Jimmy's Farm & Wildlife Park, located near Ipswich in Suffolk, is a unique and thriving visitor destination that blends traditional farming with conservation, education, and family-friendly fun.

Established by TV personality and conservationist Jimmy Doherty, the park has grown to include a Rare Breeds Farm, exotic wildlife enclosures, immersive woodland walks, and Europe’s largest polar bear reserve as part of its ‘Lost Lands of the Tundra’ exhibit. Jimmy’s Farm attracts thousands of visitors annually, offering a compelling mix of entertainment and education across more than 100 species of animals, including capybaras, meerkats, tapirs, reptiles, arctic wolves and brown bears. 

As Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park expanded, so too did its ambitions. The leadership team recognised several challenges:

• Enhancing the guest journey through digital interaction, from pre-arrival planning to on-site navigation and post-visit engagement.
• Capturing accurate and real-time behavioural data to understand how guests moved through the park and what content resonated most.
• Reducing reliance on traditional paper maps, signage, and printed tickets, aligning with their environmental values.
• Strengthening educational delivery through mobile-first storytelling and interactive learning.
• Empowering marketing and membership teams to deliver more timely, personalised campaigns to increase retention and return visits.

The farm needed a partner and a platform capable of seamlessly integrating with existing systems, delivering measurable impact, and enhancing the overall visitor experience.

Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park adopted n-gage.io’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, a comprehensive suite of tools including a fully branded, customisable mobile app for guests powered by a robust operator system behindthe scenes.

Key features included:

Custom-Branded Mobile App
Visitors use the Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park app to explore the park via an intuitive map, receive real-time updates on feeding times, access rich educational content, and store digital tickets and memberships. The app incorporates both GPS and Beacon-based navigation. 

Ticketing API Integration
Seamless integration with the park’s ticketing system enables automated import of visitor records, purchases, and membership data for more accurate analytics and targeting. The platform dynamically imports ticket purchases, membership and visitor data—fuelling personalised in-app content and post-visit marketing.

Campaign Management System (CMS)
The operator team can create, schedule, and send push notifications and promotional content based on visitor profiles and behaviour.

Analytics Dashboard
Real-time analytics provide insight into footfall patterns, dwell times, campaign performance, and in-app engagement—supporting data-led decision-making. The in-house team use a powerful dashboard to schedule targeted campaigns and automated push alerts, curate educational materials, offers, and animal talk schedules and monitor live maps, dwell times at zones, and conversion data.

GPS and Beacon Technology
As guests move through the site, location-aware content is triggered, from polar bear facts in the tundra enclosure to café offers and event reminders enhancing immersion and dwell time. Geolocation triggers deliver contextual content: e.g., polar bear feeding prompts or café offers near The Barn; and event reminders while exploring woodland areas.

Stevie Sheppard, Park Director at Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park, praised the value and results of the partnership:

“The mobile app has proven to be an incredibly valuable tool for our visitors, helping them to navigate the park, discover more about our animals, and really get the most from their visit. For us as a team, it’s allowed us to build a stronger understanding of our visitor behaviours, communicate more effectively and reduce our reliance on paper-based materials. The integration with our existing ticketing provider, Digitickets, was a real game changer, enabling us to run more personalised and targeted marketing campaigns. We’re already seeing the benefits of that through return visits, increased memberships and enhanced engagement.”

“It’s really important for us to ensure that when we introduce visitor technology it doesn’t detract from the physical enjoyment of being with us, but enhances the overall experience, and with the new platform and app we feel we’re getting that balance just right. We’re also seeing a benefit from a marketing perspective, with the ability to issue offers and special discounts in the form of in-app digital vouchers, not just for our attraction, but as we partner with other attractions in the area, for
them too,” 

“The software app is also helping the team with education and spreading the conservation message. With most of the younger generation being mobile first, what better way of helping reinforce our messaging than through the digital medium they use the most.”