342: Email ISN'T Dead: Effective Strategies for Private Clubs w/ Jay Schwendelson

Transcript

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The secret to email is the sooner you could tell somebody it's for them and not for everybody else, the faster they're going to engage, and I think clubs miss the mark on that a lot.

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Hey everyone, welcome back to this episode of Private Club Radio.

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The industry stores for news trends and conversations.

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I'm your host, denny Corby.

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Whether you're new to the private club community, welcome.

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When we say private club, we mean country clubs, city clubs, golf clubs, yacht clubs, athletic clubs, military clubs, all the private clubs.

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If you're a veteran of the industry or already in it, welcome back.

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Glad you're all here.

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This episode we are diving deeper into the marketing side of private clubs, but more specifically email marketing.

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I have on a very known, unknown person, as I call them.

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We have a good quick laugh, but the name might ring a bell with some of you.

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Others he might be brand new.

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His name's Jay Schwendelson and he is the brain behind subjectlinecom, has so much information and data and just knows email marketing more than anyone else out there.

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So when he talks, people listen and I got him to come on the show.

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And what makes this even better is he is a member of a club himself.

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So not only does he know the data and the information, but he knows how to make it relevant for us here specifically.

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So this is a rare chance we get to chat with him, so I'm happy to have him on, we are going to learn all about how to hit the sweet spot with your club's emails.

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Jay shares killer tips on crafting the most perfect subject lines that grab attention and how to avoid the spam filter when doing so.

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Also, it's a good quick chat.

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He's a fun dude, great person, wealth of knowledge.

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And before we get the show started, a quick word from some of our show partners.

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Concert Golf Partners is changing the game, one club at a time.

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Since their inception in 2001, they've been on a mission to preserve and elevate private clubs, pouring capital into enhancements that matter.

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But what sets them apart?

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These aren't your run-of-the-mill operators.

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They are a dedicated team with a passion for enhancing the private club experience, both on and off the green.

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It's their commitment to maintaining the club's unique identity while executing strategic improvements that boost the overall experience and financial health.

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With Concert Golf Partners, your club gains access to a network of enhanced properties, reciprocal play privileges and a future free from the burden of debt and outdated facilities.

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They're not just building better clubs, they're crafting lasting legacies for members and communities alike.

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If you'd like to learn more about Concert Golf Partners or recapitalization, or learning how your members will have no more assessments, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom, set up a confidential call with Peter Danula and that's it.

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Simple as that.

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Also, be sure to check out our episodes of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio, brought to you by our friends.

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You guessed it Concert Golf Partners.

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It's 2024 and it's time to change the way you vet your new members.

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Some traditions are worth modifying.

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The new member process hasn't changed really in the past 150 years, relying almost solely on social relationships and casual interactions, but lacking in factual data.

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And this is where Kennis comes in, because the traditional application process tells you very little about someone's behaviors and character.

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Until now.

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Kennis has created an innovative and confidential comprehensive applicant information gathering process that provides an unraveled depth of information.

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Thank you know can hurt your club and your members To learn a little bit more.

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Or to set up a call head on over to membervettingcom.

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Fill out the form.

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You're going to have a chat with Paul Dank.

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It's going to be good, he's a great guy.

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Also, be sure to check out our episodes of Member Vetting here on Private Club.

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And now everybody, please welcome the one and only Jay Schwendelson.

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Jay Schwendelson, founder of SubjectLinecom, the number one ranked free subject email grading tool.

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President of Outcome Media.

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We have your guru conference.

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We were just talking.

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You're like the most known unknown person in the marketing world.

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I'm very unknown, especially according to my kids, but I appreciate that no excited to be here and you know love talking about all this crazy marketing stuff.

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And when it comes to such a niche industry so we're talking about clubs and you are based out of Florida, which is like Club Central, right, and you're a member of clubs it's such like a niche talk that I feel like you can kind of shed some light, seeing, as you know, you have this view so high of all of everything that's going on.

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But also, being a member of a club, can you share how to kind of take this big data and use it properly for so we're not talking about like 50 cent, like into club.

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We're talking about like no, I'm kidding, that would be amazing.

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Can you break down for us how to get a table at a Miami club?

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That's what we want to talk about.

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It's dancing, at least not on purpose.

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Yes, I am a member of a club down here in South Florida and I hope all the club people are listening.

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Don't take this wrong way, because I have a lot of friends in the club marketing space, but I am of the opinion that club email marketing is living in the 1980s, maybe 1990s at best a little bit, and the beautiful part about it is I think there are things that club marketing managers and directors can do that can significantly increase the engagement on the emails they're sending out by just doing some of the basics that somehow get missed in the club world, in my opinion.

