Bookings

Make bookings for other members - Primary members can now make bookings for associate members on their package. For example, a member may want to book a tennis court for their child or partner. A primary member can also amend and cancel bookings on behalf of their associate.

More flexible booking intervals - Previous versions only allowed bookings to be made to be made on a fixed interval (such as every hour). The new version allows you to set an interval in which the next booking can be made so that available time throughout the day can be used up more efficiently.

 New booking rules manager - Bookings rules in ClubCentric are handled by a rules engine which checks all the rules and conditions before allowing a booking to be made or not. This engine has been improved to make it quicker and easier to manage existing rules and add new ones in future. New rules are available to limit bookings based on such scenarios as:

• Duration of a booking at peak times e.g. Member can't book tennis for more than an hour at peak times.
• Amount of time booked for an activity in a period e.g. no more than 10 hours of tennis can be booked in a 7 day period.
• Number of bookings in a period e.g. no more than 2 personal training bookings in a day.
• No shows in a period. e.g. Remove booking rights if more than 3 no shows in the last 5 days.

Instant synchronisation for new members - Previous versions would synchronise new members with Bookings every 15 minutes or so. 3.2 performs this synchronisation instantly, enabling a new member to join and make a booking straight away. Particularly useful if you want to sign up a member and book them in for an induction or PT session immediately.

Reorder how resources are displayed - If you want to display your resources in a non-sequential way you can now do this. For example, you may want to put under-used resources first to encourage these to be booked before more heavily used resources. Using tennis as an example, you may want to display your courts in the sequence 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc as this is the same as the physical layout of your courts.

Apply a default price for a booking - If you have lots of sites and resources it can take a while to add your prices. 3.2. contains a default price which for all items in the booking group, without the need to update each item individually. You can still change prices for individual items without affecting the default price for the other items.

WebAccess 2.0

The internal architecture of WebAccess has been completely redesigned so that you can now:

• Run WebAccess as a standalone web application as before.
• Integrate individual WebAccess elements into your existing website with exactly the same look and feel.
• Integrate with SitePoint, SDA's new service for dynamic hosted websites.

Cancel or amend a booking online - previously, a booking could be made online but could only be changed by contacting the club directly. Now you can cancel a booking or make changes to an existing booking. As you cancel or amend you will be advised of any cancellation fees or price changes, which can then be paid by credit or debit card immediately.

New online booking wizard - the process of making a general booking (Personal Training, Racquets etc) has been improved. Customers can view available slots in a day calendar and quickly make the booking or use the search filters to find other days and times. This can be combined with payment either by credit/debit card or on account.

Generate booking confirmations and reminders - At the end of the booking process the customer can choose to receive confirmations and reminders by email or SMS text message at a user-defined time e.g. 2 hours before the booking is due to start.

Improved MyBookings area - Previous versions contained a list of all pending bookings. This is now extended to include the ability to amend or cancel a booking from the list as well as new filter options to see previous bookings by status (completed, cancelled, no show etc) to get a full view of bookings past, present and future.

Run Live timetable across multiple domains - Now you can publish your class timetables onto multiple websites domains so that your members can view and book classes from virtually anywhere.

Add or remove optional items in a booking - A member can now make a booking and add or remove any optional items related to that booking. For example, a Member could book a tennis court and add a ball machine and speed gun at the same time.

Book for an associate online - A member can quickly go online and make a booking for one of their associates at any time. This is very handy for parents who want to book something for their children, for example.

Capture leads and prospects online - Easily create a data collection form on your website for new enquiries. You can choose the fields and style the form to fit your existing website design. All the details from the form are sent into ClubCentric with automatic activity scheduling and email updates to the salesperson. This feature will save hours of tedious data entry from email and disconnected forms.

Join online - A joining wizard is now available which can guide a joiner through the entire joining process including BACS setup and automatic address entry. The configuration also allows you to limit which packages are sold online.

Forgotten password reset - Previous versions required users who had forgotten their password to contact their club. The generation of a new password is now completely automated and requires no input from the site at all.

More control - You can now controll all aspects of WebAccess look and feel, which tabs are displayed and the order of any favourites. Personalise your system exactly how it suits you.

General

Email and letter templates can now be filtered and deleted - For those with long lists of letter and email templates you can now filter templates on their status and delete templates that are no longer required.

Advanced Find search on member contact preferences - You can now search on all contact preferences so that you can find all people who do not allow contact by SMS, for example.

More retention management features - Advanced Find now contains a range of searches for finding and contacting low and non-attenders. For example you could find all members who have attended less than 2 times in the last month and send them an email, letter or SMS. New, professionally written, retention templates are available to chose from in the templates list.

Improved integration with SDAconnect - It is now possible to sync the results of an Advanced Find query with SDAconnect, SDA's subscriber email campaign system. This will allow you to produce highly targeted campaigns for general information, special offers and retention management. For example, you could find all the low users, send an email campaign with a link to a special offer and track the number of people who clicked on the link.

Issues Fixed

Over 30 issues have been fixed in this release.

ClubCentric 3.2 is available now. For any customers who would like to see a detailed preview of Version 3.2, please contact us at support@sdasolutions to sign up for the upcoming webinar.

