Help! Our camp enrollment is down - Cover Story

Nothing puts fear into a camp director more than falling enrollments. This unfortunate predicament can cause otherwise calm people to panic and run around in circles.

For most camps, a quick fix is not possible. However, if one is facing a drop in enrollments, the problem can be addressed with the following four steps:

1. Research. Review every statistic and fact about your previous years' enrollments. Look at the numbers -- they are real. Don't assume anything. Assumptions are probably why you are in trouble now.

2. Analyze your situation and develop a plan to correct it. Ensure that every policy, procedure and step you take promotes the camp; develop plans to address every indentifiable deficiency. From the research and analysis, develop a cohesive, coordinated campaign to promote your camp.

3. Implement the plan you have developed. Change procedures that didn't produce results. Develop new sales materials. Create new advertising. Hire or fire people as necessary.

4. Analyze the effectiveness of the plans you are putting into motion.

That's marketing -- the research, planning implementation, and analysis of the selling of a service or product.

You can do it yourself or you can hire someone to do it for you. The benefit of an outside "consultant" is expertise and objectivity. The down side is the cost. Even if you ultimately decide to hire a consultant, you should understand what they can and can't do.

Let's take a look at a hypothetical example of a camp that is experiencing an enrollment slump. Camp Post has a 200-camper capacity. Instead of filling to capacity, Camp Post fills to 80 percent of capacity, or 160 campers. That's almost break even, but the situation must be turned around. The question is, "What needs to be done?"

The answer, of course, is to work through our marketing process. A major benefit of this process is that it allows us to make whatever changes can be made immediately to begin improving enrollment for the next summer, and to simultaneously begin a long-term plan for marketing.

Research

The research phase is vital to everything that follows, since it will have impact on both long- and short-term marketing efforts. Is is imperative that we research previous enrollment statistics to understand just what the camp faces in its efforts to turn enrollments upward.

Here's what we find:

* Camp Post has been in business for 75 years. In that time the camp has traditionally re-enrolled about 75 percent (or 150) of its campers each year. That means that on average Camp Post needs to find 50 new campers each year to maintain 100 percent enrollment (200 campers).

* This year Camp Post only has 160 campers. Because we know that historically we return 75 percent of our current campers, we can estimate that 120 campers will return next year (75 percent x 160 current campers).

* Therefore, instead of finding 50 new campers next year, Camp Post's director now must enroll 80 new campers to return to full capacity. If we represents a 60 percent increase in new campers. If we compare this need to the previous year's actual 40 new campers, we discover that the Camp Post director is faced with the dire task ofd doubling the previous year's new camper class.

* Unfortunately, the situtation is actually worse. Since only 120 of this year's campers are returnees, they represent a return rate of 60 percent over last year's 200-camper enrollment. Unless things change drasticalkly at Camp Post, for planning purposes the director should presume a worst-case scenario of a 60 percent return rate for the next year. Sixty percent of 160 campers is 96 campers who can be expected to return for the following year. That means the director may be faced with the task of having to find as many as 104 new campers to return Camp Post to capacity. That's a 108 percent increase over the usual 50 new campers and a whopping 160 percent increase over last year's 40 new campers.

Developing a Plan

Faced with such daunting prospects, the Camp Post director must take a planned, dispassionate approach to resolving the problem. To begin, she must look at the target markets for next year's campers and increase the yield from each target market. In the camping business the target markets are current campers and new campers.

Current Campers

First, the director should look to existing campers. After all, they already have bouthg into Camp Post. Research has shown us that a Camp Post a major cause of the current enrollment deficit is the failure to maintain the 75 percent return rate. Clearly, a 60 percent return rate is devastating and must be improved.

If possible, the director should increase the return rate to more than 75 percent for the coming year. Recognize that the current campers must be viewed both as clients for the current summer and as "hot" prospects for the coming summer. It is much easier to keep one current camper than it is to find twenty, thirty or a hundred or more new inquiries, which may only yield one enrolled new camper. Therefore, the efforts focused on the current campers while they are at camp and after they have returmed home are very important in turning around the enrollment problem at Camp Post.

