Ideas for Creatively marketing and expanding memberships

by C&RB Staff (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2007
 

March Madness: Through the Green Highland Rim Golf Course in Joelton, Tenn. (20 minutes northwest of Nashville) kicks off the start of its golf season with a March Mania contest through its Web site and an e-mail campaign. Players fax or e-mail their picks in the NCAA basketball brackets. Correctly picked games can help the player earn up to $34 in credit towards a free round of golf. Management has seen a 20 percent increase in new golfers as a result of the promotion, which also prompts course regulars to come out earlier for their first rounds of the season.

All the News That’s Fit to Print: Many clubs publish a newsletter to send to its members, but the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Fla., now publishes an entire 40-page weekly newspaper called the Ocean Reef Press.

“Basically, it’s the Happy Valley Gazette,” explains Bill Hackleton, Executive Director of Communications, who says 98 percent of the news happens inside the gates of the community—generated by the art league, cultural center and various sporting events, such as fishing, golf, croquet and tennis. “But every now and then there will be a community issue. And when we go into capital projects, we can sell the membership on how we’re spending the money, and why.”

The club has had great success with the publication, Hackleton says, by partnering with an area newspaper publisher, which prints and distributes the Ocean Reef Press to members’ homes and stocks newpaper racks in the community. In exchange for its services, the publishing company keeps the revenue generated from advertising, and pays the club an editorial-services fee.

“But it doesn’t cover all my time because we’ve grown so much,” says Hackleton. “When we took it over six or seven years ago, it was 16 or 20 pages a week. Now it’s maxed out at 40, and there is more advertising demand than space available.”