We've noticed that our customers have great ideas, but it's sometimes tough for us to determine which are the most popular. We believe strongly that it’s our job to let demand steer development - It's not about what we want, but rather what our community (you) wants. Therefore, we're going to try using a different way to listen and act more efficiently – it’s a new ideas management site called UserVoice and here’s how it works...

Pretty soon we'll be circulating the site address where you can logon and start contributing your ideas. The next release of ClubCentric and LeisurePoint will also have a quick access tab where you can log in directly.Once you’re accepted onto our ideas forum, you can view other people’s suggestions and add your own. UserVoice also has a voting mechanism enabling you to vote on certain feature requests you would like to see, and how important they are to you. The feature requests that receive more votes will be given a higher priority and move up the development queue, and ultimately make their way into a release. We urge you to get started and post a few features and vote on the ones you want the most. However, be careful, as each user only gets a limited number of votes, so use them wisely!

Go to http://ideas.sdasolutions.com to login or request access. We look forward to seeing your ideas and suggestions in UserVoice and remember, this is your opportunity to influence what we do - make the most of it!

The subject line of your email can make or break your campaign. If you don't have a compelling subject line the chance of your email even getting read is slim. According to a recent MarketingSherpa.com survey, 40% of email marketers said testing changes to just their subject line had a high impact on their return on investment (ROI). 45% said subject line changes accounted for a medium ROI and only 15% said that testing changes to their subject line results in a low ROI. As a general rule, for every email you send you've got room for no more than 50 characters in your subject line to grab their attention and encourage readers to continue to the body of your email.

Here are 10 tips for creating a subject line guaranteed to jump your email to the top of the pile:

1. Test the subject line
Take a look at email campaigns you've sent in the past. Which subject lines worked the best and gave you the highest open and conversion rates? You might find that for a particular topic there's a general trend or subject style that resulted in higher open rates. Use the campaign comparison tool in SDAconnect to see which email and subject lines resulted in the most opens.

2. Make it important
Try and put as much important and relevant information into your subject lines as possible. For example, if you're sending out an email about a special offer make sure the details of the offer appear in the subject line in a clear and concise format such as "Club X - sign up now and get an extra month. Offer ends tomorrow".

3. Personalise the subject line
If you have details about your subscribers then use them in your subject line to get their attention. A subject line containing the subscribers name ALWAYS outperforms one that doesn't.

4. Avoid spam keywords
Most email servers automatically filter out any emails that contain spam keywords in their subject line. Certain words trigger spam detection software so keep them out of your subject lines at all times. Use the spam test in SDAconnect  to see if your subject line is 'spammy'.

5. Trigger curiosity
The best way to improve your open rates is to pique the interest of your subscribers. A compelling headline that entices them to open and read the contents of your email can do wonders for your conversion rate. For example "Hi [First Name] - Does this happen to you...".

6. Make the offer clear
If you're making a special offer to your subscribers then be upfront and include it as part of your subject line. People love bargains and special offers so let them know about it before anything else.

7. Emphasise the benefits
This is a great way to encourage people to read on. For example " Club X - 10 tips to hit your weight loss target".

8. Copy what works elsewhere
If you see or receive something that gets your attention, chances are it will work for your email campaign too. Don't be afraid to 'borrow' good ideas and adapt them to your campaign.

9. Identify yourself
Make sure your subscribers know the email is coming from a trusted and credible source - you. Deceptive subject lines can confuse and annoy, so always try and include your club name where possible. Also, make sure you set the "From" attribute of your email to include your name and your club name, such as "From: John Smith <john@clubx.com>".

10. Avoid exclamations!
Avoid using excessive exclamation at the end of your subject lines. Too much hype is annoying - let your content speak for itself without being 'shouty'.

Hope you find these tips useful for your next campaign and drop me an email if you come up with others or have some good results you want to share in the blog.

8. On Time, Every Time
When sending a regular email to your subscribers, always make sure that it's sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 9am. Your subscribers will come to "expect" your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

9. The Half-a-Second Subject Line
When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using 'Our Club Newsletter', use 'Our Club Newsletter: 10 Tips for Fitness Success'.

10. The 'Free' Hook
Free is overused these days, especially in email. However, if you're looking to grow your subscriber list, then come up with something of value to your target audience (such as a guest visit or consultation) and offer it to them for free when they signup for your newsletter.

11. The Preview Pane
Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it's selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email system. If it's interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue reading.

12. Graphics Overload
Remember many users have image downloads switched off by default on their email client preview, so if your key message is in an image it won't even be seen. Make sure your key message can be seen prior to downloading any email images.

13. Link-Click Testing
When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending 2 different emails, compare the click-through stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-through, and ultimately the most sales. Use A/B testing in SDAconnect to send two different versions to a small set of subscribers and then send the winning email to the remaining subscribers on your list.

14. Make your Email Valued
You do what you do because you're an expert in your field - right? Add value to your website, build visitor trust, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by providing valuable and relevant content. Fitness tips, success stories and the latest scientific research on fitness and nutrition will be sure to hit the spot.

15. Always Sign Off
Always include a signature or sign-off at the bottom of your email, as it's one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products.

By implementing the 15 best practices described in this article, you can take your email marketing to a whole new level –- attracting more subscribers, and building both awareness and credibility at the same time, without spending a fortune.