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I feel bad saying that, but it's true.

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I feel like it's every industry too, like sometimes, I think you know, it's always like when I'm a little like you know, hey, it's like oh, go, go back to basics.

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Back to basics.

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Uh, so what?

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Because actually my basics and our basics might be different than your basics.

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What are your basics?

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well, I okay, the the easiest win in.

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So subject lines are a big deal to me, right, and I think that clubs miss the mark with their subject lines.

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What do I mean by that?

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Um, within a club you have different activities.

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You have people that play pickleball, people that play tennis, people that play golf, people that are interested in book club, people that are interested in the upcoming buffets or whatever.

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That's what's going on at a club.

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And every time you hit send very rarely unless it's like a new fee that everybody has to pay in the club does everybody in the club care about what's inside that email?

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Right?

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It's not for everybody, it's always for some subset of people.

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And if you carve out that subset and you delineate it in the subject line, you say this is for pickleball fans, right, this is just for the best golfers, literally in your subject line.

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This is for all the foodies out there, this is for the book lovers who wanted whatever.

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And you actually say basically the subset audience that you're about to talk about inside the email.

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You carve it out at the start of that subject line.

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You will see the engagement on those emails skyrocket, because what normally clubs do is they just go new information, new, whatever, and it's like.

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You open it up and it's like, or you don't open it up because you think it's for everybody.

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The secret to email is the sooner you could tell somebody it's for them and not for everybody else, the faster they're going to engage.

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And I think clubs miss the mark on that a lot, and once you, oh my goodness.

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Because no matter what it's like if you're, if the email subject is like for the best golfers only, even if I suck, I'm definitely going to open it like or you can even say secrets of our top golfers.

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You know, whatever you want to create that interest, that oh, I gotta check this out.

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You know what I mean.

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Uh, and that's what you want to do.

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You want to create that suspense, that little bit of urgency, that little bit of intrigue.

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I also think clubs don't use emojis, not nearly enough in their subject lines.

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It's like every other, uh, every other category, and that's marketing to consumers because, essentially, market you, essentially clubs are marketing to consumers.

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They use emojis and they use capitalization in their subject lines.

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They use all question subject lines which do great, and clubs don't.

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They just write the same basic thing every week.

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It's literally.

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If I printed out emails from all the clubs in South Florida, it would be wallpaper, because it's just like one giant image.

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It's super boring, not actually.

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The club where I live is actually pretty good.

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Uh, they do a decent job.

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I have to say but a lot of clubs do not.

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What's that?

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Good save, good save right, I know, I don't want to be kicked out of my club.

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Yeah, excuse me, sir, we uh heard.

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Your heard your episode right right, right exactly and then right after then, right after the, the email out to the entire membership, membership kicked out, that's right.

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Exclamation point.

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Emoji that's 100% right, you nailed it Exactly.

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How many?

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So let's say it's a club.

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You know.

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A lot of them, I think, are nervous to get a little spicy, to kind of shake things up.

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Or you know what about clubs?

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That might feel like it's too spammy or like it's not the club brand.

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You know, I think and I, I, I agree with you.

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I think clubs get caught up in that, right, where oh we are this kind of club, we can't do this or we can't do that?

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Where oh we are this kind of club, we can't do this or we can't do that?

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I'll give you an example Goldman Sachs, one of the stuffiest brands on the planet, I would say at least 50% of the emails they send out, they use an emoji in their subject line, and it's not like their investors say well, I'm not giving you $10 million this month because you used an emoji.

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An emoji doesn't have to be a stupid face that's smiling.

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It could be a calendar, right, it's a graphical symbol.

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It's something that allows your email to stand out a little bit, right.

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I mean, clubs are always sending out stuff like calendar stuff like mark your calendar, or this is coming up this week, or here's the new whatever this week.

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You literally put a calendar at the start of your subject line.

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Every time you're talking about a calendar thing and what you have to think about is no one's going deep and getting psychological on wow, they used an emoji or they didn't.

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You're trying to stop the person in their tracks for a millisecond when they're doing the social scroll in their inbox and get them to actually see your email that they keep ignoring, right, and so it's just a graphical element to grab their attention.

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There's lots of different emojis that are not embarrassing.

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You know that you can use regardless of what your brand is, and then, when you open up your email, there's stuff that you should be doing inside your email that also can be a game changer.

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I think that clubs are like missing out on that is so I didn't even think about that, with the emoji, just using that as like the, the first, the very first uh symbol, and if it's like the, the calendar for whatever, the brain then automatically knows quick, oh, that's something that I usually like.

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And then when they see the caption, so it's like that double it just continues the conversation for them, which I think isn't that a marketing thing.

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It's like you have to.

