Points And Rewards, Not Discounts, Central to Club Yogi Rewards

Whether Club Yogi Rewards, a two-year-old loyalty program which rewards campsite visitors, is smarter than the average bear remains unproven. But it's definitely smarter than the average discount program, especially Club Yogi, the one it replaced in April 2009.

Club Yogi Rewards is the loyalty scheme for the 80 franchised campgrounds under the Jellystone Park Camp-Resorts umbrella. The program rewards families for site stays, amenity activities purchased and items bought with points that can be exchanged for Yogi Bear merchandise and free stays.

It also offers opportunities to participate in auctions in which program points serve as currency. And Yogi Bear himself sends a message and free gift offer to families willing to share their children's birth dates with what, come Sept. 1, will be rechristened Boo Boo's Birthday Club, in honor of Yogi's younger sidekick. In keeping with the theme, participating young 'uns will be invited to pull a gift out of specially designed picnic baskets.

The current free program is a far cry from the one it replaced, in which for $20 participants received a 10% discount on site rental and little else.

"We were missing a whole demographic—the cabin families," says Michele Wisher, director of Marketing at Leisure Systems Inc., which operates Club Yogi Rewards. The old program rewarded only families looking to camp in tents or recreational vehicles. The new one also embraces site visitors who vacation in more comfortable settings, such as fully equipped cabins, with air conditioning and kitchens and decks, for instance.

By switching from straight discounts to points, the program has boosted the engagement the average participant has with it.

"There are a lot of [hospitality] discount programs, from The Good Sam Club to AAA," Wisher says. "When looking at our [original] program, there wasn't enough differentiation between ours and whatever else was out there. We also felt that the people in that program were more likely people who were just shopping for a discount versus a true loyal customer."

The earlier Club Yogi program boasted between 13,000 and 15,000 members, according to Wisher. While all were automatically enrolled when Club Yogi Rewards was launched, around 2,600 took advantage of an early registration opportunity.

Of those 2,600, 97% are still engaged, says Lauri Hart, Club Yogi Rewards loyalty program manager. They've logged in to the program's Web site, are earning points and have helped increase total active membership to more than 37,000.

The new program is not without its hurdles. Only 45 of the participating parks are on the same reservation system, meaning that incorporating data from the other 35—some of which record point transactions manually—can be tricky. And the fact that each campground is independently operated means that some proposed soft benefits, such as faster check-ins for members, had to be rejected as they couldn't be universally offered.

But all are offering points, even if, in two or three instances, members have to send receipts to club headquarters for credit. And the rewards are becoming ever more sophisticated. In mid-July, the auction will offer a lot created in conjunction with an outside partner for the first time. The lot includes merchandise from Bass Pro Shops, and Club Yogi Rewards is matching it with camping packages. (In Club Yogi Rewards auctions, high-point bidders take all, and losing bidders have their points returned to their accounts.

The twists on the auction are only the latest program modifications. In April of this year, the program added a few new communications. In addition to its regular quarterly activity statement and newsletter, Leisure Systems began sending out "close to" and "qualified" e-mails. The former alert participants that they are within 250 points of a reward tier, while the latter let them know they can log on to the program's Web site and print out a reward certificate.

"The open rates are very similar on both, but the response [on the "qualified" notifications] is higher due to the fact that they are able to redeem points," says Hart. "The goal of the [close to] campaign is not for them to go on the Web site, but to stay at a park. We'll be looking at that over time."

Hart, who was hired by Leisure Systems in May, will be increasing the amount of analysis run off the program's data. She anticipates being able to generate custom report packages which detail transaction activity for all of the participating campground operators, as well as starting to perform more detailed analysis on various activities' impacts on point collection and redemption.