Golf Club Marketing: Creating an Email Re-Engagement Campaign

Are you looking for new ways to increase golf club membership? If so, one tactic you can deploy is a re-engagement campaign. Re-engagement campaigns can be used to accomplish a number of different goals - from CRM list cleaning to getting back in touch with a segment of your CRM to moving leads to sales qualified leads or sales qualified leads to customers. All of these approaches should be treated uniquely and start with a goal in mind. Let’s take a look at re-engagement email campaigns with the goal of boosting club membership.

With your intention set, the next step is to plan the steps of your re-engagement campaign.

Step 1 - Define Your Audience and List

The first step to creating a re-engagement campaign is to define who your target audience, or audiences, are. In the case of many clubs, you may have a list of leads and a list of sales qualified leads. How you interact with each of these audiences is likely going to be different because of where in the sales funnel they are. Leads are often still in the awareness or consideration stage of the buyer’s journey whereas sales qualified leads are in the consideration or decision-making stage of the buyer’s journey. Start by segmenting your audiences(s) as the messaging, number of emails, and more will be determined based on this.

Step 2 - Craft Your Messaging

Once you have your goal set and audiences or lists segmented, you need to define your messaging. For your leads list, you will likely have more email touchpoints than your sales qualified list. The reason this is important is so you can meet them where they are at in their buying process. The email string for your leads may look like this: 

• Email 1 - Inform your audience of what’s new at your golf club and invite them to explore your membership guide or learn more about your club.
• Email 2 - Entice them to act by visiting the club through a round of golf, a social event, lunch, tour, or a combination of these. Tip: Tailor the invite based on what you know about your leads. Are they a golfer? Do they have young children? Are they looking to meet new people? Whatever their driving force for exploring and considering membership is, play off of this to let your audience know that you understand their needs and wants and are able to meet them. 
• Email 3 - Invite them to apply for membership. If you can time this with a sense of urgency, that’s even better. For example, perhaps you have a fee increase coming up, a special members-only event, or are nearing a waitlist. Any of these time-sensitive reasons will help your chance of converting. 

In devising the messaging for your sales qualified leads, you’ll likely cut email 1 and go straight to email 2. There are a few reasons for this. First, you don’t want to waste their time by telling them the information they already know or asking them to download an offer that they’ve already looked at. Second, you want to meet your prospect where they are at in the buyer’s journey. If they are already sales qualified, chances are they have had a certain level of engagement with your website and/or sales team already and can be taken to that next step. 

Step 3 - Set a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

For each email you send, you should have a clear, concise, and consistent call-to-action (CTA). Using the example above, the CTAs are as follow: 

• Email 1 - Learn More 
• Email 2 - You’re Invited to X 
• Email 3 - Apply for Membership before X 

If you’re able, test CTAs via an A/B test to determine what will work best with your defined audience. Remember to follow CTA best practice guidelines to help craft the messaging and design. 

Step 4 - Plan Your Timing 

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to the perfect email timing. This is where understanding your audience comes first. Think through their journey in receiving these emails. Is there a point where it might make sense to only send email 2 if they haven’t taken the said CTA? Should you have two different CTAs based on what you know about your audience(s) and trigger this with conditional if/then branches in a workflow? What’s the ideal journey for each user based on what you know, what actions they take, and the length of your campaign or deadline for action - in this case, the action being applying before X to take part in an event, get in before a waitlist, or join with lower fees or rates. 

Step 5 - Measure Performance 

No matter what email platform you are using, you should be able to track the performance of your emails including the open rate and click-through rate. If you’re using the HubSpot platform, take it a step further and create a campaign to also track the number of leads to sales qualified leads and the number of sales qualified leads to customers. Depending on how you’re using the CRM and Deals within HubSpot, you can also track the number of won and lost deals, revenue, and ROI.

These re-engagement email tactics can be transferable outside golf club marketing as well. So, whether you’re looking to connect with your inactive subscribers, get more information about your subscribers, move your subscribers or leads down the sales funnel, or convert them from sales qualified leads to customers, a re-engagement campaign, when designed with intent, can help you accomplish these feats.