Program: SHORT ROUNDS

Measuring Success

In order to evaluate the impact your instructional program or event has had on increasing golf participation, player retention and spending, The PGA of America has created a series of online forms and tools to help you easily track this vital information. This information can be of value to you in determining which programs offered are most effective and will provide you in information on the results of your program(s) that you in turn can report to your employer. This information will also help The PGA of America’s national office analyze and report aggregate results (combined data for all facilities and programs) back to the industry to demonstrate the PGA Professionals role in growing the game.

The three tools that you will need to use to effectively measure program participation include:

The Play Golf America Customer Registration Form is an important tool that serves several purposes.

• First, it captures participant contact information that can be used for customer correspondence and for creating a customer database.
• Second, it provides the golf professional responsible for instruction with the benefit of knowing what the student’s background in golf is (if any), and identifies what the student’s expectations are for taking a particular class.
• Third, it offers the facility and the National Office with customer feedback identifying how these individuals heard about the facility’s programs and helps to evaluate what marketing efforts are most effective. With this information, future marketing can be focused on the areas identified with the highest return.
• Finally, by identifying what the student’s golfing experience and spending habits were prior to coming into a program, the facility and the National Office can compare this information to data collected through year-end customer surveys to determine the effect that the program had on increasing golf participation and retention among its customers. This information will be useful to the golf professional, the facility, and the golf industry, to measure the success of various programs and for continued development of new and existing programs.

It is important that you have your students and event participants fill out the Play Golf America Customer Registration Form prior to starting a Play Golf America clinic or event. We strongly recommend that you schedule each of your events online through the Play Golf America Resource Center prior to allowing customer registration. This form is available to students and event participants online once you have scheduled your event, and can also be downloaded and printed to capture information from those who may register on-site or by phone. If the form is filled out in person or by phone, the facility should assign a staff person to enter the form online on behalf of the student. It is also important that the form not be altered from its original content so that the necessary student information is captured.

Through the Play Golf America Resource Center, you have been provided with tools to allow your customers to register for programs either online or through the assistance of staff, to help you build and maintain a customer database, and to provide you with the ability to utilize your customer database for direct marketing campaigns.

The two areas of the Customer Registration and Database Tool include the:

Registrants area that provides you with the ability to:

• View a complete list of customers in your database and the last event they participated in, if applicable
• Add customers to your database
• Access/edit customer contact information
• Track their participation in various programs and easily assign them to follow up programs

And the Reports area that provides you with the ability to:

• View a list of participants by program/event
• Use the e-mail tool to contact participants via e-mail to alert them of program changes, drop friendly reminders or to notify them about additional program opportunities

In order to measure the effect your programs have on increasing golf participation, retention and spending, we have created a Year-End Golf Participation Survey that should be distributed to your students and event attendees at the conclusion of each year. The PGA of America provides you with the option of sending out an e-mail with a link to the online survey using e-mail copy they will provide to you, or you can have The PGA send out an e-mail with a link to the survey on your behalf. The survey captures information on:

• Nine-and 18-hole rounds played and green fees paid for the current year
• Incidence of spending on golf instruction, F&B and merchandising for the current year
• Extent of purchases made at your facility
• Factors that would influence the golfer to play more

To incentives online participation in the Year-End Golf Participation Survey, The PGA will enter respondents into a drawing for select prizes providing they complete the online survey within a specified time frame.

Once the data has been collected, The PGA will tie participant results back to their Play Golf America Registration Form to measure the increase in participation and spending. The PGA will also be able to compare the results of specific programs and events to see determine which ones have had the largest impact on growing the game. Results of this study will be published online and will be presented to the industry during the annual Golf: 20/20 conference in November.