Customer Acquisition: Targetbase Claydon Heeley's campaign for The Alternative Hotel Group

Objectives

Create and launch this premium golfing brand to customers and new prospects. Recruit 4,000 new members in year one, limiting member cannibalization, and supporting full memberships.

Strategy and targeting

Our core target audience was 25 to 55-year-old men, keen regular golfers, but with a busy lifestyle and a limited budget. They play once a month, maybe more in the summer, but don’t want to pay thousands to join. They want to be treated as members of a ‘real’ golf club, with all the perks: competitions, handicaps and the sense of a quality club. But they don’t want it to be fuddy-duddy.

DVC membership is managed online and De Vere email communications have proven efficacy. However, as we didn’t have email details for all the prospects, we test-targeted the primary audience of pay and play customers with DM. Our stylish campaign offered the irresistible promise to ‘change the way you play golf forever.’ Peter Alliss lent a link to golfing tradition: we made him Honorary Captain rather than just a spokesman. Our copy focused on selling the tradition and heritage of the DVC – through its courses, links with the PGA – but also on the practicalities and benefits of joining. The initial email and follow-up was sent to our primary audience and leisure members with an interest in golf. A single email was sent to remaining leisure members, with a follow-up triggered if they clicked through. There were four versions of the email, targeted to incorporate derived needs via visuals, copy and subject line, with the club that pay and play members had most recently visited included to personalise the message.

Database

We combined and cleaned disparate data sources across AHG to give us a fantastic warm file of prospects, along with partner and cold data. We’ve fed this into a new ongoing CRM programme, with regular targeted emails and MMS.

Results

In just five months we’ve already sold 1,724 DVC memberships and 700 five- and seven-day memberships, generating income of £1,258,580 with an ROI of 7.4:1. That’s before any incremental ProShop, hotel, bar and restaurant revenues. Or any lifetime value modelling.