Reward Your Loyal Customers

Creating incentives for repeat, non-member golfers honors the loyalty of customers who are looking for the complete golf experience rather than those seeking steeply discounted public course play.

John Spiess, General Manager, The Heritage Club, Wake Forest, N.C. JSpiess@theheritageclub.net

I don’t have to tell any golf course operator how much competition there is for the public golfer—all you have to do is open the pages of the local newspaper or go online and type in “discount golf.” The average public golfer is flooded with offers of special discounted rates, two for ones, etc.

Here at the Heritage Club, we have approached the madness from a different angle. We are looking for the repeat golfer who appreciates the complete golf experience, not the golfer who is looking to play your course for next to nothing.

A couple of years ago in an effort to attract the repeat golfer, we rolled out our Heritage Links card. It is a twist on your basic loyalty card that rewards the golfer who continues to play your course. Every time a non-member visits our club we ask them if they have a Heritage Links card. If they do not, we then offer them the card at no cost in exchange for their email address. This is a great method for collecting email addresses for our database. We then punch their card with a specially designed hole punch each time they pay to play eighteen holes of golf. We advise them to keep the card in their wallet or golf bag, which allows them to be reminded of our club every time they plan to play golf. After their card is punched seven times they can redeem their card for a free round of golf at our club.

This card has worked very well for our club as it serves as a great incentive for the guest to play our club again and again in order to earn the free round. We have quite a few golfers who end up going through two to three cards per season. The card has allowed us to grow the number of guest rounds the past few years without resorting to the discount wars that are prevalent in the industry. We also use the emails gained to send out news of upcoming events, etc., to our most loyal customers. If you are looking for a way to bring back your best customers, then you should consider a loyalty card.

Tags: John Spiess Loyalty Card program The Heritage Club Wake Forest N.C.