Youth sports camps are fun – for athletes and for coaches.
But, having awkward conversations about money? Not so fun.
Camps are a big revenue driver for many sports facilities and training academies. And for good reason. But, they’re only successful monetarily if you’re able to collect that revenue. So, how can you improve your youth sports camp payment collection process to make it easy for parents to register their athletes and for you to stay on top of your business and finances.
Here are 7 tips to improve youth sports camp payment collection.
By offering online registration and payment options through your sports camp management software, you can reduce barriers to entry and encourage campers to sign up. The fewer hoops to jump through, the better, as more roadblocks can ultimately lead to clients taking their business elsewhere.
You may also consider offering discounts/ special offers for those who register and pay by a certain date. This can easily be done through your camp management software. For example, with Upper Hand, you can set a pricing schedule, where the list price of your event increases at set dates leading up to your event. This incentivizes athletes and parents to sign up and pay early to take advantage of lower rates. And, it helps you bring in revenue and plan for your upcoming camp.
Another way to improve your sports camp payment collection is through leveraging social media. By sharing your registration link via your Facebook or Instagram page, for example, it makes it easier for parents and athletes to access the registration page. This will also help you spread the word about your camp, leading to an increase in signups (and as a result, revenue).
Bonus tip: Upper Hand uses unique URLs, which take people directly to the event page. This empowers clients to book from their phone, laptop, desktop, or tablet – wherever the day takes them.
By providing multiple ways to pay, you can better accommodate your athletes and parents. For example, you can choose to accept credit cards, check, or cash payments, or a combination of methods. This can help make the registration and payment process more convenient for parents, thus leading to a higher likelihood of on-time payments.
Additionally, accepting multiple forms of payment can also help you reach a wider audience. By being flexible and accommodating with payment options, you can improve the payment collection process and provide a better experience for your athletes and parents.
Additionally, you could offer payment plans that allow clients to pay in multiple installments over time. Similar to offering payment method flexibility, offering payment flexibility in terms of collecting these payments enables you to reach a wider range of clients, and can make it more feasible for some athletes to attend your youth sports camps.
This is especially beneficial for families with multiple children or on a tight budget. By offering this level of flexibility, you can make it easier for families to pay on time, consequently increasing enrollment and revenue. And, it helps to demonstrate that you are willing to work with clients, which helps turn clients into repeat visitors.
Bonus tip: With Upper Hand, you are able to create payment plan options that will automatically bill clients at the set cadence.
Whether you’re requiring a full payment at the time of purchase, offering payment plan options, or are okay with clients paying via cash on event day, it’s important to communicate expectations in terms of your sports camp payment collection. This will help you keep you and your athletes and parents accountable. In the event that an upcoming or outstanding payment exists, it’s important that you’re organized so that you can follow up with reminders of these expectations.
In Upper Hand, you are able to track outstanding balances and generate a list of those who are not yet paid. Then, you can then reach out to them reminding them that a payment is due.
For your loyal/ repeat clients, offering incentives or discounts is a great way to help them feel important. Including event perks for members incentivizes athletes to sign up for your sports camps. But, it also helps you generate stable, recurring revenue. By having this reliable source of income through auto-renewing memberships, you have more freedom when collecting payments for your sports camps, enabling you to focus on your sports camp agenda.
This also helps you cultivate a community of brand advocates (who are likely to be on top of their payments). Brand advocates will promote your business to others, which leads to further revenue growth. So, you may consider creating a membership program to show appreciation for those athletes who are great advocates for your business.
At the end of the day, by providing exceptional customer experience, you can boost youth sports camp payment collection as well as drive more revenue at your sports business. Improving payment collection requires a multifaceted approach – from effective communication, streamlined registration, to payment flexibility and more. By implementing these strategies, you’ll be able to reduce late/ missed payments, generate more revenue, and provide more positive client experiences.
If you’re managing your camp manually, you have a lot of opportunities to eliminate headaches and spend more time working on designing a well-thought-out program for athletes. Request a demo of Upper Hand today to see a personalized walkthrough of the software!
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