Launch of a new members’ magazine
Success achieved
Their new magazine - The Golf Club Manager - becomes a key engagement tool for the members of the Golf Club Managers’ Association- Website
- https://www.gcma.org.uk
- Project dates
- Launched in April 2017
Project team
- Mike Hyde, Communications Manager
- Steve Carroll, Editor
- Tash Johnson, Business Development Manager
- Marie Taylor, Communications Executive
Tools & Systems
Our primary membership engagement tool in 2017 was the new members’ magazine, The Golf Club Manager.
The magazine is delivered in print form to every member each month, and they also receive a digital version, which they are encouraged to distribute to anyone in their club who might find it interesting or useful.
All magazine content is also published to our website – albeit some is kept as members only. We always make the member-focussed content available to the public, as we know that they will be looking to share it amongst their colleagues and friends. We ensure that we also post that content to social media platforms as well to allow easy sharing.
The link to the digital version is included in our weekly enewsletter, and the statistics for that newsletter always include a spike in opens from the members who have been featured – regardless of the size of their contribution to the magazine.
Introduction
Whilst membership recruitment is traditionally strong, the association hasn’t achieved the success it would have liked with membership retention in recent years.
As well as looking to improve our membership retention processes, the association identified that we also needed to improve the level and quality of our engagement with our members.
The fundamental way we’ve looked to do this over the last six months is through our new members’ journal, The Golf Club Manager.
The GCMA has published a journal since 1937, and for the last 20 years the association’s magazine has been provided by a third party publisher, with very limited contributions from the GCMA. Members rarely featured and no member had ever been featured on the front cover.
For numerous reasons the association was looking to change that model, and in April 2017 we launched the new magazine. As well as gaining complete commercial control, we also had comprehensive editorial responsibility.
It was always our intention to make it a true members magazine. It would have GCMA members at its heart, and any manager opening an issue would be able to read about a number of their friends, peers and colleagues.
Discovery
We initially ran a ‘state of the nation’ membership satisfaction survey in 2015, which included numerous questions about the existing GCMA magazine.
We initially wondered if we might end up not continuing with the magazine, given the general trend towards digital, but the survey was conclusive that print was still the way forward for us, at least in the medium term.
Indeed, with the magazine rated at just 66% satisfaction, it was clear that there was huge potential to deliver a product that they would enjoy reading more than the current title.
The subjective feedback also made it clear that they wanted to see more of other GCMA members, rather than just industry experts. We identified the following ‘devices’ that we would include in the magazine that would feature, or give greater value to, GCMA members:
- Members letters
- Interviews with high profile members
- Profiles of ‘normal’ members
- A list of members on the move
- Social media round up
- A gallery of activity from the last month
- Regional meeting round ups
- Recruitment advertising
We allocated 50% of the magazine to member focussed content, with the rest of the magazine dedicated to educational content.
We devised our initial plans for the magazine on the basis of that survey data – what people liked from the current title, and what they wanted to see. Once we’ve sketched the outline of the structure of the magazine, we visited a number of regional meetings to discuss our ideas face to face with the membership to see if we were on the right lines.
We received excellent feedback during our tour of the country – led by Mike Hyde and CEO Bob Williams – and very little changed from our initial plans.
Objectives
We set the following targets and objectives for the whole project of relaunching the magazine, which also required us to set up a new company.
After four issues
- Magazine satisfaction: Target 85%
- Would a member recommend the magazine?: 90%
After twelve issues
- Target: 40 job advert listings
Membership
- Our renewal date is 1 January, so we have yet to go through it since the magazine launched, but we are aiming to increase membership retention to 92%, from 87.5% in 2017.
- We aimed for 200 new members in 2017 (up 10% on both 2016 and 2015), and we are currently on target to achieve this.
Activities
The project was delivered by the communications team, and we recruited two roles to expand our capabilities: Business Development Manager in Nov ’16 and Communications Exec in Jan ’17. The Communications Manager managed the project, with that role changing from Digital Communications Manager to reflect the increased scope.
BDM works full time, and all hours are on raising income for the association, primarily through the magazine.
CE was initially a full time role, and was reduced to 30 hours a week in August following a re-recruitment. This role works approx. 60% on the magazine. CM works full time, and between June 16 and Mar 17 probably dedicated 80% of hours to the magazine, which has reduced to 30% now.
Innovation
Title
The first innovative step was the immediate decision to change the name to The Golf Club Manager from Golf Club Management magazine. A simple change, but it instantly put our members at the heart of the magazine, and made it clear that we were intending a considerable change of emphasis. Rather than a trade publication, this was going to be a true members magazine.
Publishing model
Next, the hybrid pubishing model we agreed with Sports Publications was key to the success of the project, and for the long term future of the association. By agreeing for SP to take control of the publishing side, leaving the association to manage the commercials and contribute industry expertise, we ensured we always had an exit strategy if need be, and secured long term relationships with suppliers, industry experts and members.
The hybrid model wasn’t the cheap option – we could have allowed SP to deliver the entire project without our input, at a much lesser risk to the association – but it appears to have been the right decision.
Member content
After deciding that members would be our focus, we had to work out different ways to include member content, whilst avoiding repetition. As well as ensuring a member would be on the majority of our covers, we settled on:
- Headline interview with a GCMA member
- A week in the life
- Meet the Manager
- A matter of opinion – roundtable discussion with four members
- How to... - a best practice guide to a specific area of management featuring at least one member
- This GCMA club is famous for
Data based decision making
Even though we wanted to create a very personal magazine, our initial decision making was very much data-driven, as we planned the magazine’s structure using results from various member surveys. This meant that our focus group consultations were often just confirming we were on the right lines, allowing us to drill down into more subjective detail.
