People Expect You to Have an App

Posted on May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

In today’s world, consumers pretty much expect every business or organization to have an app they can download to their phone. Given the choice between viewing a mobile web page and an app, most people will choose the app. Apps are sleeker, more powerful, and designed to be viewed on a phone. Web pages (even ones optimized for mobile viewing) are clunky, hard to navigate, and tiny. As my eyes get older, I’d much rather look at an app than a web page with minuscule print.

In other words, your club needs an app. Your members expect you to have a website, and they expect you to have an app. Our Pool Dues app is the perfect solution. Here’s what’s on the app:

Bring your club into the current century – get Pool Dues website and our Check In App.

Why Spring is the Best Time to Advertise on Facebook

Posted on March 21, 2019March 21, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

In a previous post, we talked about how to advertise your club on Facebook. Today we’re gonna talk about why spring is the best time to advertise on Facebook.

People start thinking about joining a pool when the weather starts to warm up. If you use Facebook to advertise to a targeted (read: local) audience, people will visit your club’s website to find out more about the club.

Some people may want to visit the club before joining, but here’s the reality about the club in spring: the pool is covered, the chairs and tables are still stored away, the gates are locked, you may not have mowed the grounds yet, and your spring cleaning day may not have occurred yet. In other words, your club doesn’t look its best.

That’s why your website and your Facebook page should be the face of your club for prospective members. Let them see the pool at its best – the middle of the summer when everyone is having a blast at your 4th of July party! Or tween night. Or that awesome adults-only party! Let prospective members poke around on your website and see all the events at the club, all the pictures of smiling happy families, and how easy it is to join.

As always, with a Pool Dues website, people can join at any time of the year and their annual billing will occur when they originally purchased their membership. That way everyone gets a full year of membership no matter when they join.

Get an Awesome and Shiny Sign for Your Tennis Courts

Posted on March 15, 2019March 19, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

Want an awesome and shiny new sign for your tennis courts? With every Pool Dues website that includes tennis courts, we’ll send you a free, brand new sign for your tennis courts.

Our tennis reservation signs are UV weather resistant, metal, and reflective. They’re a great way to get your members to start using the Pool Dues reservation grid. Place the sign where people access the courts from the parking lot, and they’ll be reminded each time they walk in to use the Pool Dues app or website to reserve a court.

We’ve got a lot of great features built into our tennis reservation system, and it’s now included in our app! Members don’t even need to visit the club’s website anymore – they can reserve a court directly from the Pool Dues app on their phone.

Check out our recent blog on how to use the app to reserve a tennis court.

How to Fish a Tennis Net Cable Through a Net With the Old Cable Removed

Posted on February 23, 2019February 25, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

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When an old tennis net cable breaks, DO NOT remove it! The best possible scenario for replacement is attaching the new cable to the old one and pulling it through.

If you’ve stumbled onto this article, it’s probably too late for that, and you’re at your wit’s end trying to figure out how to thread a new wire through the top of the netting. You can usually get a wire about 2/3 of the way through, and then it comes to a dead stop.

Here’s what worked for one of the Facility Directors at a Pool Dues club…

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Tools you’ll need…

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Push-pull rod assembly over 42ft
Nylon or steel (thin) fishing wire (not tape) at or over 50ft
Duct tape
Needle nose pliers
High-quality string
Impact driver to remove worm gear clamps holding scoreboard and tennis ball holder.

1. Fish both PUSH pull rods and nylon fish wire through tennis net.

a. Assemble ~45 feet of the push-pull rods by threading them together.

i. Two of these push-pull rod kits are needed since the net is 42ft long: https://www.harborfreight.com/3-16-inch-x-33-ft-fiberglass-wire-running-kit-65326.html

ii. These are cheap push-pull rods, and the reason why I struck through pull is because if you pull on these they come apart and break. A more high-quality set would prevent this from happening. But as long as you are pushing these rods you’ll be OK.

2. Tape the nylon fish wire to the push-pull rods.

a. Use duct tape, but only wrap around 2 or 3 times because if it’s too thick the wire won’t fit through the ends.

i. Nylon fish wire used: https://www.harborfreight.com/50-ft-nylon-fish-tape-66505.html

3. Lay the net on the ground and tie the end to the pole where the fish wire will exit.

4. Push both wires through and out the other end.

a. Pull the net tight and keep it straight while pushing the two wires through the net.

b. Its a tight fit at either end, so thin and long needle nose pliers are helpful to grab and push the assembly through.

5. Remove the duct tape and the yellow push-pull rods, leaving the red nylon wire inside the net.

6. Connect the new tennis net cable to the red nylon wire.

a. Use string to join them and then duct taped this junction. The duct tape acts as a back up while also streamlining the connection.

b. Use pliers to gently compress the loop end of the new tennis net cable so it will be easier to fit through net openings.

7. Go to the opposite end and pull the red nylon wire until the new net cable is out the other end.

a. It’s helpful to go slow as the junction enters each opening.

b. Each opening is tight, so pushing or pulling with a tool is advised over brute strength.

