It’s not enough to have active social media pages and maintain a great golf course. If you want to entice people to play on your course and get regulars excited about the game and your club, then you should be using the most underrated tool out there: email marketing.
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But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. The old method of bombarding your entire group of email subscribers with random stuff every day and hoping for something good to come of it no longer works well.
Check out these effective email marketing strategies to boost engagement on your golf course website and start seeing real results.
Why Is Email Marketing Important for Golf Courses?
You may wonder why email marketing is important for brick-and-mortar businesses like golf clubs. The truth is, email marketing is valuable for EVERY business—the vast majority of people are online and have an email address they check regularly.
Here’s why you should definitely consider getting your email marketing up and running or changing your strategy if you’re already doing it.
- Excellent ROI: For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect anything from $20 to $40 in return. If you do it right, that is!
- Easy-to-Measure Results: It’s very easy to track your emails, see how many people opened them, how many unsubscribed, and who clicked on what. That makes it way easier to adjust your strategy than social media marketing, for example.
- Easy to Personalize: One of the things that set email marketing apart is that you can really personalize your communication. Sending certain emails to certain groups of people helps you to target people who are most likely to be interested and avoid annoying people who aren’t.
Email Marketing Tips That Will Grow Your Golf Business
Ready to start providing more value to your golfers, booking more rounds, selling more golf clubs and equipment, and different golf bags, and getting that ROI? Here are our top email marketing tips to get people to your website and onto your course.
Build a Quality Email List
You can’t be successful with email marketing if you don’t have an email list to send emails to! Here are some options to build your list:
- A Free Value-Packed Lead Magnet: eg. 10 Ways to Become a Better Golfer ebook, the Golfer’s Cheat Sheet PDF, or a free round of golf on your course. Make sure it includes a link to your website.
- Website Pop-Up: Promote your lead magnet wherever you can, including an eye-catching pop-up on your website, where visitors can put in their email addresses.
- Pro-Shop Sign-Up: Promote your lead magnet in the pro shop too! That way, people can join your list even if they haven’t been on your website.
- Use Tournament Registrations: When golfers sign up for tournaments, include an opt-in for them to join your email list (with a free lead magnet, of course).
Know Your Types of Email
To keep your audience engaged and interested, vary your email types. Here are the four main types of emails you should be sending:
- Sequences: These are a short series of emails that you send out for a specific occasion. For example, when someone signs up (welcome sequence), when someone starts buying/booking and doesn’t check out (abandon cart), and so on.
- Newsletters: In these emails, you don’t do a lot of selling. These are more about providing value to the reader—keep them updated about news, share how-to’s, or lead them to your website or YouTube, where they can see more valuable stuff.
- Promotions: These are where you “sell”, and they’ll generally include a pointed call-to-action that leads the reader to your website, a particular product, or a booking app when clicked.
- Transactions: These emails go out in response to a specific action by the subscriber. Examples include “Thank you” emails after someone’s placed an order, confirmation of bookings, or password resets.
- Re-Engagement: These go out to subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked an email for a while. They’re designed to catch their attention and get them engaged again. May include discounts.
Segmentation for Personalization
Not every email subscriber is equal. A promotional email about a new golf club you have in stock might be of interest to experienced golfers but not to beginners, for example. You can segment your email list by demographics like location, golfing experience, or equipment interests.
Proper segmentation (and sending appropriate emails to each segment) can lead to higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates, as well as getting more traffic to your site.
Craft Compelling Content
Make your email content VALUABLE to the reader, both the copy and the design. Create curiosity-inspiring subject lines, greet them by name, and provide interesting, practical, and exclusive golf-related content. Your reader should get something out of reading your emails.
How-to content, tutorials, sneak peeks, special offers, discounts, and deals are all considered to be valuable content. Try to keep the emails short and sweet—too long and people won’t get to the bottom. In terms of design, make your emails look appealing, and stick to a similar “branded” design every time.
Have Clear Call-To-Actions (CTAs)
You should have no more than 2 CTAs in one email. Any more than that and it looks like you’re trying too hard to sell… And it could also confuse your reader about what they should be doing.
Your email should reach a conclusion at the end and lead the reader to action. For example, “Buy Now”, “Book a Round”, or “View Our New Golf Clubs”. Use “action words” for these CTAs and make them compelling to click.
Analyze Email Campaign Performance
Whichever email provider you’re using, you’ll have access to data about your campaign performance. Don’t neglect it! Keep an eye on:
- Open rates
- Click rates
- Conversion rates
If you notice your email open rates have dropped, analyze the email and compare it to previous ones to figure out what stopped people from opening it. Open rates are closely linked to subject lines, while click rates are more closely linked to the quality of your content and how compelling your CTAs are.
We recommend doing A/B testing to see what works best. This means testing a single factor by giving 2 versions of it, one of which goes to half your list and the other to the other half. For example:
- One subject line informs the reader that there’s a discount inside, and one subject line tells the reader what the discount is (curiosity vs taking advantage).
- One CTA telling the reader to “Buy Now” and one CTA that’s more action/benefit-oriented, like “Improve Your Game” or “Become a Better Golfer”.
- A long version and a short version.
Important note: Only test ONE thing at a time. Subject lines OR CTAs OR design colors OR length—never more than one thing in an email.
Conclusion
Great email marketing can take your golf course to a whole new level. Not only is it likely to keep your regulars more up-to-date with what’s going on at your club, it has the potential to draw new golfers to your course for a round.
Plus, if you link it to your social media and provide excellent content, you can begin to establish yourself (or your club) and an authority in the golfing world, driving traffic to your website and, ultimately, increasing your revenue.
About the Author
Jordan Fuller is a retired golfer and businessman. When he’s not on the course working on his own game or mentoring young golfers, he writes in-depth articles for his website, Golf Influence.