Every club owner, manager and sales person wants to ensure those membership sales numbers are as high as they can possibly be for month end. But how can clubs do this effectively without spending a fortune on marketing campaigns, and without “spamming” their prospects?

The key is well measured, well timed and well executed campaigns.

Well measured...

By now, your prospects should know all they need to know about your club, the equipment and facilities you have, and what their fitness goals are (or at least should be). It's now up to you to decide what offer or incentive might tip them just far enough to make a commitment. If you don't want to give them money off membership products, how about a month free? Or even reduce or eliminate their joining fee? All of these are quick and simple to do through the ClubWise promotion management module.

Well timed...

Month end is the perfect time to hit your prospects hard. Put quite simply, month end brings money. Most people get paid at the end of the month, which means they feel they can afford to give you that first payment along with their joining fee. This, weighed up with an enticing deal has proven to be highly successful in recruiting new members. Though timing isn't just about the day in the month, but the time of the day too...

In order to increase the success and effectiveness of your campaigns, you should be aware of optimum times for open rates. Smart Insights is a great website to find information and statistics on email marketing and have recently drawn from a white paper compiled by Pure360 who have monitored over 40,000 campaigns to outline the key times different sectors tend to excel when it comes to open rates. I have listed what I believe to be the key findings below, but should you want to visit the site, check out the article and download the white paper yourself for a bit of light reading, you can do so by clicking here

• MYTH BUSTER: Those of you that thought scheduling your emails through the night would ensure you end up first on the list of emails to read in the morning, please stop! Less than 4% of these are actually getting opened.
• Whilst 5-6pm seems to be the general optimum time to launch an email campaign, the leisure industry seems to be way off. Between 10am and 12pm or alternatively between 10pm and 11pm are the best times for you to be targeting your prospects.
• Personalisation is key. Go on, make them feel special!

Well executed...

The icing on the proverbial cake is the execution of the promotion. We asked Lee Mogridge, General Manager at Waterside Leisure, what month end means to them, and how campaign manager helps...

"We use many incentives to entice our prospects including: additional free day passes if you join family and friends, 10% off our restaurant, free consultations with our Kinesiologist, Chiropractor, Sports Massage."

“Campaign manager is an essential aspect of the ClubWise system, and possibly the most important part of the close out process. Using both SMS and email keeps our prospects on track and helps us to close the deal"

ClubWise Campaign Manager allows you to communicate with your members and prospects as you choose, by email or text. When it comes to the end of the month, and you want to promote promote promote, this tool allows you to customise your communications with corporate fonts and colours, add images, insert promo codes, brand up to the nines and personalise by mail merging fields such as first name. SMS campaigns can be very powerful and exceptionally motivating when used correctly. Over 77% of the world's population owns a mobile phone, and of this 12% are SmartPhones. SMS campaigns average at a 97% open rate which is incredible - just think of the ROI! Though be careful, as much as we want to capture those prospects, over communicating is not only annoying, but it can deter them from joining all together and in turn harm your brand. In the immortal words of Professor Albus Dumbledore, "Use your power wisely Harry!"

For more information on how ClubWise helps you to optimise your sales during the close out period, how it can reduce your admin costs, improve your efficiency, generally increase your membership sales, and provide you with a terrible movie quote every now and again, please do not hesitate to contact us