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Getting your Emails Opened (part 2)

In part 1 I talked about tune-out. Sending the same email with discounted rates time after time will just get your emails sent to the round file. Your emails need to have good content. Content designed to build up the relationship with your facility and enhance customer loyalty.

But how do you get your emails opened?

I am sure everyone has a friend or acquaintance, that when they send you an e-mail you immediately open the e-mail. You can’t wait to see what they sent you, is it a joke or an interesting news item they found, whatever it is, if you are like me, you drop almost everything to open it up. Well what do you think would happen to your business if all of the golfers on your list dropped everything and opened your e-mail? What if instead of an offer you included a funny video, or a great joke. What if it was a great inspirational story, or a giveaway to the first 50 gofers that signed up for something.

Your subject line should reflect the interesting nature of your content. The subject line could be a question, a statement, a how-to, a top-5 list, or any number of lead-ins that pique the reader’s interest and curiosity. I am sure many of you can come up with some great ideas, if you just go back through your own e-mail inbox and find those people that you always open their e-mails and see what kind of interesting types of content you can find. Then go back and also include a video golf tip, or a link to an instructional e-book, and pretty soon your golfers will be opening up your e-mails as fast as you can send them.

So let’s review. It is OK to send an offer, just not the same one or same type over and over. If you do send out an offer alone, make sure you send another e-mail out (maybe a few days later) that is nothing but good, current, fun, and enjoyable content. Also take the time to look at what content you think will connect with your golfer so that he will drop everything to open up your e-mail and make sure that you always have some type of content like that in every e-mail that you send.

In part 3  I will go further into the types of content that you should use to ensure the success of your e-mail campaigns and what resources you can use to find great content for your e-mails.

As always if you have any questions or comments please leave me a note at the end of the post and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

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Tags: Email Best Practices, How To, Tips and Tools, Web-Based Marketing for Golf Courses and Golf Professionals by Al.W
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Are you sending the right e-mails to your golfers (part 1)?

I am continually educating myself on technology so that I can keep my clients up to speed on the latest trends and best practices. Since most golf course operators have their hands full managing day-to-day issues, my goal is to serve as a resource, doing the research and passing along the knowledge so they don’t have to.

One of the ways I keep in touch is by subscribing to golf course email lists. I subscribe because I like to know what the golf courses are up to, and because sometimes I see interesting approaches that I can then pass along to my clients.

One of the things I can tell you right off the bat is that most golf courses don’t do a very good job of letting me know what is going on. Are there big tournaments coming up or just completed? A wedding? Greens aerated or in great shape? Special meals or events? Any news about the course or the staff? Any new videos or articles or tips posted on the site? Keeping your readership informed of what is going on at your facility helps them stay closer to the facility, and being closer improves customer loyalty. The more loyal they are to your facility, the more likely they are to spend time and money there. Your email is a perfect tool to build customer loyalty.

Is your email going to give me good information, or will it be just another tired discount offer? I can tell very quickly if the golfers on your list are going to open the e-mail or not based on nothing more than the subject line.

This brings up 2 key points:
1. When is sending out only an offer or a regular offer too often to where the golfer starts to tune out your e-mails? and
2. How can you ensure that your golfers want to open your e-mail.

Let’s look at the first point first: tune-out.
If you need rounds, and your best source of marketing to your golfers is your e-mail list then fine. But what I see a lot of is the same dreary e-mail with the same look, and basically the same pricing, hours that you can book the special, and the same days of the week. It comes out virtually the same time every week, and guess what, it is boring the heck out of your golfers who you are trying to get to your course. The only time they will look at your e-mail is if that week they have decided they want to play your course, and they remember that your e-mail has the specials on it. Other than that it will find its way to the deleted file every time without even being opened!
If you need to send out a weekly offer, you must either add content to the e-mail that gets the golfer to open and read the e-mail or send out another e-mail during the week that does not have an offer attached but has good content that gets your golfers engaged in reading the e-mail.

Look for Part 2 – Getting your emails opened – in the next post

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Tags: Email Best Practices, How To, Tips and Tools by Al.W
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Well it’s been the better part of a month since the seminar and I thought I would go out into golf website world and take a good look at whats going on. I have spent time looking at golf course websites,  some from those that came to the seminar and many that did not. While I see golf courses getting closer to Web 2.0, I still see that many courses are still falling woefully short of creating a compelling online presence. With the golf business continuing to struggle to get more rounds we need to be working hard to insure our websites are working for us to their capacity.

Here is what I see:

• Courses are definitely getting better at producing content that is relevant and timely
• Courses are starting to embrace some social media. I see a lot of Facebook and twitter icons.
• Specials, News and Promotions are becoming more standard on home pages,
• I am seeing less of my old favorite, the description of the course and what it has to offer.

