customer data and The power of retention

Did you know that it costs 5 times as much to get a new customer as it does to retain a new one?  Selling to an existing customer is also has a much higher margin than selling to a new customer because they convert at a higher rate and because it costs less to sell to them.  These existing customers are 50% more likely to buy a new product and will spend 31% more on your offering when they do buy than a new customer.  I could quote statistics like this all day and you could find many articles on this on the web to back up the point. . . doing a great job retaining your current customers is vital to running a profitable indoor golf center. 

Since the bottom line here is about keeping good customers, do you know how well you are doing?  Can you calculate your churn rate?   Churn rate is a measure that determines what portion of customers end their relationship with you over a set period, say a month or a quarter.  This would require you to know who your customers are and whether they are visiting every month.  Can you find a way to get them to check in (say, giving points for visits that goes toward food or beverage credits) so that you have a means to measure what portion are coming back.

Once you can measure, you need to segment.  Look at males versus females, different age groups, different skill levels, etc.  Get a little info on them when you set up your points program, maybe check in with Facebook or get an address so you can calculate how far they are driving to get to you.  Do surveys and tie it back to churn.  Find out what features are keeping them and which ones they wish were better.  Every dollar you spend here returns more than the dollars you are spending on ads to get them here in the first place.