Scarcroft Golf Club

Following a four year period of relatively modest visitor sales, Scarcroft Golf Club were keen to make better use of the spare capacity on the course to generate additional revenue. The private members club in West Yorkshire had identified an opportunity to grow their green fee income at the end of 2020 and needed to do so without jeopardising their large membership with the sale of cheap green fees.

Defined Strategy

Having been limited in their capacity to capitalise on the additional demand in the summer of 2020 due to a protective stance around the member base, we worked with them through the 2020/21 off season to put together a strategy for the summer that complemented their existing customer base.

Digital Marketing

The main area of opportunity that we identified was a lack of marketing communications with their historic visitors. They had a well-developed database and social media following but weren’t realising the commercial benefits they presented to them. The new strategy involved regular emails to the database to promote the key areas of their business in order to grow green fee sales, society booking and membership enquiries. This was complemented by consistent messaging via their social media channels with both organic and paid advertising. Their web traffic had been low historically and the additional activity gave it the necessary boost to increase their bookings to the desired level.

Dynamic Pricing

To ensure that the marketing activity had the required impact, a new green fee structure was implemented which allowed them to grow sales in their off peak times, while implementing price rises to their headline rates that were in keeping with the wider market and their direct competitor set.

Results

The outcome was an increase of £14k in online sales and a £30k uplift in offline sales over the period of six months. The additional footfall has led to a rise in membership numbers and the objective of increasing revenue around member play was achieved.