Raising awareness of the GCMA amongst golfers
A key criticism of the GCMA from our members is that the association is not prominent enough with normal golfers. Therefore, as part of our agreement with Sports Publications, we ensured that the GCMA would receive profile-raising coverage in SP’s consumer golf titles. As well as a headline feature planned for SP’s National Club Golfer December issue, we have had adverts for the association in every issue of NCG, as well as alternate issues of Lady Golfer.
Marketing
As well as the regular focus groups, we kept our members fully updated with the process.
We presented our plans at regional meetings, more formally at AGMs in 2016 and 2017, and communicated with our members via our weekly enewsletter.
We held a formal launch at BTME 2017 – a major gathering of the golf industry – where we presented our plans to industry suppliers, other golf organisations, the press and our members.
We ran a full press campaign, gaining coverage in a number of industry publications, and from our industry partners.
As well as sending the first copy to our members, we also sent around 1,100 additional copies to non-member golf clubs, with an invitation to join the association, which was followed up with targeted emails and calls.
All magazine content is also published to our website – albeit some is kept as members only. We always make the member-focused content available to the public, as we know that they will be looking to share it amongst their colleagues and friends.
Challenges
One of the challenges that we still face is communicating to commercial partners, and members to a certain extent, that the magazine has changed hands. Our previous supplier has continued to produce a golf industry magazine, which some people continue to confuse as the official magazine of the association.
We have looked to overcome this with a concerted press campaign, and constant communication with our members.
Another challenge has been maintaining the editorial integrity of the magazine. Previously there was a lot of content that was plainly just linked to advertising, which devalued the product, but also raised expectations of clients.
We have therefore worked hard to create a quality product that advertisers actively wish to be associated with, not because they are able to buy their way into the editorial content.
In connection to that, we had to work really hard to convince potential advertisers to join us before the magazine actually launched.
Before we printed the first magazine, we were essentially selling an idea and a promise to create a quality product, so we had to discuss our plans in detail with potential clients to overcome their understandable initial skepticism.
It was also hard to know when to fire the starting gun on the whole project – we knew we couldn’t raise any commercial income until April 1st 2017, but at some point we had to speculate to accumulate. I think we got the decision about right, although at the time I was frustrated with the board’s decision to allow the appointment of a sales role until November 2016. I had initially asked for that role in April, but it was felt (understandably) that that was too greater financial risk.
Achievements
After four issues
- Magazine satisfaction: Target 85% / Achieved 88%
- Would a member recommend the magazine?: 90%/ Achieved 95%
After twelve issues
- Target: 40 job advert listings Achieved: 37 after seven issues
Membership
- Our renewal date is 1 January, so we have yet to go through it since the magazine launched, but we are aiming to increase membership retention to 92%, from 87.5% in 2017.
- We aimed for 200 new members in 2017 (up 10% on both 2016 and 2015), and we are currently on target to achieve this.
Targets & Statistics
Website traffic – sessions:
- (One months) Before – 8,904
- (Two months) After – 10,503 (up 18%)
Members area of the website - pageviews:
- (One month) Before – 4,311
- (One month) After – 5,548 (up 29%)
Financials
A new company, GCMA Communications, was set up to deliver the new magazine. We were ambitious with the structure of the company – moving a number of existing costs (including staff) into GCMA Comms, even though those resources contributed to GCMA MainCo too. Therefore it was agreed that GCMA Comms could run at a loss initially – because resources were required to get the project off the ground as early as 2016, whilst we couldn’t earn any commercial revenue until 1 April 2017. It was therefore predicted that GCMA Comms will become profitable in December 2017, and breakeven in May 2019.
Year one’s prediction was accurate, and we are now projected to make a smaller than expected loss in 2017.
We are yet to see an uplift in membership subscriptions, as we ran a discounted offer for much of 2017, but we anticipate a significant spike in January, for the main company through improved retention.
What would we do differently?
We launched the magazine in the same year as our biennial conference. Although we had 5 months between the first issue and conference, both projects were significant drains on the association in terms of internal resources. Our suppliers were also being asked to invest in our conference exhibition, in a year when we were also approaching them for advertising commitments.
We were also too reliant on submitted content (articles supplied to us in full by third parties), which whilst often contained some interesting nuggets of info, were usually poorly written and unfocused. Over the year we have moved to only publishing occasional content like that, and always from industry experts who we couldn’t emulate – e.g. legal advice. Otherwise we create all content from scratch – often with the same contributors we might have used before – ensuring we control the angles and narrative. This also allows us to introduce GCMA members alongside industry experts, which provides a nice balance.
Feedback & Testimonials
“I feel confident that the publication will go from strength to strength, and having produced such a strong issue 2, there should be plenty who will be proud of their Association’s publication. This in turn will no doubt lead to willing contributors both from golf industry specialists and members alike as well as valuable advertising support.”
Joan Raffety, GCMA Regional Manager
“Just had the new magazine land on my desk. What a fantastic read and excellent information in there which is much more relevant to the industry and in particular my role. Well done and lots of credit to all involved!!!!!!”
Martin Robinson, GCMA Regional Manager
“Sincere congratulations on getting to this point with your new magazine and on the overall quality of the first edition, it is excellent. I know you’ve both worked really hard to get to this point so credit where it’s due, you’ve done a great job and we’re grateful to be part of it going forward.”
Jim Croxton, BIGGA Chief Executive (partner organisation)
Wider impact
The main impacts on the association have been:
- Increased member satisfaction with the association’s official journal – a key membership benefit
- Increased member engagement – more members featuring in the magazine - In the 7 issues we’ve published so far, we have included content that features 63 different GCMA members, plus around 50 extra members have been pictured in those issues.
- Increased awareness of the association outside of our membership – amongst golfers and the wider golfing industry
