Just as there are things you should always do to create a winning loyalty program, there are also things you shouldn’t do. Avoid these five missteps to ensure your efforts hit the mark with your customers.
1. Don’t stay on the sidelines because you don’t know all the answers. Small business owners tend to lack the man-hours needed for a digital marketing effort. That’s why tools like Custom Campaigns from Google are so important. According to Imavex executive Zach Miller, with what’s freely available, you can run some loyalty-marketing experiments that aren’t a time-suck and, when completed, will tell you exactly how worthwhile your effort was.
“The biggest mistake is to not get started,” Miller says. “Once you try a loyalty-marketing promotion and see the results, the momentum will build.” The most common trigger is a glance at the tee sheet that shows openings for an upcoming weekend. “At that point,” he says, “you can pull 1,000 email addresses and there’s a decent chance you’ll get 300 people open it and maybe 20 of those people to book a time.”
From there, Miller says, “it no longer feels like busy work and you challenge yourself.” You’ll choose your prospect pools more shrewdly, time your outbound messages to coincide with events or holidays, and even write more provocative subject lines.
2. Don’t build a loyalty app. In this “mobile-first” world, it seems natural to want your golf course loaded as a digital app on the handheld devices of area golfers. At a price of $5,000 or less, it’s not even super-expensive. But many experts aren’t much in favor of this tactic.
A recent survey from Bond Brand Loyalty found that 48 percent of loyalty-program enrollees say they would like to interact as customers with apps on their smartphones and tablets, but only 12 percent have in fact ever downloaded a loyalty-program app. Geoff Chaney of SMS Masterminds much prefers a one-two punch of email and text messaging.
“A text message is universal—it can be received by any device, anywhere,” Chaney says. “It’s a big mistake to develop an app because you will only hit a small number of prospects. Loyalty is about appealing to the masses, at least at the start of a campaign or promotion.”
In your travels, look for messages that say “Text us once and we’ll reward you for life!” or words to that effect. Small businesses are eagerly gathering text-able device numbers, for all the reasons Chaney expresses.
3. Don’t get deep into loyalty marketing without knowing the “before-after.” Boots Crossley of CourseTrends says, “First and foremost, it’s important to analyze current habits of customers. Course [operator]s should survey golfers in order to determine how often they play, what time of day they play, and what benefits they would most enjoy receiving from a loyalty program.”
4. Don’t forget that reward programs are supposed to also reward your business. All this talk about relating to the customer on his or her terms and creating a feeling of friendship shouldn’t obscure the fact that loyalty marketing is a two-way street. According to consultant David Waits, the work you do to create highly-satisfied repeat customers will eventually lead to a point where “price stops mattering to that customer.” These are the people “you can resell and upsell to,” says Waits. Better profit margins are welcomed by any course operator, especially in these tight times.
“Loyalty incentives can be used to push loyal customers to buy tee times that are traditionally harder to sell,” says Crossley of CourseTrends. “That has the added benefit of freeing up prime times for customers who normally don’t play the course.” In turn, that builds up the database, adding golfers who can be targeted for repeat spending.
5. Don’t give up on Facebook campaigns just because they cost money. At this point in the evolution of social-media marketing, course owners should have a credit card connected to their Facebook accounts and a budget set up based on certain keywords used in posts and other relevant factors. “If you don’t pay Facebook, they’ll put your commercial message out to 8 percent of your audience or less,” says Chaney of SMS Masterminds. “Social media isn’t free anymore, and you simply have to accept this.”
Chaney’s advice? “Create a post that promotes your course, put $10 or $20 against it, and Facebook will give you a number of people they expect that post to reach. This approach needs to be part of your overall plan, because it’s the future of advertising.”