How golf clubs can use SMS to increase member retention

Most golf clubs are missing one of the most effective communication tools available to them.

Email is essential — it's your highest-volume, best-documented channel for membership communication. But email has a significant limitation: roughly 20-25% of your members will open any given email on any given day. The other 75-80% won't see it.

SMS is different. Text messages have an open rate of around 98%, with the majority opened within 3 minutes of receipt. For time-sensitive or high-priority communication — the kind where you actually need to know the message has landed — that difference is enormous.

Used well, SMS isn't a replacement for email. It's a complement to it: the channel you reach for when something genuinely matters, when timing is critical, or when you need to cut through the noise.

When SMS is appropriate for golf clubs

The key to using SMS well is restraint. Text messages arrive in the same place as messages from people's friends and family. Overuse them for low-priority content and you'll train your members to ignore them — or, worse, prompt them to unsubscribe from SMS entirely.

Use SMS for:

Booking confirmations and reminders. A confirmation text when a tee time is booked, and a reminder 24 hours before. This is genuinely useful to the member and has practical benefits — it reduces no-shows and last-minute cancellations. Almost nobody objects to this kind of SMS.

Event reminders. A club championship starting tomorrow. An open day in 48 hours. An event that's nearly full and worth a final push. Text messages for time-sensitive event promotion work because the timing of the message matches the urgency of the action.

Urgent course or operations updates. Course closed due to frost. Clubhouse closed for a private event. Car park changes. These are the messages where SMS genuinely earns its place — it's the only channel where you can be confident that most members will see a message within the hour.

Renewal nudges at the critical moment. The final 7 days before a renewal deadline. Not the 60-day reminder — that's an email job. But the "your membership expires in 3 days" message, where the timing is specific and the action is clear, is appropriate for SMS.

Personalised milestones. A birthday message. An anniversary of joining the club. These short, personal messages can have a significant positive effect on member sentiment when they feel genuine rather than automated. Keep them brief and warm.

What NOT to use SMS for

Monthly newsletters. General club news. Routine marketing offers. Surveys. Anything that requires the member to read more than two or three sentences.

Long text messages are annoying. Marketing messages that arrive via text when the member signed up for urgent updates feel like a breach of trust. Anything that could reasonably have been sent by email shouldn't be in a text message.

The test: would a reasonable member be glad they got this as a text, or would they have preferred an email? If there's any doubt, email is the right channel.

GDPR and SMS marketing

The legal requirements for SMS marketing are, if anything, stricter than for email marketing. SMS is governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) as well as UK GDPR, and the rules on consent are clear: you need explicit consent to send marketing messages via SMS.

Transactional messages — a booking confirmation, a direct response to something the member has done — generally don't require marketing consent. But any SMS that's promotional in nature does.

In practice, this means:

• At the point where a member provides their mobile number (enquiry form, membership sign-up), you should include a clearly worded, unticked checkbox specifically for SMS marketing
• The consent must be specific to SMS — consent to email marketing doesn't cover text messages
• You must provide an easy way to opt out, and honour opt-outs immediately

This doesn't mean you need a lengthy legal consent flow. It just means being explicit: "Can we text you with booking reminders and the occasional club update?" is a reasonable, plain-English ask. Most members will say yes if it's framed clearly and you've established trust.

Keep records of SMS consent the same way you should be keeping records of email consent — logged against the contact record in your CRM.

How to integrate SMS with your email campaigns

The most effective use of SMS isn't as a standalone channel but as part of a coordinated communication strategy.

A practical example: you're running an autumn membership drive. The sequence might look like this:

• Week 1: Email campaign to enquiry list with an overview of membership and an invitation to book a visit
• Week 2: Follow-up email to non-openers with a different subject line and slightly different content
• Week 3: SMS to prospects who opened but didn't click through — "Still thinking about membership at [Club Name]? We're holding a few places for this month — reply YES and we'll give you a call."
• Week 4: Final email to anyone who engaged but hasn't booked a visit

The SMS in week 3 doesn't replace the email — it reaches the people who saw the email but didn't act. The combination consistently outperforms either channel used alone.

Similarly, for renewals: an email sequence that starts 60 days out, combined with a single SMS in the final week, ensures that even the most email-averse members have seen the message.

The case for SMS in membership retention specifically

Why does SMS improve retention? Two reasons.

First, it's the channel members actually check. A member who's drifting — who hasn't played in 60 days, who's skimming your newsletters — is likely deprioritising their inbox. A well-timed, personal SMS cuts through in a way that email can't.

Second, the personal nature of the channel signals that the club cares enough to send something direct. An email newsletter feels broadcast. An SMS feels individual, even when it isn't. That perception matters when someone is on the fence about renewing.

As Stonebridge Golf Club's General Manager put it in describing the impact of better communication systems overall:

"The ability to track and manage every lead we receive, as well as send regular email marketing campaigns and follow up with all new leads and enquiries has been an absolute game changer for our business."

SMS, integrated with a CRM that knows what each member needs and when, is the channel that completes the picture — reaching the people that email alone can't.

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Capture includes SMS capability as part of the platform, integrated directly with your member database and automation workflows. Book a demo to see how it fits into a complete member communication strategy for your club.