores -- consumers post comments/questions and employees post responses. It's simple, but the fact that you can see other fans' questions and, importantly, some responses makes this idea more personal.

I'll be back tomorrow for another day of NRL coverage. As always, you can follow me on Twitter (I'm @pawlow34) or on Facebook (Digital Hoops Blast).

Thanks for hanging with me!

Andy