Fore!mula For Success - Marketing Assistance Program - November 2009
Enhance Your Marketing Strategy and Maximize Your Revenue Potential with the Marketing Assistance Program
With the current economic conditions causing courses to cut staff and resources, golf operators are wearing more hats than usual, and with their time spread increasingly thin, marketing can often times take a back seat. Fore! Reservations saw an opportunity to help its users streamline their marketing efforts with an affordable solution that works. The Marketing Assistance Program, a new service offered from Fore! Reservations, was designed to help golf courses with their overall marketing efforts while having a positive impact on their bottom line. Launched as a pilot program during the 2009 season, the program set out to prove that the Fore! Reservations model of marketing best practices could help golf courses achieve beneficial results. After conclusive results were proven in rounds, green fee revenue, customer database growth, Internet reservations, and Fore! Marketing revenue, Fore! Reservations is now offering this marketing service to its entire customer base.
"If I wasn't the first course to sign up for the Marketing Assistance Program, I had to have been the second," Lake of the Woods Golf Course Head Golf Professional Dave Huber says. "Our marketing was better than it's ever been with this program! Last year (2008) was the worst year we've had since 1990, but this year with the Marketing Assistance Program was the best we've had in 20 years!"
During the 2009 season, Lake of the Woods Golf Course, an 18-hole municipality located in Mahomet, IL, was up 33% in overall revenue, up 39% in green fee revenue, and rounds increased by 20% to nearly 30,000 rounds. "This year was the perfect storm. Our weather was wonderful, course conditions were better after completing a 10 year 1.5 million dollar renovation, and our marketing was drastically improved. It couldn't have been better timing to capitalize on a great course and playing conditions by effectively marketing to our golfers."
Like many golf professionals, Dave felt like his marketing efforts had fallen short in past seasons so he jumped at the chance to use the Marketing Assistance Program to help him with his marketing initiatives. "Most golf operators don't have the time to consistently perform marketing tasks or the resources to hire to do it. The Marketing Assistance Program is a turn key operation that really helped me stay on top of things," Dave says. "Working with the experts at Fore! Reservations is a no-brainer. To be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone right away that gives me the right answer - that's worth a ton. I can't say enough about the marketing staff, they're just stars! A+++!"
Prior to joining the Marketing Assistance Program Lake of the Woods utilized a third-party website company to do their marketing. The difference for Lake of the Woods this year was clear; the advantage of working with just one company. "This program was much better! It makes little sense to work with a third-party purveyor when you can do everything with Fore! Reservations. There was so much lag time and redundancy working with a third-party which I didn't have in this program; it's one phone call to so many things," Dave states.
Tired of the marketing tactic of discounting green fees and bartering tee times for marketing services, Larry Myers, General Manager at Shepherd's Crook Golf Course, an 18-hole public municipal course in Zion, IL, also decided to utilize the Marketing Assistance Program to completely change their marketing strategy. "I was put in charge of marketing for Shepherd's Crook for the first time this year and I wanted to take a different direction," Larry says. "I eliminated all of our third-party trade business and changed how we spent our marketing budget. For the first time we took advantage of the Internet and e-mail marketing, and since I'm not too computer savvy, working with Fore! Reservations was a perfect fit."
As part of the program Shepherd's Crook changed its website to a more professional, better branded, easier to navigate site that incorporated all of the Fore! Internet Premium features. As a result, the course's online reservations increased by an impressive 151% (equating to 10% of their total rounds booked) and Larry was more inclined to send e-mails directing customers to their site for course information and to their Internet Specials Calendar to get the best tee time deals which generated $6,000 in revenue.
"The marketing team recommended that I use the calendar to create our own tee time specials. Prior to this, I relied on our previous website company to run our specials which was the means to my madness," Larry says. "The program helped us do our own marketing and we're so pleased with our results that our 9-hole sister course Shiloh Park is joining for next year. In fact, a lot of courses in our area were down in rounds and revenue; we stayed steady, and are tickled to death."
Shepherd's Crook, like all courses in the Marketing Assistance Program, also saw considerable growth in its customer database; growing by nearly 1,500 new customers compared to only 200 the previous year. The course in the program that grew its customer database by the highest percentage, 157%, was Eagle Pines Golf Club, an 18-hole public golf course in Mooresville, IN. Eagle Pines started the program with just 400 e-mails in their database but was able to grow it by encouraging counter staff to collect e-mail addresses, increasing online tee time reservations, using the Fore! Marketing product, installing the Touch Screen Kiosk, and starting an aggressive e-mail marketing program.
"We are committed to getting our existing and new customers into our e-mail database. By growing the database over time, we learned we can leverage that with e-mail marketing to keep our customers playing Eagle Pines," Owner Kathy Scott says.
The Marketing Assistance Program helped Eagle Pines establish a monthly e-newsletter, create holiday e-mail messages that resulted in $1,500 more revenue this year compared to last, as well as design any other e-mail blast promotion. "The program allowed us to start a line of communication with our customers through e-mail which we never had before," Kathy states. "At first we were hesitant to begin an e-mail marketing program but with the guidance of the marketing staff we were able to do so with ease. They elevated the professionalism and creativity of our e-mails, which we couldn't have achieved on our own. Sometimes you just need a little push to try something new."
All courses in the Marketing Assistance Program benefited from the brand new Fore! Marketing product. On average, courses generated $5,000 in revenue from the Birthday Club and $3,000 in revenue from the Defector Campaign. "Fore! Marketing made marketing easy for us. We reached so many people with so little work. It's dynamite!" exclaims Larry.
Eagle Pines always wanted to start a Birthday Club but it wasn't until joining the program that they were able to get the idea off of the ground. "We're thrilled with the revenue Fore! Marketing has generated for us and the positive response from our customers," Kathy says. "We do other forms of marketing, even local television ads, but it's hard to track the effectiveness of those ads. With Fore! Marketing, not only does the product offer affordability, but the e-mails are automated and single-handedly kept our customers coming back. Plus, I'm able to directly see the revenue results from the coupons tracked through the point-of-sale system."
Courses in the Marketing Assistance Program also benefited from receiving individual account management services that ensured a facility was maximizing their utilization of the Fore! Reservations system. Courses received monthly reporting to help guide marketing efforts and respond as needed. "We're definitely using more of the Fore! Reservations software than ever before as a result of the program," Kathy says. "The staff was exceptional to work with and the reporting was very helpful. Continuing with the Marketing Assistance Program next year was an easy decision."
"Everything we did in the program was a home run! We've come a long way this year and will go even further next year," says Dave. "We've been with Fore! Reservations since 1997 and it just keeps getting better all of the time."
"I would recommend the Marketing Assistance Program to anyone. It's one of the best decisions you can make for your golf course," Larry states. "Fore! Reservations has always been on the cutting edge of the industry presenting us with ideas to increase rounds and revenue, and the Marketing Assistance Program is no different. Fore! Reservations is a software system that you can run your entire operation on, and I wouldn't manage my business any other way."
Click here to learn more about the Marketing Assistance Program. Call 630.789.9705 to learn more about our affordable services and receive a free consultation on how we can help. Fore! Reservations is taking on the first 100 courses that register for the 2010 season so don't wait, register today!
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