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5 gifts on every club’s wish list this holiday season

5 gifts on every club's wish list this holiday season

‘Tis the time of year when we put together those holiday wish lists. In the spirit of the season, we thought we would share 5 enchanting gifts that every club we know would love to receive.

Enthusiastically connected members

Enthusiastically connected members power the success of any club. Building and maintaining these connections is crucial. That means providing an excellent experience when members are at the club. But it mustn’t stop there. We also need to go outside the club to meet them where they are—online, specifically on their smartphones.

We must provide them with useful functionality, timely reminders, and an intuitive experience that allows them to extend their connection to the club beyond the physical grounds. This is why the member app has become such an essential part of any successful club.

A member app can make things more convenient for your members. Whether they want to book a tee time, make a dining reservation, sign up for a class, order food on the go, or pay a bill from their phone. The app makes it easy.

Plus, the app can simplify planning a get-together with your club friends. For example, Northstar’s member app offers a buddy list functionality that helps members easily organize an outing at the club.

The app also allows you to send targeted push notifications to keep members updated on everything happening at the club. Through its dynamic feed, you can share important announcements, promote upcoming events, and encourage interactions.

All of these features energize members and help them feel more connected to the club even when they are not at the club.

Passionately engaged employees

Empowered employees are a gift to any operation. In fact, they are the backbone of any successful club. Smart clubs know that building this empowerment is the key to everything from improved operational efficiency to an elevated member experience.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to launch an employee app at your club. With an app like Northstar’s, employees have the much-desired ability to manage their own schedules right from the app.

Moreover, it can streamline work, allowing employees to create reservations and bookings right from the app.

The app also enhances employees’ ability to personalize your members’ experiences. Through the app, they can see who is at the club, who is seated in the restaurant, and even access members’ profiles.

To top it off, your employees can use the app to access BEOs, pull up powerful club analytics, and more to help further optimize operations.

By providing employees with a new tool to do their jobs efficiently and effectively, you can boost morale, reduce turnover, and improve overall job satisfaction.

Conveniences that surprise and delight

Nothing improves member satisfaction like making it easier for them to enjoy the club. And nothing helps you accomplish that like a smart website solution that makes your site as functional as it is beautiful.

A modern solution can incorporate the ability to make online reservations a snap. Whether it’s getting a tee time, setting dining reservations, or signing up for a class or activity. Plus, it should offer e-commerce functionality to sell merchandise from any of the club shops online.

Another convenience is the ability to set up a member portal through which members can access their accounts to check charges and minimum balances, pay bills, and more.

Having all this conveniently accessible online improves how members view the club and how it caters to them.

Finally, a smart website will also make it convenient for you and your staff to deploy advanced marketing campaigns. For example, Northstar’s built-in tools allow you to segment your members by interests and preferences. And then send targeted email campaigns and notifications to keep members updated and engaged.

Unparalleled understanding

What club manager doesn’t have this one on his or her wishlist? In-depth operational analytics can provide a deep understanding of your club’s performance across various departments – from food and beverage to golf to fitness. That is valuable understanding you can use to improve your club significantly.

This is why Northstar has created NS Analytics. Every module in the Northstar system offers a rich set of NS Analytics reports as well as a set of KPIs and charts. This insightful data puts the information you need at your fingertips. The information that helps you get a clearer picture of the state of the club. And the opportunities at hand.

Northstar also offers member sentiment and behavior analysis data through Happometer. With it, you can track member usage patterns, preferences, and spending habits to identify opportunities for targeted marketing and personalized experiences.

With these advanced tools, clubs can make informed decisions, optimize operations, and improve the overall member experience.

Game-changing operational support

An optimized back-office operation is the gift that just keeps on giving. When everything is optimized here, it lays the foundation for creating an exceptional club experience.

Northstar recently collaborated with hundreds of clubs worldwide to understand how the back-office software could be improved to better serve the club. The result is NS Office. This exciting evolution gives you and your staff a system that is intuitive, powerful, and customizable.

A user-friendly interface delivers modern UX features like a mega menu and customizable shortcuts such as ‘favorites’ and ‘recents’ to quickly access the functionality you need, saving valuable time and reducing frustration.

A robust search function gives you quick access to the information you need – from member records to financial reports. Customizable reports provide valuable insights into your club’s operations, helping you identify trends and make more informed decisions. And there’s much more.

By rethinking how the back office software should function, NS Office helps improve the workflow, increase efficiency, and empower data-driven decision-making to boost your entire operation.

A holiday wish for your club

As you’re putting together your wish list for your operation, consider giving your club these 5 gifts. Gifts that can help ensure members are even more delighted, employees are even more empowered, and operations run smoother than ever. Of course, if you’d like to learn more, just request a demo.

May you and your club have a joyous holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

How Your Club’s Website Can Improve your Member Engagement

How Your Club’s Website Can Improve your Member Engagement

It’s no secret. The more your members are engaged, the greater the success of the club. Both today and tomorrow.

The key is to keep them connected. Even when they are not on the premises. Then make it easy for them to interact. And serve them up a regular helping of surprise and delight. There is no mechanism better suited to do all this than your club’s website.

Don’t just create a website. Create an invaluable engagement tool for members.

It’s easy to think of your club website as simply a marketing tool for introducing your club to new members.

Leading clubs understand that a website holds much more potential than that. And they deploy sites designed to be functional and engaging tools.