Before improving the return rate, the camp director must analyze why the return rate dropped. This is not the time to proceed on gut feelings. This is the time to find out the reasons for the decline and then address those problem areas. Therefore, the director should perform "exit" interviews with families on non-returning campers to find out why they won't return. In addition, the director should interview the past season's staff.

Next, the director should make changes to the camp's summer program. The changes should be developed as a result of the information learned in the interviews and the staff interviews. Keep in mind, the selling process for the next year begins the day the campers arrive for the current season -- not the day after camp ends.

In addition, the director should plan a coordinated series of contacts through the winter to stay with the current campers. Without being overwhelming these contacts must be planned to keep the memory of the camping experience alive over the winter.

New Campers

Regardless of the gain the director achieves in returning campers, the director must simultaneously increase the quantity of inquiries and/or the yield from the new campers inquiries. In order to assess the success of any changes to the marketing effort for new campers, the director first needs to review the past years' statistics for inquiries and yield.

Be careful. These statistics can be deceptive. For instance, a client once bought a card in a college planning guide which promised to generate many inquiries. In fact, the card did generate hundreds of inquiries, to which we sent expensive, four-color viewbooks and other materials. Fortunately, all inquiries were tracked through to applicants, accepted students, and enrolled students. We discovered that the planning guide generated many inquiries, but didn't yield a single student. The cost of the effort was not only the cost of the card in the guide, it was the cost of fulfillment to all those inquiries. Without proper tracking, research, the analysis, the card would have seemed a valuable purchase.

In developing a marketing plan for new campers it is important to establish mechanisms for tracking your inquiries and for assessing the relative probability of converting an inquiry to an enrolled camper. Tracking is done through the use of codes for each different marketing effort. Every time a new inquiry contacts the camp office, the person answering the phone call finds out how the inquirer learned of the camp. Return cards and advertisements have different codes. A simple data-base program on a personal computer will allow for sophisticated tracking of the inquiries.

Assessment of inquiries is accomplished by identifying the sources of the inquiries, developing a yield of each source, and establishing a cost per enrolled camper for that source.

In addition to learning which sources are most cost effective and yield the best results, research also will give you the information to begin ranking your inquiries for probability of conversion to enrolled campers. Those inquiries. They should receive your strongest efforts as you guide them through the inquiry process.

Why not apply the same effort to all inquiries? The enrollment business is a person-to-person business. To the most effective, you want to spend the limited available time working the inquiries with the most amount of chance for conversion. That's why keeping track of the source of inquiries and the yield from each source becomes important to the success of your enrollment effort.

Of course, in this age of the computer you can do a remarkable amount of "personalizing" with mail-merge programs. In the final analysis, it is the personal touch that makes the difference.

Putting it All Together

Thus, far, the director has:

* reviewed all the statistics available on the past years' marketing efforts;

* reviewed every step traditionally taken in working with current and new campers and decided in each case if that step really contributs to enrilling campers;

* made decisions -- based on the analysis, not on gut feelings -- on which specific marketing efforts to undertake to immediately boost enrollment for the coming year;

* established tracking systems to provide data for analysis of all efforts;

* instituted a ranking system to concentrate efforts on the most likely inquiries;

* developed a coordinated cohesive plan for responding to and staying in touch with the inquiries throughout the decision making process;

* and finally , established criteria for deciding when to downgrade (or upgrade) the ranking of prospects.

Now the director has a marketing plan for beginning to turn around. This plan also forms the basis for the long-term marketing plan. What remains is to keep good records to analyze which parts of the plan worked and which didn't. Those procedures that are successful should be continued; those that aren't shoudl be revised.

The marketing planning process can work. It starts with good research and builds from there. Individual statistics will vary, which is why analysis is so critical. But if a plan is built and carried out, good results will follow.

COPYRIGHT 1993 American Camping Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group