New Member Orientation Is Not Enough
New member orientation has become an essential part of the membership marketing process. New member parties, how-to presentations, and introductions to department heads are necessary, but they’re often mundane and certainly expected by the new member. As consumers, we expect some form of orientation with everything we purchase. Access to how-to videos, a walk-through when […]
Holistic Approach to a Better Strategic Marketing Plan
As you finalize your strategic marketing plan for this year, don’t fall victim to what so many organizations overlook. All too often, strategic plans include separate campaigns created for each department with little overlap and no transition to the next. This results in “silos” which creates gaps in your planning and can negatively effect the […]
Making Sense of the Private Club Market Analysis
A Tale of Two Communities Unlike the Charles Dickens novel, this tale is about the private club and the two distinctly different communities it serves. Both are infinitely definable and should be a part of private club market analysis. Let’s start with the first community, the club’s existing members. Where do they come from? Depending […]
Best Follow-up Strategy, Phone or Email?
Follow-up: The key to converting leads Closing the sale is the name of the game in any sales position, and the follow-up strategy plays a vital role in the success of that recruitment goal. Obviously, communication is an important component of this process. However, the fastest way to shut down your interactions is to communicate via […]
Benefits of Video
Discovering New Benefits of Video If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the video is a picture on steroids. In fact, according to many sources, video is processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. Most clubs understand there are benefits of video but are you aware of the not-so-common uses your […]
The Developer Legacy – Equity Refund
This article will not be for every reader, but it does address one of the critical issues facing community oriented and even freestanding clubs today; how to deal with equity refund. I call it the developer legacy not because I want to pick a fight with developers, but because it’s an accurate description of how […]
Industry Trends: The Change From Obsolete to Relevant
Industry Trends Looking at club trending today is a bit trickier than you think. Why, because today’s clubs are in various levels of pain or gain. Some clubs have zero initiation fees or discounting marketing plans, and scrambling season to season looking for the “deal of the day”. While other clubs never felt a tremor from […]
Still Mending the Wound of 2008?
Let’s be honest, all of us were affected by the tanking of the economy in 2008. It’s a question as to what extent, and what steps did your club take to address the aftermath. Some private clubs escaped with a mere surface wound. While most were cut much deeper. Here we are nearly a decade […]
Membership Retention & Relations
One of the most interesting realities of the private club industry is that we spend far more time and energy in matriculating new members than we do keeping the ones that we have. From my perspective, we need to spend equal time and energy on membership retention as we do with membership recruitment. Obviously, there […]
Increase Club Value Today With This Simple Step
How often have we heard from members of the board, “Let’s get as many members in the door paying dues,” “All we need are more bodies,” “We’re in the dues business,”? These all too familiar phrases continue to drive the reactive marketing plan at private clubs. While most boards focus on the number of new […]