Membership Checking System

If you don't have a system for checking members into your park, then you need one.  You could take a look out at the park any day of the week and see how many people are there, but could you tell were they are coming from, whether there are up to date addresses and emergency forms on file, when their birthday is?  There are many things that your membership program can do for you including most recent visits, how often patrons visit, and linked to point of sale (pos) programs can tell your their buying patterns.  Looking into this info every quarter could really help you understand where you need to improve your marketing, outreach, or services.  Using this data is what Google and Walmart do very well.  On a smaller scale you can personalize sales to match patterns you find in the data, you can add birthday notes, send renewal membership notices, or other customizable promotions.  In many of these membership tracking programs you can have debit accounts for the kids so parents can load money onto their account for food.  You can customize them to make reporting easier so your understanding of what your patrons do helps you serve them better and in turn, make better buying decisions and sales decisions.  If every person who came to your park had info entered into your program, you would have a large pool of information and potential to work off of for your business.  Setting up the system is a lot of work, but much of it can be done by the people working the front desk or other areas of the park that don't have busy daily routines or those that have down time.  By steadily increasing what you know about your patrons, you can better serve their needs and increase what you understand about their buying, and visiting the park habits.  This way when a non-member comes in and you get their name into the computer, you could then have a conversation about how many times they have come and how buying a membership is a good thing for them.  While all this might sound daunting, taking small steps will get you a long way quickly.