While there are tons of ways to market to new families and increase your enrollment for next summer, with all the talk about “new families” sometimes marketing to your existing families gets forgotten.
There is a known saying in marketing: “It costs 10 times more to get a new client than selling to an existing one.” The saying makes a lot of sense. For someone new to trust you, you need to work really hard. Not so much with families who already know and love you!
In case reaching out to your families from last year about registration for NEXT summer is not part of your pre-registration routine to, here is a great template you can use to market your next registration season to your existing clients.
“Summer Camp Registration Now Open” Email Template
What is good about this summer camp email?
Key points to note in the email template above that will help you create your own awesome and effective email to families include:
The camp email is personalized.
This is the #1 most important part of this email: making the parent receiving the email feel like it was meant for them.
Using a good camp registration software means you can personalize your emails for every parent, without writing 1,000 emails to each one. You do this by using what we, at Regpack, call “Tokens”. This is essentially a placeholder in your text that will populate with the users you select to the send the message to. So when you select 1,000 people, each email that sends out will put the information associated with that token in that specific email. An easy, and quick, way to personalize!
Including key information as part of your text that can be filled in by your system, including Family name, First name, Email address, Camper First Name, etc will go a long way with your open rate and your registration enrollment numbers.
You’ll note that all the names in BOLD in the email example above are areas where you can personalize through your system. Instead of saying “your camper” you can pre-populate the camper’s actual name, etc.
When you are creating your own email draft, be sure to take advantage of any personal information you can include.
The email has your camp’s contact information.
You don’t want a situation where a parent has a question and they feel frustrated just finding the right phone number or email address to reply to.
The first tip is to send the email out from an email you would like to receive responses to. This will make the parent feel they are replying to a real person and ensure their question or comment gets to the right person.
An email signature is a perfect place to include your email address and the phone number a parent can call with questions.
The camp email has a clear call to action.
This is pretty obvious given the entire point of the email is to get them to register, but ensure that you don’t fill the email with extra information or anecdotes that take away from the email’s intent.
The email subject line and the opening line should be about registration and the rest of the body will give important dates, discounts, contact info and where to go to complete registration.
The email has a direct link to your camp’s registration
Of course, a link to registration is KEY to getting your call to action acted upon. You might be rolling your eyes right now and asking “who doesn’t do that???”. Believe it or not, I have seen quite a few emails without a link! Seriously!
If you have a way to make the link styled so it will stand out, by all means, go wild! Even a simple button or larger text in a different color that is underlined will do. You want to draw their eye to the link because this is the main purpose of the email, not just to inform them that registration is open, but to REGISTER!
Email Marketing for Your Summer Camp
I’ve included some resources below for marketing your camp effectively on social media platforms and other nontraditional and traditional marketing ideas. But the #1 task on your list is to let your returning families know they can register. Don’t forget this email!
You can plan to remind them about registration with 2-3 follow emails leading up to the end of registration too. Consider sending an email:
- 1 week before early bird registration (if you do this) is going to end.
- 1 month before camp starts.
- 1 week before camp starts with any updates on sessions that are still open/that are full; waitlist information and any last minute deals you might want to include.
I’ve also included some resources below on some discounts you might want to consider that you can offer to returning families and new ones alike!
Camp Registration Resources:
10 Best Camp Marketing Blogs
Summer Camp Social Media Marketing Guide
Camp Marketing Strategies to Find New Campers
3 Camp Marketing Ideas
Guide to Camp Marketing With Instagram
Camp Registration Marketing Tips
Using Your Camp Software as a Sales Platform
5 Ways to Increase Camp Enrollment