Landscapes Golf Management, operator of more than 50 golf courses and country clubs across America, in partnership with data marketing and technology specialist Metolius Golf, offers these insights to better drive engagement and topline revenue.
Some businesspeople consider “hope isn’t a plan” overused and cliché. Advocates of the adage, however, are brazenly correct in that laying groundwork turns lofty ideals into realistic achievements of goals.
Such is true in the golf, country club and resort industry. Relying on conventional promotion of stellar offerings alone – a.k.a. a “wing it” mindset – is fruitless at best and hazardous at worse.
Hence, we turn to the importance of data management. It’s imperative to know details about members and guests, notably their demographic and behavioral compositions. That data informs how and when to tailor communications to squarely hit their unique sweet spots. Generate awareness, move them to consideration, make it easy for them to purchase and develop loyalties.
Don’t give it lip service. With proper focus, data management and activations aren’t as intimidating, frustrating and time consuming as they may appear.
Landscapes Golf Management, operator of more than 50 golf courses and country clubs across America, in partnership with data marketing and technology specialist Metolius Golf, offers these insights to better drive engagement and topline revenue:
Start building an effective data management strategy by installing proper marketing technology. A reservation and point-of-sale system that’s easy to use among guests and members, as well as administratively, must be smoothly integrated with your e-mail service provider.
Next, develop a segmentation strategy that groups members and guests into buckets. For starters, create listings by participation frequency, geography and handicap – the categories of attributes are endless. Sorting allows for messaging information only to those who care about a specific subject while mitigating “white noise.” Real-time analytics results in hypertargeting communications and programming around member and guest proclivities.
With a solid technology stack and segmentation strategy in place, it’s time to upgrade data collection practices.
Make it simple for customers to transact online via your booking engine, e-commerce store and website forms. Train and even incentivize clerks to capture contact information by phone, in-person and online—before, during and after participation. For outings and tournaments, obtain each player’s contact info, not just the lead foursome registrant. The same goes for diners, spa-goers, tennis players and guests of all shapes and sizes.
Frequency of messaging is critical. Don’t bombard your list with too many e-mails at too narrow a cadence – they’ll stop reading. Establish a calendar that, for example, sends e-mails and SMS once or twice weekly in season and monthly off-season. Remember, if high handicappers’ histories show play in “wine-and-dine” events, don’t send them Club Championship messages. Or if a golfer doesn’t take to messaging about spa specials, well, you get the gist.
Other tactics:
-Data Appending – There are services which add information to mere e-mail addresses and people’s names for complete demographic profiles.
–Data Hygiene – Remove bounces and disengaged contacts to improve deliverability.
-Lead Scoring – Automated tracking of e-mail, website and social media engagement prioritizes individuals’ likelihoods and abilities to spend money with you.
More best practices:
-Open rate is inconsistently reported and possibly invalid; therefore, it isn’t a primary indicator of success.
-Use click-through rates or, better yet, referral sources, to isolate impact of e-mail, text and social media campaigns on website traffic.
-Embrace best practices for building engaging, non-spammy messages.
Monitor website traffic, track conversions and isolate effects of your strategy via an automated reporting system.
Evaluate metrics quarterly, if not more frequently, and implement necessary adjustments.
A solid data management and integrated communication strategy is paramount to infiltrating consumers in this overloaded information age. As the world becomes more digitized, embracing data and marketing technology guards against razor-thin member-guest pipelines and puts you in a strong position to consistently grow business.
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