The Customer
How Sports Labs automated seven years of renewal tracking with FLG. Then Fetchify’s email data cleansing protected its domain ahead of its busiest year yet.
The Background
Behind every certified sports pitch is a test it has to pass. Sports Labs is one of the independent test houses that carries out that work. Operating since 1998, the business runs its headquarters in Scotland, with satellite offices and laboratories around the world. It certifies sports surfaces and technology to national and international standards, both in the lab and in the field.
It is exacting work. The laboratory is ISO 17025 accredited and tests to strict safety and performance protocols. Its people also help develop those standards, keeping them current with the latest product innovations. Governing bodies need to know a surface is safe to play on. This is where that assurance comes from.
The problem: renewals that could not be tracked by hand
A Sports Labs certificate is valid for one year from the day the report is uploaded. With thousands of pitches to look after worldwide, the team has to reach every facility in good time for renewal. That has to happen year after year, without fail. Miss the window and a pitch falls out of certification, and the client goes looking elsewhere.
For years, the team tracked all of this by hand, working from spreadsheets and checking websites for renewal dates. It worked when they were testing eight pitches a week. As demand climbed toward twenty-five, it stopped working. The manual process could no longer keep up. With every new pitch on the books, the risk of a renewal slipping through grew.
The solution: renewals that look after themselves
Sports Labs has worked with FLG for seven years. This is exactly the kind of job the system was built for. Rather than rely on anyone to remember a date, the team built automated workflows. These reach out to each facility six months, three months and one month before its certificate expires. The renewal window is never missed, because nobody has to remember it.
It matters beyond the retest, too. Sports Labs also runs a consultancy arm that manages resurfacing. Knowing where each facility is in its cycle feeds work to more than one part of the business. One reliable view of every pitch and its renewal date keeps the whole operation moving.
A big year, and a data problem in the way
This year brought something unusual. The England FA has changed its expiry system. A large batch of certificates will now expire in the same month in 2027. Only three test houses are in the running for the work. To get ahead of it, Sports Labs decided to send a bulk email. The aim was to encourage facilities to book their retests early, rather than wait for the rush.
There was a catch. Their email addresses had not been updated in a long time. That pushed the campaign into a wall of bounce-backs, high enough to get the domain flagged and blocked. Left unchecked, it would have put every email the business sent at risk. That came right when it needed to reach more facilities than ever.
Wesley, the Sports Labs account manager at FLG, spotted the cause. He suggested running the contact data through a cleanse before it did any more damage.
Enter Fetchify: email data cleansing made simple
That is where Fetchify came in. FLG’s sister company handled the email data cleansing for around 1,000 facilities, from start to finish. Sports Labs had never had data cleansed before, but there was nothing to it. Wes arranged for the data to be sent across. The cleaned file came back and went straight into the system. No disruption, no technical project, no fuss.
Since then, the bounce rates and domain problems have gone. The business is back to reaching the facilities it needs to reach. It now has a clean contact list and a protected sender reputation ahead of its busiest year.
What’s next
The renewals now run themselves, and the data is clean. Sports Labs is set up to compete hard for the certificates due in 2027. It can keep pace with demand well beyond that, too. The systems that track every pitch and renewal will carry the business through its busiest period yet. All without a spreadsheet in sight.
Behind every certified pitch is a renewal that has to happen on time. Sports Labs has built the system to make sure it always does
FLG is the Lead Conversion System for small UK sales teams, keeping follow-up and renewals on track so nothing slips. If missed renewals or ageing data are costing you, book a 20-minute walkthrough, and we will show you what to do about it.