March 2011

  
On the Tee with ForeTees

  
Well, Spring is here!!!  Aren't those wonderful words to hear for so many of us, especially those of us residing in the northern half of the United States?  Of course, the biggest challenge for us now is to get all of this snow melted without too much flooding.  That should be a formidable task.

 

This newsletter is packed with a lot of vital information for our ForeTees customers.  We are not only introducing a new product, but have added some outstanding features to our industry-leading tee time system.

 

We had a very successful trip to the 2011 CMAA Conference and Exposition in Orlando at the end of February.  We want to thank so many of the club managers and clubhouse staff from hundreds of facilities for stopping by our ForeTees booth.  So many of you had wonderful things to say about our product and we greatly appreciate your positive comments and feedback.  Also, we had many people stop by to say they had to see our product because the feedback they are hearing from their peers using ForeTees is outstanding.  We certainly appreciate all of our "cheerleaders" out there across the country who are singing the praises of our product.  There is no better advertising for us than "word of mouth".   Thanks to all of you (and please keep talking).

 

Obviously, the hit of the show for us was our new ForeTees Dining Product.  We received some excellent reviews of this new product and also enjoyed the positive feedback from those of you who had suggestions for improvements.  We have returned to our St. Paul offices with some important tweaks that we want to make to the dining system before it is 100% ready.  Plus, it is being tested by a couple of our Twin Cities ForeTees accounts just to make sure it is ready for prime time.  We should be ready to demo this product to all of our current accounts in its entirety by this summer.

     

We are very excited about this product and we know that, "If Your Members Love Our ForeTees Tee Time System - They Will Also Love ForeTees Dining!"  After all, if members enjoy 24/7 access to tee times, why wouldn't they want the same for their club dining reservations?  Plus, now you don't have to always have a staff person available at a phone to take a reservation.  The front of the house and the back of the house is always "live" and up-to-the minute on what is going on throughout the clubhouse concerning dining and event reservations.  You can also trust ForeTees to give your members a very user-friendly product that will be used because of your members' trust our product.

 

Congratulations to David Somers, General Manager at Heritage Golf & C.C. in Sarasota, FL for winning the iPad drawing held at the CMAA Exposition.  David's name was drawn for a large number of entries that were signed up at our booth during the two-day expo.  His new iPad will come in very handy when he logs onto ForeTees in the future. Thanks for stopping by our booth, David, and again, congratulations!

Our development team has been hard at work over the winter and has created some great new features to make your job easier and your members happier.  Below is a list and explanation of what has been transpiring:

1) Handicap Summary Report - This report will be very useful if your club uses the GHIN handicap interface.  With this report you can generate a list of all members that currently have a GHIN number and see the number of rounds played and the number of scores posted during a specified date range.  This allows you to quickly see which members have a significant discrepancy in these numbers.  You can also select an individual member from the list and get a quick detailed view of his/her rounds and postings.  To access this report, select Reports - Handicap Reports - Individual Peer Review, and then select the Summary Report button.  

2) Quick View on the ProShop Tee Sheet - Directly under the Tee Sheet Summary box in the upper right corner of the current tee sheets page, there is now a Quick View button.  Selecting this will give you a snapshot of that day's tee sheet(s).

 

This view will include two color-coded tables representing the morning times and the afternoon times (one cell per tee time).  A legend identifies the colors and what they represent.  To see the time and contents of an individual tee time, simply hold your mouse pointer over the table cell.

3) Changing the Mode of Transportation on the Tee Sheet - Now, you can rapidly change the players' Mode of Transportation (MOT) settings and the 9-hole play options right on the current tee sheet without going to Edit Tee Sheet.  Simply click on a player's current MOT on the tee sheet and a floating popup will allow you to select a different MOT and/or change the 9-hole option.  Checking the "Change All" box will force that change to ALL players in that tee time as well.

4) Custom HTML Email Content - This new feature is a MUST SEE for every club!!  If you want to increase member participation at club events or increase sales in the shop and therefore, increase revenue, then you will want to use this feature.

This feature allows anyone at the club (with proshop access to ForeTees) to create HTML formatted messages that can be added to the email notifications and general emails generated by or through ForeTees.  These custom messages can contain text, images, and links to help promote club events such as dining specials, social events, golf or tennis events, sales in the shop, and much more.

There are several reasons why this makes sense for all clubs that use ForeTees:

 

a) It is basically free advertising.  There is no additional cost to use this feature.

b) It will reach your members and they are more likely to read them.  Email messages from ForeTees are read by a very high percentage of recipients.  If it has to do with their tee times - members will open these emails.

c) It is easy to use and the messages can be timed for specific dates and times of the day, as well as specific email types.  This allows for a very targeted marketing program.

To use this feature you must have authorized user access.  Once you have access and are logged in, go to Tools -  Email - Manage Email Content (from the main menu tabs on top).  Select the Create New Content button to create a new message.  Once on that page, you can select the "Help & Tips" button to learn more.

 

5) HTML Formatted Messages When Sending Emails to Members - Now when you send emails to members, the message body will be created using the new online editor tool.  This means that the message will be built in HTML format, providing much more flexibility and allowing the addition of images, links, font changes, colors, and much more. 

6) Guest Tracking (expanded guest database) - This expanded guest database will allow clubs to better track guests and enforce their guest policies.  If email addresses are included with the guest data, then the notification emails will be sent to guests.  The guest database will allow for the storing and tracking of recurring guests.  This will enable clubs to better enforce any guest policies, as well as store useful information about their guests (address, email, phone number, etc.).  It will also allow both members and proshop users to quickly add recurring guests to their reservations after they have been initially added to the guest database. The email tool will be updated soon to allow proshop users to easily send emails to guests in the guest database.

7) IBS Point of Sale Interface - If you use the IBS POS System, this interface will allow you to send tee time related charges from ForeTees to the IBS System.  Contact ForeTees support for more information.

8) Event Signup Tracking Enhancements - Here is an awesome new feature created by our talented development staff.  Now, when an event signup is created, modified, or cancelled, the ForeTees system tracks who did the transaction and when it occurred. Simply go to an event under the Event tab and in the Control Panel, click on "View Event Log" and you will see the log for that event.

 

ForeTees recently reached a major milestone as its nearly 250,000 club members and shop personnel have logged into the system more than 35 million times.  What does this mean?  It means that members love our system and use it on a regular basis because it does make their lives easier and fits in perfectly with their busy lifestyles.

The number of members using the mobile interface also continues to climb.  Currently, more than 8,000 members at our 400 clubs are using this interface.  61.5% are using an iPhone to logon to ForeTees.  38.5% are using other models of smart phones.

As I review the sites of our ForeTees clients, I find that many of our customers do an excellent job of updating and creating some very entertaining announcement pages. This page can be so important in your ability to communicate with your members. Therefore, it is important to be creative and change the information on your announcement page on a regular basis.  This is the first page your members see when they sign-in to ForeTees and it is important to use it to the best of your ability.  If the head professional is too busy to update this page on a regular basis, why not assign it to one of your assistant professionals or interns?  The new online editor now let's you be even more creative in what you can do.  Plus, it is possible to easily download member photos, staff photos, promotional photos of special events, photos of your golf shop etc.  The sky is the limit, so be creative and have fun with your announcement/home page.  Use it as a method to market your events and increase golf shop sales.  You will be glad you did and so will your members.

We would welcome any posts or comments from our customers on either of these sites.  This would help spread a positive message on ForeTees products to the private club industry.  

Thank you!

See you down the middle!!!



Watch for these emails in the future to keep up on the latest news from ForeTees.