8. Attach the loop end to the cleat and follow your net setup guide.

a. Example net setup guide starting a few steps in: https://youtu.be/3BoA7nT-KRo?t=108

Misc Articles and Videos:

Cable replacement:

https://www.tennissuppliesandequipment.com/how-to-install-a-tennis-net-cable/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwecj3_Bm3o

Setting the net to regulation spec:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BoA7nT-KRo

Center of the net (strap) should be 37 to 38 inches tall. Keep in mind there is a bump in the concrete where the center strap connects to the ground so the height was set to 37.5″ subtracting this bump.

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Looking to Increase Your Membership Numbers?

Posted on February 22, 2019February 22, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

Is your club looking to increase membership? One great but overlooked way to reach out to prospective members is a traditional mail campaign. But forget the days driving to every house and stuffing a handmade flyer into each mailbox. And forget about paying to print out thousands of flyers and send them to every single house in a 5-mile radius.

For less than the cost of a family membership, you can target your advertising to specific neighborhoods or even roads. The USPS has a targeted advertising tool that lets you choose exactly where to send your marketing mail, and this is a great way for neighborhood swim and tennis clubs to get new members.

The Every Door Direct Mail service allows you to target your flyers to specific mail routes. By using their mapping tool, you can search your area to find which neighborhoods are the best for membership campaigns. The mapping tool lets you see addresses by:

Business & residential or residential only – Obviously you don’t want to send your membership flyer to a business-heavy area. You want to send it to residential areas. Use the tool to figure out which mail routes are residential and focus on those.
Age range – Maybe you don’t want to waste your advertising money on mail routes with a high percentage of elderly people who don’t want to swim or play tennis. Use the tool to find mail routes with younger people and focus on those areas. On the flip side, maybe you want to encourage more of the older crowd to come join your club – use the tool to focus on mail routes with older ages and focus there.
Household size – Want to increase your singles membership? Use the tool to focus on mail routes with lower numbers of people per house. Want to get more families? Use the tool to focus on mail routes with a large number of people per house.
Household income – Do you feel like a portion of the income spectrum is missing from your club? Maybe households with higher incomes are left out because of a nearby country club. Why not reach out to those households and offer them a less expensive club option? What about households on the other end of the spectrum? Maybe you should reach out to those households and show them what a great value your club is!

The other great thing about this service is that the USPS will deliver your flyer for less than the price of a stamp. So not only are you getting a better price, but you’re only spending money to send your flyer to actual prospective members.

Let’s do the math for a second here. In our example, our selected route includes 1507 houses and costs $280. The price for 1500 flyers is about $300, bringing your total to less than $600. Lots of neighborhoods have less than half that number of houses, but a mail campaign is a great way to extend your club’s boundaries and pick up some new members from outside your immediate neighborhood. If you send out 1500 flyers and get even one new membership, the advertising has paid for itself! And 1 out of 1500 is a pretty dismal projection – presumably, you’d get more than one single new membership. This is a no-brainer for clubs looking for new members!

With all that said, are you gonna point prospective members to a crappy old website? First impressions are everything, so if you’re going to do a promotional push, make sure you’re sending people to the best possible version of your club’s website. People expect interactive modern websites these days. Prospective members or customers want information when they visit a new website – they want to know about your facilities, your prices, what kinds of social events you do, and they want to see pictures. A fresh modern Pool Dues website that includes pictures of your pool with your members doing real things is what draws people in to engage with the website and ultimately join the pool.

Using Facebook to Get New Members to Your Neighborhood Swim and Tennis Club

Posted on June 22, 2018February 20, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

Facebook is your number #1 tool for getting new members to your neighborhood pool. If you are not a fan personally, hear me out. Because Facebook is essentially an automated member recruiter. What Pool Dues does for automating billing and check-in for members, Facebook does for finding new members. Their “discovery” algorithms (what they recommend to users) leans heavily on location and what a user’s friends are into. So, if a potential member has Friends in your Facebook group, they are going to get a recommendation from Facebook. And of course, you can occasionally remind members to add people to the group that aren’t members yet. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a step back to discuss how to start your club’s presence on Facebook.

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The Difference between a Page and Group

Chances are someone at your club has already setup a Facebook Page, but if not, consider this an online business card for your club. Within a few minutes you can add a video or image header, icon (like your personal profile icon), and basic info like location, contact info, description like, “We are a members-only swim and tennis club in [city, state].” You will get stumble-on traffic to this publicly visible page, so you want visitors to quickly know you aren’t a community pool, but you also want to show off the best your club has to offer. So make sure you post up some high-quality photos. Find someone with an iPhone and take some decent photos of the pool in full swing. Kids jumping in. Adults with drinks in their hands in the pool. Point is: look cool. An empty pool, or a picture of the front entrance sign is pretty lame.

Next up make a Group for the pool. Groups are social, Pages are not. Although it is possible to post a comment to a Page, people generally do not as Pages are heavily moderated., and comments get shelved to a tiny corner of the page.

