Tennis Promotional Events: Organizing Your Open House Leads

Holding an open house is not only a great way to get members together but also to attract additional guests who may eventually become members and join one of your tennis programs. It is also a great and effective way to publicize your new tennis club or tennis program by inviting community members, influencers and partners into your place of business.

If you are doing sign ups prior the event, you have likely collected a lot of valuable information about the attendees (such as emails, phone numbers, demographic information, etc.). You should also be doing that during the event in order to collect information about other people your guests may bring along to the event, such as friends and family.

Sign-up sheet at the registration or front desk (prior and during the event) is an oldie but goodie, however, you could also create an online form for people to register (MailChimp, Wufoo, Google Forms, etc.), which automatically collects and sorts their registration information into lists for later use.

In this blog, we will go over how you can organize your leads information in the most effective way and how to create an email marketing campaign.

Create a campaign

Creating a campaign is the first step of your marketing efforts for your open house. Start by simply naming your campaign after your open house and include the year, if this is an annual event (for example, "Summer Tennis Open House, 2017"). Next, define your goals - 1). how many people you would like to register and visit your open house, and 2). your tennis program enrollment goals (how many children or adults you would like to register for each private or group class as a result of the event).

Create a sign up (registration) form

You should create an online sign up form, which would automatically place the registrations into a list in your email platform for later use - e.g. MailChimp, Constant Contact, HubSpot (affiliate link). The form can be kept open on a laptop or tablet at your front desk and easily filled out by your desk staff or guests that walk in. You could also collect the leads in a paper format to sort and import them after the open house is over. The first option, of course, would save valuable time.

You can include this online registration form on your website, in your marketing emails, and provide link to it in your social media posts. Be sure to leave a field in which you can enter notes about personal interactions with each potential client during the open house.

Promoting your tennis club open house

There are so many ways to promote your tennis club open house. Here are a few ideas:

• Create a brochure or flyer with Canva
• A video teaser or a video announcement for your YouTube channel
• A dedicated website page that allows people to register and learn more
• Announce event on all your social media
• Run Facebook ads
• Send an email out to existing customers and asking them to share with their friends and family that are not members yet

Import and segment your tennis contacts

Once you have collected all your leads' contact information and emails, you can start importing them into your email marketing database. Email services such as MailChimp, HubSpot (affiliate link) and Constant Contact are easy and convenient way to email all your potential clients at once.

Separating your contacts into separate lists will not only ensure that you start out with an organized contact database, but also gives you more flexibility when segmenting lists in the future. For example, you can have separate lists for leads interested in children's lessons, adults lessons, Cardio Tennis, round robins and socials, or any other category that is applicable to your tennis club.

Follow up with your tennis leads after the open house

Before you begin creating your email, it is best to set up an email template - one that can be used for all of your post-event marketing emails. You would keep the same template and just tailor the text and images in it to the appropriate email list (for example, junior programs list and adult programs list would get same template but with different email text and images/videos).

In your post-event email, be sure to thank your leads for coming to your open house. Then, provide information on the programs appropriate for them, and ask what else you can do to assist them, or whether they would like to sign up.

Always double-check who you are emailing. If certain demographic is less likely to use or respond to email, you might want to contact them via phone. If a lead appears unsure or have a loose timeframe, then make sure you add them to your list of incubating leads (those who you will not pursue aggressively, but instead email or call occasionally and "nurture" them with helpful information).

Any other tips for organizing leads? Share them below!