They cyber-sky is the limit when it comes to what members and guests can now do online- from checking statements and paying bills to tapping into online directories and databases, and even participating in club-specific social networks.
The annual member/guest tournament at a prestigious private club in the Northwest didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned this year. The club had recently taken on a new head golf professional, and because of a lag in communication between the pro and the tournament’s two volunteer chairmen, e-mails explaining player divisions, tournament format, and the schedule of play weren’t sent to guests until a few days before the event.
SUMMING IT UP
• Ensuring that staff members make full use of electronic marketing tools is the key to getting members online.
• Online member exchanges can foster a better sense of community within a club’s membership. • There can be hidden costs associated with paying bills online. Find a system that works for your club. |
“Typically, that sort of thing gets sent out a month before,” a member of the club recalls. “At $1,000 a team, guests certainly had a right to expect important information like that to arrive much sooner. My guest, in fact, called me asking where he had to be and when, and what to expect. It could have been organized better.”
Fortunately, the tournament ended up running smoothly and upheld its reputation as one of the most enjoyable in the Pacific Northwest. More efficient discussion, consultation and execution prior to the week of the event, however, would likely have avoided the few unwanted headaches.
“Our Web site is very powerful,” the club member adds. “And for the most part, it works extremely well. But the problem, —which I suspect might be the case at many clubs—is that the staff doesn’t always use e-mail marketing enough to notify members of upcoming events and encourage participation.”
On a regular basis, a few more photographs from golf tournaments, swim meets and the like could also be posted to the club’s online photo gallery, this member believes, to increase “community bonding.” And even with a monthly newsletter and weekly e-newsletter, he feels the staff could do a better job of plugging undersubscribed events and encouraging members to sign up online.
“One staffer is in charge of most of the Website administration,” the member notes, “but other department heads should be involved as well. At the end of the day, the system is only as good as the people who use it. Our new pro is great, and he’s proved very popular since his arrival, but he’s still in the process of becoming more comfortable with computers.”
Behind Closed Doors
A visit to this particular club’s “Members Only” area reveals the wide range of links, menu items and applications that has becoming increasingly common on club Web sites. All told, the club’s site has what Kris Strauss, Director of Sales and Marketing for OB Sports, which manages 31 public and private golf facilities around the country, would call “good functionality.”
But, as this member’s observations highlighted, “human error”—or in most cases, human inability or unwillingness—is still too often a basic sticking point that stands in the way, for even the slickest and fastest Web sites, of achieving full effectiveness.
To Strauss, the most important functions of members-only sections, which started appearing on most club sites four or five years ago, are anything that engages the membership: club calendars, announcements, flyers, forums, etc. “Applications that get the members involved and talking, not only with the club but also with each other, are crucial,” he says.
Of course, for members to interact, they need ways to contact each other—directories with e-mail addresses at the very least, and ideally with photographs and other information as well. Other important components of a members-only section, Strauss says, are a tee-time reservation system, menu items from the dining room (and perhaps a separate reservations service), and space for club rules, regulations, by-laws, news and minutes from recent board meetings. It’s also valuable, he adds, to have a permanent member survey function that can help gather input for analyzing and evaluating what’s working, and what isn’t, at the club.
A member exchange—a sort of Craigslist-style trading area, where users might try selling their old golf clubs, cars or furniture, or where they can publish their daughters’ baby-sitting rates—has also proven to be popular on several of OB Sports’ sites. Finally, photo galleries, with pictures from recent club events, must now be viewed as essential parts of any members-only section.
“Members like to see pictures of themselves at social activities,” says Strauss. “And if you are showing a prospective member all of the great activities they can be a part of, it certainly aids the membership sales process.”
A club’s newsletter, Strauss adds, is something that can be posted in both the members-only and public sections of a site, as another good way to attract potential members.
One club with an interesting twist on the standard photo gallery approach is Dalhousie Golf Course in Cape Girardeau, Mo. In addition to posting photos from recent tournaments and dinners, the club also has a section (playing on the Missouri state nickname) called “Show Me Your Dalhousie.”
Here, photos are displayed in which members have posed at interesting locations around the world, sporting Dalhousie colors. One couple is shown standing 30 yards or so in front of a herd of elephants, presumably in Africa, while another is unfurling a Dalhousie flag on the 1st tee of the Old Course at St. Andrews. One of the junior members is shown alongside the Captain of the original Dalhousie Golf Club in Carnoustie, Scotland.
Payoffs from Online Money
Another online application that clubs are trying to implement gives members the ability to check statements and even pay bills online. Yet while this is a function that OB Sports’ Strauss describes as a “huge plus,” he adds that it is not yet widely used, probably because of the costs involved.
“We have looked into it and recommended it to our course owners,” he says. “But we have not seen too many gravitate towards it yet. The technology is there, and personally I don’t think it’s that cost-prohibitive, but there certainly is a cost—somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 just to set it up. When clubs are prioritizing, it gets pushed back.”
It’s only a matter of time before online bill-paying becomes more commonplace, Strauss believes, because when members are able to review their statements online, they have a more natural tendency to want to settle them that way, too. The hangup is that the preferred method of payment is likely to be a credit card that can help the member earn various rewards such as airline miles, cash back, discounts on gas, or free hotel nights. But for every dollar of benefits the member earns, it is estimated the club loses ten in credit card fees. Until more equitable arrangements can be made with credit card companies or other payment services, this will remain a cost-prohibitive hurdle.
Like many clubs, Bellingham (Wash.) Golf and Country Club is currently looking into the possibility of adding bill-paying to its member-only services. Erin Prescott, the club’s Director of Member Services and its Web site administrator, believes such a tool would drive a great deal more traffic to the site.
“I don’t have a recent figure for how many of our members are using the site regularly,” she says, “but I do know it’s not as many as I’d like. And I think if members could check their monthly minimum statements and pay their bills, a lot more would use it.”
Bellingham’s General Manager, Nicola Mann, says the club tried a system that allowed monthly payments by credit card, but it soon broke down. “It gave members the opportunity to earn credit card points and was popular because of that,” she says. “But it came at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars each year. We felt the members’ money could be better spent elsewhere.”
Today, about a third of Bellingham’s membership uses the club’s automatic bill-pay system, which transfers money directly from their checking accounts. But many remain wary of an automatic bank debit initiated by the club, Mann reports. “A good portion use their own bank’s online payment system,” she says.
If more club members can be educated, however, about the win-win aspect of automatic debits or self-initiated bank transfers, as compared to what credit card transactions cost the club, it may generate more momentum for greater installation, and use, of online payment systems. Some clubs are even thinking about creating their own rewards programs to encourage this practice and reduce the sting of lost credit-card points.
“Saving the club a lot of money on credit card fees can help pay for far more important things, like course maintenance and clubhouse remodeling,” concedes the member of the club that had the communications hiccups with its recent member/guest tournament. Or maybe even to train, develop or hire savvy Web-marketing experts who can then maximize the power and reach of existing club sites—and get the word out about events more efficiently.
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