The optimal way to achieve this is to find club management software that allows you to build your website on the same database that your other systems use (i.e. accounting, F&B, golf, etc.). We’ll look at some examples of the advantages of this single database approach in just a bit.

Taking this approach can turn your website into your members’ club away from the club. Picture them securely logging into your site where they have customized their profile. Imagine them greeted with a highly personalized experience that looks great whether they’re on their computer, tablet, or mobile phone.

This is the kind of club website that has the exceptional ability to strengthen the members’ connection to the club, leading to improved utilization and higher satisfaction.

Empower members to plan and manage their club experience virtually

Choosing a smart website builder opens up a world of possibilities for your users. First and foremost, it takes the work out of keeping them updated on news, events, member’s birthdays, new committees, and more. And that’s just the start. You can give your members the ability to:

  • Look up and reserve tee times
  • Shop at the club’s online stores
  • Sign up for an event, seminar, or a class
  • Book a room, a court, fitness session, spa visit, childcare, and more
  • Make dining reservations or order Grab-N-Go

Plus, you could add in the functionality of a buddy list. For example, when the member makes a dining reservation, the system will present her buddy list. She can then choose those friends she wants to invite to dinner right on the club website and the system will send them an invitation from her.

You can also set up online account statements for members so they can see current charges, minimum balances, and historical statements. And you can give them the ability to pay right online.

This is the type of functionality that strengthens engagement with your club and encourages interaction between members even when they’re not on the grounds.

Streamline how you manage the experience with your club management software

A big factor in assessing the value of a website builder is the ability of the club to easily manage the site.

You can’t overstate the importance of connecting your website platform to all parts of your club to provide instantaneous coordination and to reduce the frustrating task of manually inputting data from one system into another. There are key features to look for as well. Features that easily allow you to:

  • Create forms, announcements, blogs, and marketing content
  • Enter information once and have it update across all appropriate locations on your site – and in your mobile app
  • Build new pages using a template-based, point-and-click interface
  • Tie your online stores into your inventory control system

Plus, your website builder should:

  • Offer a media and photo gallery for easy access to your graphics
  • Deliver insightful website statistics reporting
  • Allow you to assign credentials and permissions – for example, giving the golf director access and allowing him to set up a golf event that populates across the site
  • Automatically generate sitemaps and provide SEO
  • Offer 24/7 support for any help you need

All of this functionality helps transform a club website from a nice brochure to a powerful tool that members and staff can easily use.

Expect more from your website

Today, a website can do so much more than present some nice pictures of your club. It can make the operation more efficient, streamlining work and creating opportunities for you to delight members. Better yet, it can become an indispensable tool for members, helping them interact with the club and others. All of which help foster engagement and build an even better member experience at your club.

The often-overlooked gem of Club Communications

The often-overlooked gem of club communications

Communication is key for your club. You could say it is the x-factor for retaining and growing your membership. After all, a smart communication effort can create a feeling of community. It can build a sense of belonging. And it can boost member engagement and Club Communications.

When it comes to your communication effort, the ideal approach is to allow your members to engage with the tool (or tools) they feel most comfortable using. This improves the potential of them receiving communications and engaging with you.

Of course, from a club perspective, we’d like to command their attention immediately – from virtually anywhere and anytime.

Does fulfilling our member needs and getting what we want sound like a bit of a pipe dream?

Not as much as you would think. What if we could have immediate access to them but do it in a way that feels familiar? In other words, a way that doesn’t require them to learn a new technology. A way that takes advantage of a tool they are already using. A lot.

What is this magical means of communicating? Texting.

What you need to know about texting as part of your club communications

Texting might not have the aura of a shiny new technology. But what it does have is familiarity. And ubiquity. Everyone with a mobile phone most likely uses texting in some manner.

You can benefit from that adoption and usage by including it in your member communication strategy.

The challenge for a lot of clubs is that adding the capability means adding another stand-alone piece of technology to your system. And then having to coordinate it with your other tools like email and in-app messaging.

When clubs do this, it creates more work as you have to dedicate time to yet another system. And it takes more effort to coordinate with existing channels. But what often goes unexamined is the inability to deliver more relevant messages. Since it is a separate piece of technology, you most likely can’t tap into the member preferences that exist in a separate CRM system.

Furthermore, you may not have the opportunity to integrate any ongoing analytics from your texting campaigns with other channels – like your email efforts. This results in a communication effort that can feel disjointed and leave you without the data to make decisions about future campaigns.

The key is robust integration with your club management software

Having your texting function (along with other communication channels) integrated into one system will save you time and effort. More importantly, having all these channels operate on the same database gives you the ability to segment members by preferences or behavior. For example, say you want to send a message out about a golf event and you want to target it to those in your database who play. Easily done if everything is integrated. Or say you want to send out a special offer at the restaurant to those who have been infrequent visitors. Again, easy to segment and send if you’re operating off of one database.

Of course, as your members engage with your texting efforts, all that behavioral data goes back into the database. This helps you build an even deeper profile of each member, allowing you to further customize communications and even set the stage for developing predictive campaigns in the future.

Not all club management software solutions deliver this kind of integration. So it’s worth the effort to find an offering that can help you coordinate your efforts across all the popular communication channels that your members use. And especially help you take advantage of texting and the unique position that it holds in your members’ lives.

If you’d like to learn more about how to take advantage of an optimal texting solution for your club, request a demo of the Northstar club management software system. You’ll discover how texting technology integrates into one complete solution, operating on one database to help you maximize how you reach and engage your members. Request your demo, today.