The Chicago Yacht Club (CYC) set sail as an organization in 1875 when its two current facilities—one located right in the center, the other a bit farther north near Lincoln Park—joined. The legacy of this historical union currently plays out through CYC’s diverse values and dual-identities, which are nicely integrated into a single offering: A yacht club first and foremost, yes, but also the ideal setting where the other chapters of a member’s life might just as likely unfold off the lake as on it.
Communicating this identity—its possibilities and accessibility—to prospective members is a large part of what the CYC does. Certain misconceptions can attach to yacht clubs—as, say, the exclusive preserve of those with blue blazers and outsized vessels. But these stereotypes don t quite match the reality of CYC’s inclusive vision.
Therefore, an important objective in the club’s communications program is to address the “misinformation” that prospective members might have about the club. “I always thought you needed to own a boat in order to sail and be a part of the yacht club,” says one member, who now races competitively with her husband. Indeed, about a third of CYC’s members don’t own boats and instead join other crews or, avoiding the pains of storage and maintenance costs, just take one of the club’s many keelboats out for the reasonable fee of $40 per hour. The CYC makes sure helpful and accurate information like this get wide circulation among members and potential members alike.
ONLINE ENGAGEMENT
The club has an admirable spirit of openness and experimentation when it comes to pioneering (and then refining) online channels of communications. Like other clubs, the CYC uses its website, e-mail and Facebook presence to help shape a lively, contemporary and positive public image.
But CYC does more. It utilizes metrics to keep track of its reach and to collect indicators of its effectiveness. Measuring communication usage and results is crucial to pushing. outcomes even higher. CYC uses information in a virtual cycle of measure interpret adjust. This discipline of continuous improvement is applied to electronic communications. For example, the club watches closely the rate at which e-mails are opened (more than 30%) and the level of website traffic and then focuses efforts at improvement and enhancement where they are most needed or most likely to bring the greatest return. Analytics of this sort stood behind the recent re-launch of the club website.
In addition to building awareness and sharpening vague perceptions, the CYC makes education and certification another focal point in its communications program. And the club takes care to deliver its content through media that are easily accessible and invitingly visual so that even for those without much background or experience in sailing can easily seize opportunities to get up to speed. The club’s YouTube channel includes an introduction to the CYC and features boating events, sailing programs and videos on topics such as safety. Pinterest is another social media tool that the club is starting to use to share ideas and boating insights. They also harness the website as an effective and rapid crew finder.
MEMBER OUTREACH
The CYC also taps many of the more personal and traditional forms of communication in deepening its members’ understanding and expertise in the sport. The club embraces its role as a promoter of sailing, working continuously to encourage wider enjoyment of the sport at all levels. At the CYC’s year-round sailing school, youths of various ages and skill levels learn the technical aspects of sailing while making friends and forming memories. While many adults discover their love of sailing later, some of the club’s strongest ties are nurtured among its youth, and that’s what might make the difference as they return to the sport and club life somewhere down the road and add their own effective word-of-mouth to the club’s formal communications efforts.
The CYC also prides itself on the active role its members play in helping run the club and boost their sport. Approximately twenty-five volunteer committees bring members into the decision-making fold in the areas where they have special interests or talents. Working in conjunction with one another, the club’s committees for communications, membership attraction and admission are not only able to attack specific objectives, but also combine them in an integrated fashion to achieve larger aims. One committee works to enhance the club’s image, another to tailoring incentives for existing members to sponsor new ones and then yet another to assemble an attractive membership package. It was precisely this sort of collaborative recipe—or synergy—that enabled CYC to significantly increase its associate members, effectively doubling that category.
SHARING COMMON GOALS
Broad participation and specialization of function come together into a comprehensive and coordinated program that not only builds the membership ranks, but also gives club members a better sense of what the club offers and represents. Together they spearhead a broad range of initiatives, utilize a variety of communications technologies and ultimately move the club forward. Thus there is a unity of purpose in this flurry of committee activities. These individual contributions form a larger strategic vision for the sport, which in turn knits the members together in common cause.
And what is their aim? Perhaps a simple impulse to do something well, and, in the process, to embrace a singular pleasure that somehow seems deeper because it is shared. What could be better than to sail with companions, supported by a club that itself has the institutional heft and cherished traditions that reach across the generations?
With the sailing season drawing to end, CYC prepares to bring in their boats and focus their energies on preparing for the next season. CYC uses many facets to promote membership: prospective member receptions, sponsoring their own booth at boat shows and conventions, working on their quarterly publication and, of course, encouraging their members to spread the word.
And so CYC continues to foster that unique spirit, one that is never more on display than with one of the club’s signature boating events. The club’s most famous race, the annual Race to Mackinac, proudly goes forth with over 350 boats—back dropped by the glittering towers of the Chicago skyline—setting off for Mackinac Island, Michigan, more than 300 miles away. Veteran sailors and novices alike, on this special day and many others throughout the year, gather to celebrate the sport of sailing, enjoy club life, and perhaps reflect on their own good fortune to have arrived at such a place.
Club Trends Fall 2014