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It just continues the conversation for them 100%, which I think isn't that a marketing thing.

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It's like you have to continue the conversation as it goes.

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So it's like from the first thing then to the next one, which then has to lead them to the next.

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Yes, you don't want to break that chain and the other piece of it, speaking of that chain, is okay.

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After the subject line, what do people see?

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They see the pre-header.

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Now some people call that the second subject line, but essentially the pre-header is that little line of gray text that appears under the subject line before you open it up.

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Right, it's that pre-header line.

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I would say 90 of clubs put this information there.

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They'll write if you're having trouble viewing this, click here.

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That that is what they put in their preheader, and it's so unbelievable to me because what happens is you haven't opened the email yet, right?

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You're looking at it and it says if you're having trouble viewing this, click here.

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And you're like, dude, I didn't open it yet.

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I don't even know if I'm having trouble viewing it.

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Why is that there?

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Why is that there?

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And so what you want to do, exactly your point is after the subject line, you continue.

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Whatever that offer is in the pre-header, you write you know a big new buffet and we're gonna have, you know, stone crabs tonight, okay.

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And then when they open it up after you put that information that you're gonna have stone crabs in the pre-header, okay.

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Then you put if you're having trouble viewing this.

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Click here that format issue.

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Information cannot be the start of your preheader because it makes no sense and almost every club does that and it drives me crazy and it depresses response.

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Yeah, oh yeah, and it sounds like even dumb to say.

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But even if, let's just say, you get a one or two percent more open rate just by switching that over time, that's thousands of more open emails.

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I mean, I promise you you do this stuff, and then people are going to make wait a minute, I didn't even know that you all were sending out emails, right?

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People are like hello, what's going on?

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And I also think that clubs you know clubs don't view their databases the way that regular markers do, and I think there's something that they should be doing which is call it a win back, but it's not truly a win back.

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But in any club uh, let's, I'm making this up you have 10,000 people on your list Maybe it's a big club, whatever and you email, email, email.

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Let's say, 50% of the people in your database have opened or clicked on one of your emails in the last year.

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But you have a big chunk of people in your database, in your club database, that have not opened and clicked on any of your emails.

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And to not carve out that group and then try to do some specific emails to that group like hey, you're missing out, you know, or did you know, question mark, but specific campaigns to the audience within your club that is, just ignoring your emails and bring them back is a fail, because you know, if you were a direct-to-consumer marketer and you were you know Bomba Sox or whatever.

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All day long they're doing win-back strategies.

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How do we get them back?

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How do we get them back?

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But clubs are like all right, they don't open up our emails, that's okay.

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Why is that okay?

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It's not okay.

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As I'm trying to pick up my foot to show you my Bumba sock, because they email me so much.

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Yes, they do and it works.

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Look, they have socks on your feet.

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Well, and they also have a great return policy.

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So I've had a bunch of socks that just not even like less than a year just started getting like holes in, like the sides I don't know if I put them on too hard or whatever and they have like no questions asked for term policy.

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They just send you a like, you send them a photo and then they say how many pairs, and then they just ask you to send those back and then they send you new ones.

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But then obviously I feel like because I know that they donate socks also so now whenever I do that, I just feel like I order more socks anyway.

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So so now whenever I do that, I just feel like I order more socks anyway.

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So it's like this what are you actually doing?

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I've never heard of a human having holes on the sides of their socks.

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What's wrong with?

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you.

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So on the Bombas it's like the point, like it's on the side where all the threading just kind of comes together.

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You got to tone down how aggressive you're pulling up your socks.

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I mean mean we might need to have like a moment here because I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's weird.

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I mean, I feel like that's weird.

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All right, I I.

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Maybe that's why they just handed them over like this dude's weird, like no one they should like flag you in the database.

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Uh, we have a separate kind of flag here for side hole people, which is like really strange.

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Anyway, it sucks.

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Oh, my God, who knew?

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Hope you all enjoy that episode.

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Jay, thank you so much for being on, appreciate it.

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I know I always get a joy from listening from one of the masters of marketing.

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Jay also hosts one of the largest the largest, the world's largest virtual email marketing conference.

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It's coming up in October, 100%, totally free, over 20,000 marketers.

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It is a wild time.

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I was able to enjoy some of it last year and word on the streets is you never know, I might be doing a little bit of performing on there.

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We'll see.

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Might be seeing me there, but you can learn more over at guruconferencecom.

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And while you're at it, if you have not done so already, head on over to privateclubradiocom to sign up for our newsletter.

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Stay up to date with all the current episodes we are releasing here on the channel hey, like, share, subscribe, thumbs up reviews.

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Until next time, catch y'all on the flippity flip.