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The #1 way to get more kids to summer camp
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Back in my days overseeing multiple camps, one of them had a 25% higher retention rate than all the others. The Farm Camp Program. Jennie was in charge and she got nearly every kid to come back to camp. She wasn’t a trained salesperson. In fact, she was a trained librarian which is about as opposite of sales as you can get. So what did she do to drive retention north of 85% with 200 kids over the summer? She called 10 families every morning. That’s it. That’s the retention playbook. Most calls went to voicemail. Maybe one real conversation out of 10. But the voicemails alone showed care. I’ve seen this pattern everywhere. Gary at Camp Nock-A-Mixon does something similar. 90% retention. When I asked him what’s different, he said, “We keep them in the loop like they are family.” Nothing fancy. Just consistent contact. The DataTravis Allison, Eric Wittenberg, and I recently surveyed 90 camps, both overnight and day. The finding: when camps got families on the phone, they closed the deal by answering their questions. Think about your camper recruitment efforts (aka enrollment funnel). Becoming aware of the camp is at the top, then considering options, then nudging to help finalize the registration. Emails handle becoming aware of the camp. Phone calls handle everything else. And many camps struggle with the “everything else”. In plain math language: 50% retention is the floor. Some camps are below this, but it’s the first goal. 60-65% is good. North of 80% is great. Every camp, of any size, can get to north of 80%. If you’re not there, chances are you’re not making enough phone calls. You’re not building strong enough relationships with families. That’s really it. Why Camps Don’t Do It And Why Phone Calls WorkThe same objections appear all the time. “It’s not worth it.” “I feel inauthentic doing sales calls.” “Parents will find the information online.” “I’m afraid of the answer I’m going to get.” These are all real feelings. They’re just not good reasons to avoid the phone. Email goes to a pile of several hundred messages a day. A phone call rings through and a voicemail is likely to get noticed. Parents want dialogue. You can’t assume they’ll find everything online and digest it on their own. They want to interact with the information, ask questions, hear a real person. Especially when it’s about their child. The world is filling up with AI and automations. Phone calls are still unmistakably human, and a signal of care that nothing else replicates. The PrescriptionPut all your families on a spreadsheet. Call 10 every morning. Start with the camp families you talk to the most to get comfortable. Then go to unenrolled leads. Then enrolled families. Then alumni. Ask if they know anyone who might be interested. You don’t need a script or training. Remember, Jennie was a librarian. You just need to pick up the phone. Phone calls aren’t complicated, and many camps won’t do it. Which is exactly why the ones who do pull ahead. Retention a problem? Pick up the phone. Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
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Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
Camp is humming along. Summer is cooking. And in the run of play, a staff member comes to you and asks for feedback on their performance. They want to know what they could be doing better. Great! This is the moment camp directors always say they want. And they believe it when they say it. Wrote a while back about the complaint that comes up most from camp staff. They never get any feedback. So when one of them walks up and asks for it directly, you, of course, oblige. Sit them down. Name what...
Today’s young camp staff are hyperaware of the moment a phone comes out. Think about a moment at your own camp. Something fun is happening at the end of a long day. But now marketing pulls out a phone to grab a quick photo. And then the mood shifts just a little. These staff are 17 to 23. They have spent basically their entire lives watching people get turned into marketing posts, or worse, into memes in someone else’s group chat. They notice the second a phone comes out. They notice when...
Every time I walk into a camp staff training, I know what the staff is looking at first. My socks. I wear no-shows socks. You know the kind that disappear inside the shoe and the ones that frame me as the elder millennial I am. The staff is wearing crew socks. Stoop socks or quarter length, the full-leg ones. So they notice the second I walk in. I could go buy new socks, but honestly, I don’t want to and they wouldn’t look right on me. So I just acknowledge it out loud at the start of the...