On Facebook people converse in groups. And neighbors in neighborhood groups talk A LOT. You want to encourage people to make the group active. Allow members to post freely. The more active it is, the more people visit the group (or get recommended to it) and get to know your neighborhood pool and the people there.

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Group Settings

If you created the pool’s Facebook Group, you are the Admin by default. If you are just taking over as Social Director or Membership Director, get the current Admin to give you Admin powers. Then, make the pool’s Page the admin of the Group. Find Edit Group Settings, then look for this option…

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After you make this connection, you’ll have the option to post in the Group as either yourself or the Page. Facebook makes it easy to toggle back and forth (for reference, see the image below). So you can even respond to your own posts by toggling back and forth.

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Group Settings for a Neighborhood Pool

The big decision in your Facebook Group’s settings will be the Privacy. You definitely don’t want Secret, so it comes down to Public or Closed. For marketing purposes Closed might seem counter-intuitive, but if your Group’s description reads open and inviting, you should get plenty of new neighbors / potential members to the group. Your group’s title will also help encourage new neighbors to join. For example if you title it “Hillside Pool – Members Only Group”, that’s obviously not going to attract non-members. If you title it, “Hillside Neighbors and Pool”, you’ll get plenty of people asking to join.

You can still be choosy about who you allow in the Group. One of the main things I look for in approving new members is mutual friends and location. If the user is new to Facebook and knows no one that I know, and doesn’t live nearby, I won’t approve (which is rare).

For extra scrutiny, you can even ask questions to Facebook users that request to join. For example, “Do you live in the Hillside neighborhood?” or “Do you want to be contacted by our membership director?”. These questions will probably deter anyone that’s just looking to advertise their local business.

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Let’s rundown a few other useful settings…

Automatic Membership Approval – Great setting. If you run another group, for example, the neighborhood Men’s or Women’s group, this will auto-approve anyone in your other groups.

Posting Permissions – Do not toggle this on. Doing so would make every post subject to admin approval. Which sucks. The whole point of groups is open discussion. If a member is a trouble-maker down the road, deal with that on a case-by-case basis.

Custom Address – Give your group a nicer URL with this option.

Location – Obviously you want to enter the club’s home address.

Group Type – Club or Neighbors. I’m not sure if there’s a benefit to one over the other.

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It’s called Social Media for a reason. It’s time to be social (and show non-club members what they are missing)

Once you add people to your group (and you definitely need to add them in yourself), it will begin to fulfill its purpose of reminding prospective members about the club. In the off-season, people will discuss whatever – local news, restaurants, power outages, etc. You don’t have to do much posting then.

During the summer month’s you’ll have no shortage of things to post: ice cream socials for kids, beers by the pool, shark nights, swim meets, birthdays, poker nights, outings with other club members, tennis round robins, clubhouse parties, adult nights, tween nights, etc. Plus any news worth emailing to club members is worth posting on your Facebook group as well.

What you’ll find is that members are going to do plenty of this social media work for you. You can nudge them to help out too. If you see someone taking a photo or video at the pool, ask them to post it to the group.

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Example post: Crowd-pleasing time-lapse video (no one is visible long enough to be scrutinized in their suit)

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Not only are you reminding current club members that all this fun stuff is going on, but you’re also advertising ALL the cool stuff going on to people in the Group that aren’t paid club members. And that’s what this boils down to.

The lookie-loos that gravitated to your online group ARE your target market! You can hang door flyers, you can send stuff in the mail about the pool, you can put up road signs to advertise, but none of that converts the anti-social people. Those people are a hard sell.

The pool will be an easy sell to neighbors that are naturally social. But a road sign doesn’t show them what they are missing. As the old adage goes, “show don’t tell”. That’s what Facebook does. It shows people – Hey, look. This is EXACTLY what’s going on down here. Why aren’t you here?

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Can Your Pool Put up Permanent Street Signs Around the Neighborhood?

Posted on June 3, 2018February 20, 2019 by Justin at PoolDues

Not all swim and tennis clubs are located at the front gate of a neighborhood. My neighborhood is HUGE, and technically it’s comprised of 5 subdivisions. If a family moves into the subdivision farthest from the club, they might not realize their interconnected neighborhood even has a pool.

So, can you take it upon yourself to help people find their way to the club by putting up street signs? Well no, but as the saying goes, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Getting your city to permit affixing pool signs to existing road signs could be a lot more work than just doing it.

If you do decide to take the initiative yourself, here’s what I recommend…

Don’t go cheap. Get reflective, metal signs.
Stick to 1 color (not including black or white).
Use a plain font for the sign.
Don’t add a phone number or website. That’s way too much advertising.
Add directional arrows to the club. That should be the real point of the sign, just get people there.
Don’t include any promotional text like “Join the [club name]”. Just “Pool and Tennis Club” is really all you need.
Keep the signs within your neighborhood (no main roads).

What’s it cost? Expect to pay about $40 per sign. Which really isn’t bad at all. 7 or 8 street signs are less than the cost of one family joining. And as long as the city doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, those signs will last many years.