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freemium, but instead of digital I did a spiral bound 16 page book, “What to do on a boat on
Lake Minnetonka”. This varies from the traditional digital download because I wanted to
acquire a customer’s physical address to continue to market items. I also wanted control over
the print quality of the photos and physical richness of the paper in their hands. I wanted to
create an experience in their home.
It worked.
That first year, I
reached a 154%
increase in
membership. The
reason was, it didn’t
matter what time of
day the customer
asked for information,
they started in the
funnel and received an
email
acknowledgement.
The other benefit of
creating an infinity
marketing machine is
the concept of the
infinity customer. We strategically target our pontoon rental customers as prospective boat club
members. We also target boat club members to upgrade to boat purchases. Summer of 2015
we had a boat club customer purchase a brokerage boat and slip, a $27,000 upgrade! Growing
your own customers and keeping them within your own profit centers is the ideal benefit of the
infinity marketing machine.
This year I created a funnel for our winter storage program. This was not a small task. The
funnels and have electronic quotes for winter storage. So far 6 have signed up that have gone
through the system. That’s a great start since I’m writing this about 3 weeks into the process.
However, the biggest benefit to the infinity marketing machine is seen with our pontoon rentals.
We have the capability to send acknowledgements of reservations AND reminders two days
before their cruise. This might not seem like a big deal. But it is. Infusionsoft has a feature that
can make it a backward building system. You can select a date and let’s say you’d like to send
a reminder two days before the date. Most systems are forward building, i.e., someone buys a
product and two days later you send a “thank you”. Think about the possibilities when you can
individualize a date to a person… or several dates and build backward! Boat drop off, boat pick
up, anniversaries, it’s endless!
This year I enhanced the pontoon reservation system by including a text messaging system.
The text is auto generated and is sent at 8:00am the morning of a cruise reminding the customer
that the deposit is needed in CASH (not checks and not credit cards). This alone has reduced
customer friction.
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