Here is what is missing

• We are still afraid to give. I see almost no one with a tip, or giving something away.
• We still aren’t creating a dialogue with our golfers. Too much one way communication.
• We are still making it hard to book a tee time online (had to get my plug in)
• We are not anywhere near being effective in utilizing our social media avenues to drive business to our facilities.

What do we need to do?

What I think is golf courses need to create an action plan that consists of a plan that communicates, gives rather than always takes, and that makes the site simple and easy to navigate. But above all we need to start somewhere and get going. It’s one thing to embrace technology and web 2.0 intellectually, it’s quite another to get off our collective behinds and do something!

Here are a few ideas that may make it easier to get started.

• Find a new way to communicate to your golfers. Open a twitter account and instead of saying join us on twitter, create an incentive to join and tell your golfers that they will get a twitter update on how they can redeem their incentive. Use a company like survey monkey and create a simple survey that asks them what they would like to see in e-mails and on your website. Give them a small incentive to fill it out. (give) Ask for their opinion, you might be shocked at what they say!!
• Start telling them what is going on and what events have just happened. Show them how fun it is to play golf at your facility. Photos, testimonials, upcoming events, upcoming programs. Do you have a Thanksgiving shotgun?? While I know that is still considered early November, I can’t find a website that tells me what’s going on for Thanksgiving Day? Not a photo anywhere showing me a past successful event? Start creating compelling content to get your golfers coming back to your site.
• Last but never least GIVE.  How about that golf tip of the week. How about finding a cool golf instructional tip on the internet and linking to it. (There are 1000’s) How about a tip of the week, that’s not instructional related.  Give them a link to a cool golf book on Amazon. Find some golf e-books and share why you like the e-book and why your golfers might be interested in purchasing. (Eric Jones has a great one if you need an e-book to start with) How about telling them how good the hot new restaurant around the corner is with a link to their website. You can get 100’s of ideas if you just take a minute to change your paradigm and start to find ways to give rather than always trying to find ways to sell them something! (Classic web 2.0 vs. web 1.0)

So in conclusion I am starting to see lots of improvement, but we could, should do, and need to do a lot better. Just take action and get started. Here are the 3 keys to get going and succeed in there simplest form.

1. Communicate Now
2. Create Compelling Content Now
3. Give Now

Do all 3 of these on a weekly basis for your golfers, and soon you will be embracing web 2.0 and with a little patience, I think you will start to reap the benefits of creating a real dynamic online presence for your golf course.

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Tags: Web Site Design, Web-Based Marketing for Golf Courses and Golf Professionals by Al.W
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A lot of you have asked for the 2 documents I referenced  in my portion of the “Using the Internet to Improve your Business” seminar on October 12th. The first one is from a article written in 2000 by Sheryl Kimes. Her article is titled “Applying yield management to the golf-course industry. I am having a tough time finding the article where you don’t have to pay for it, so please be patient and I will have a link posted soon.

The second is an article from the NY Times titled “Airlines Coax Travelers to Their Own Sites.” This article talks about how Southwest became successful by utilizing advance rates, and how many of the major airlines have followed suit. This article gives good examples that golf course operators can use when determining whether they want to adopt this type of strategy to increase revenue. Click here to read the article.

An interesting point to make about demand based pricing and its sister term yield management is that these strategies have been  indispensable tools for increasing profits within the highly competitive airline industry for almost 30 years. The techniques have steadily gained acceptance in other industries that have similar business processes. Although making a golf tee time resembles making an airline reservation in many respects, yield management is rarely practiced in the golf industry. Well to be honest a homogenized version of yield management is used that claims to use certain aspects, but in reality falls well short of what the airline and hotel industries have used for years.

In recent years, new revenue management technologies are emerging that are specifically designed for golf operations. These technologies could have a positive financial impact on the golf industry during the current economic downturn, and potentially represent a new trend in golf course management. One of these such technologies is my company W5golf. We offer a real time booking engine that can incorporate rate periods or fences, (which is the term the airlines use) an advance rate program, (like Southwest Airlines) and can allow you to post different rates like seniors and walking rates right next to a rate with a cart fee for example. We also offer a call center service, but I will save the explanation of how that works for another post.

But with whatever technology you might want to persue, the most important point is to determine if using these strategies are right for your operation. My goal of this post about demand based pricing, and future posts will be to provide information for you to be able to make informed decisions on how to implement a demand based pricing type program but even more importantly how to utilize basic yield management principles to help courses drive rounds and revenue.

Please leave any comments or ask me any questions and I will be glad to get back to you quickly.

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Tags: Demand Based Pricing by Al.W
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