Australia’s largest golf retailer use SMS to drum up foot traffic and increase store sales.
Hands up, golf enthusiasts! If that’s you, it’s likely you’ve been to (or at least heard of) Drummond Golf.
What started as a small store in Bendigo in 1974 is today Australia’s largest off-course golf retailer with 50 stores nationwide. All the company’s stores are owner-operated, and they’re supported by a small (but mighty!) head-office team based in Melbourne.
With SMS for HubSpot, they’re striking while the iron is hot – sending bulk SMS campaigns to promote key sales and driving store visitors (and sales!) up.
Drummond Golf turn the big 5-0 this year – it’s a major milestone for any retailer. As Senior Marketing Executive & Digital Manager Jordan Blick points out, it’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate five decades on the green with their franchisees – and reward their loyal customers.
Just as a golf course needs players, Drummond Golf’s promotional activities must drive customers into their stores.
“Under a franchise model, essentially we work for the store owners, so it’s our job to make sure they get sales,” Jordan explains.
SMS is critical to doing just that. Drummond Golf have worked with various providers over the years, but encountered deliverability issues.
During short sale periods, it’s critical that customers receive that text notification almost instantly, says Jordan.
“With our original SMS provider, delivery was anywhere from 4-48 hours. Our second provider was much better, but not as fast as we’d hoped.”
Luckily, third time’s a charm.
“We’re a long-term-relationship kind of company,” Jordan laughs. “When we partner with someone, we spend a lot of time making sure they’re the right fit for our company, and that was Sinch MessageMedia.”
Drummond Golf went to market for a new CRM system and landed on HubSpot, which also let them choose an SMS integration. Working with their HubSpot partner, Modern Visual, they considered a handful of recommendations, guess who came out on top? (Hint: us!)
Jordan says there are three primary reasons Sinch MessageMedia are the right SMS partners: we guarantee fast delivery, integrate with HubSpot, and have five-star customer service.
“The Sinch MessageMedia team is second to none. The customer service that we’ve received from the team and our account manager has been incredibly great to deal with.”
Jordan vividly remembers the first time he used Sinch MessageMedia.
He sent a bulk SMS campaign to their national database, and within 15 minutes, he could see a spike in web visitors.
These days, Drummond Golf send marketing campaigns via SMS for all their key sales and promotional periods to drive foot traffic into stores.
Sometimes, the campaign is national, segmented by state and time zone to stagger online traffic and minimise send time. These campaigns usually feature an SMS landing page with all the available deals. Other times, they use SMS to support store-specific sales or communications about store hours, personalised by location and customer purchase history.
As for most retailers, Black Friday and the holiday season are busy times for Drummond Golf. And with SMS, they went well under par.
“Sinch MessageMedia promised fast delivery and that’s what we got.”
Jordan Blick, Senior Marketing Executive & Digital Manager
With stores all over Australia, Drummond Golf need to send sales SMS fast and at the right time (literally).
When they first started using SMS, they hit send to their entire database all at once. A customer in Perth would get their SMS at 9 am compared to someone in Melbourne who would get theirs at 12 pm.
With SMS for HubSpot, Drummond Golf have created automated workflows that segregate and send their SMS campaigns based on time zones. This helps spread out website traffic, and most importantly, it ensures customers get their sales notifications when it makes most sense for them.
With Sinch MessageMedia’s HubSpot integration, Drummond Golf have found a winning formula for sending marketing SMS at the right time and to the right customers – every single time.
With a delivery rate of 100%, it’s encouraging more customers in-store during key sales periods. Jordan records foot traffic data in-store to evaluate the effectiveness of his campaigns. When he looks at those campaigns that include SMS, compared to those that don’t, he always sees a large spike.
“It’s made a substantial difference to the number of people visiting our stores – to the point where we’ll have stores calling and checking if an SMS has been sent.”
Sinch MessageMedia also save Jordan a day’s work – and his sanity.
“I used to dedicate a whole day to making sure our SMS campaigns were sending,” he explains. “With Sinch MessageMedia, I get that time back.”
Jordan Blick, Senior Marketing Executive & Digital Manager
Five decades later, Drummond Golf are just as passionate about golf – and they have some big plans for the future.
Jordan says they’ll explore other ways they can use SMS beyond marketing, particularly with their online store.
But for now, he highly recommends Sinch MessageMedia to any other franchise businesses looking for ways to land directly in their customers’ pockets.
Drummond Golf is Australia’s largest off-course golf retailer with the biggest range of the world's leading golf brands.
Customer
Jordan Blick – Senior Marketing Executive & Digital Manager
