In the dynamic world of golf facility management, ensuring a seamless and personalised experience for members and visitors is paramount. One of the most effective tools to achieve this is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
CRM is designed to manage a company's interactions with current and potential customers, using data analysis to improve business relationships. With a CRM system in place, golf facilities can enhance their operational efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately, drive revenue growth.
A CRM system can be transformative for a golf facility, integrating various aspects of operations and customer service into a cohesive platform. At its core, CRM allows you to store detailed customer information, including contact details, preferences, booking history, and feedback. This data can then be used to tailor communications and offers to individual members, ensuring a personalised touch that can significantly enhance the customer experience.
Often CRM systems are combined or included with the golf club management software meaning you can streamline administrative tasks such as scheduling tee times, managing memberships and coordinating events. These platforms are great at a simplistic level and there are many advantages to having an integrated solution, but as Chris Knight, Director of The Revenue Club and PGA Professional, notes - when it comes to connecting sales and marketing a standalone CRM platform is a must.
As experts in the field, Chris and his team specialise in digital marketing within the golf space, working with facilities and organisations to implement best CRM practice. In his words they “help golf clubs to turn strangers (unaware of your golf club), into prospects (aware of your golf club and interested in your offering), into customers (members, visitors, golf lessons, food & beverage patrons), and finally into promoters who will help introduce more strangers into the flywheel, and so the wheel keeps turning!”
If you’re new to the subject or seeking to optimise or improve, read on for some key pointers from Chris on how to maximise the impact of CRM.
Automated prompts
New ‘deals’ are tracked through the sales pipeline, with automated prompts helping the sales team prioritise and manage enquiries efficiently. We set up notifications for the sales team/person when customers show repeated interest in specific website areas. This allows for tailored marketing communications to separated groups, saving time and ensuring effective communication. Having access to all past correspondence with each contact helps personalise their responses further.
Customer activity
CRM monitors customer activity, allowing for timely communication by tracking call connections, email opens and even website visits. This reduces unsuccessful outbound calls, making the sales process more efficient.
All paid online marketing campaigns we create are managed and more importantly monitored through HubSpot. The software tracks where new leads originate and follows their journey through the sales process, assigning a financial value to each closed lead. This helps the golf club demonstrate a clear return on advertising spend (ROAS) and provides insights on the best use of future budgets.
Insightful reports
Comprehensive reports on sales and marketing activities help operators identify best practices, such as the typical lead time for golf society bookings and their preferred booking times. The software can go deeper, reviewing when successful calls are made through to which key words are searched by each customer type. These automated reports provide crucial information, enabling data-driven decisions that refine the marketing and sales process in turn significantly increasing revenue while improving efficiency.
Delivering results
Adoption of CRM software enabled Get Golfing to generate a total of £67,840 in new membership leads, with a ROAS of 2,148%. They also now hold nearly 200,000 customer records. As Dan Lucking, Sales and Marketing at Get Golfing, says: "Combining the expertise in the golf industry from The Revenue Club and the technology from their CRM system has been a great collaboration that has allowed Get Golfing to maximise marketing reach alongside effective sales.
“Our best practices are constantly evolving, and we are pleased to have been early adopters of this technology which has allowed us to grow rapidly through working in an innovative and nontraditional approach whilst maintaining key management controls."
For further information on the Revenue Club, www.therevenueclub.co.uk/
