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How Member Jungle Can Help Your Sports Club

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AFL, Soccer, Netball, League, and Union are all equally great sports that every single one of us loves equally. Okay, okay, I can't keep a straight face any longer. Obviously, we all bitterly and passionately disagree about which sport is best; if it were legal to kill a man because he thought a different variant of ball sport was best, people would, and I wouldn't blame them. But that's not what we're here to discuss today, and I will not be drawn into a childish debate about which sport is best. 

*cough* Union’s best *cough* 

 

Soccer

 

No, today, we are going to talk about the one thing they all have in common; not strong opinions on what size and shape a ball should be, not broken bones, not even universal annoyance at what the referee/umpire just said. 

No, today we are talking about us, the players, the fans, the supporters, the parents. The people gathered around the field/court watching the game on a misty and aggressively cold Saturday morning. The people who spend their Sunday cooking snags outside a Bunnings so the team can get new jerseys. The people who give up their time, effort and money to ensure the club and the teams succeed. 

Today, we'll talk about how the Member Jungle system can assist your club and the amazing people who bring it to life. We’re going to cover how Member Jungle can make running your club easier, make managing your membership better, how it can allow you to improve communications, improve how you can wine and dine your club sponsors to secure more funding and, most importantly, how it can give you a whole bunch of new ways to show your people that you care and appreciate all the effort they put in.

How Member Jungle Works With Your Existing System

I get that many clubs involved in competitions need to use particular league management systems, such as MyLeague, MyClub, Sportsfix, etc. These systems are crucial for essential operations; we're not looking to replace them. Instead, we're talking about how Member Jungle can complement these platforms, enhancing your club's capabilities and providing new ways to connect with and oversee your community.

Normally, your league-required systems can only help you manage your players. This leaves the rest of your club and membership to fend for itself, which is not ideal for running any club.  Member Jungle will make organising the rest of your club so much easier, allow you to expand your membership beyond just players, and even allow you to import your players from your other system so that they can get the benefits of Member Jungle, like more effective communication and digital membership cards.

Member Jungle can provide your club with: 

  • New Website
  • Digital Member Cards for Everyone
  • Push Notifications To Member’s Phones
  • Easy Email Communications
  • Individual Chat Rooms per Team
  • Event Sales and Ticketing
  • Online Store Merchandise Sales
  • Automatic Membership Renewal 

Member Jungle can do this in a few different ways. Firstly, Member Jungle allows you to set up membership levels for other groups other than just your players. You can still organise your players' memberships through your current league-mandated system, but you can also organise memberships for your fans, parents, social club members, or even your club's sponsors. All these groups will be able to sign up for the right membership type online, make digital payments, and receive online approval from you. They will also have the option for automatic membership renewal when the time comes, which will save you a lot of time in the process.  

Second, we can provide you with a brand new website for your club along with an all-in-one membership management system that will allow you to automate your membership renewal process, give you an online store, email and SMS campaigns, a mobile app, digital membership cards, and so much more. All of this will work alongside your current required league system. 

However, if you don't want to replace your current website, the Member Jungle system can be set up to work as a member portal. This will work with your existing website while still providing you with all the benefits that come with Member Jungle. By doing it this way, you can keep your current website, maintain your required league system, and provide a way for members to log in, access exclusive content, download the mobile app to stay up to date on the go, and get digital membership cards for all members. It's basically the best of both worlds. 

 

How Member Jungle Can Help Your Sports Club

 

There are already a few different clubs that use the Member Jungle system in exactly this way. 

Merewether Carlton Rugby Union Club uses the Member Jungle system as a member portal, allowing members to sign up to become club members, download the Member Jungle app, and get their own unique digital membership card. This card can be used to prove membership, and it gets members free entry to all home games and a 10% discount at the club canteen.   

The Coburg Lions AFL Club uses the Member Jungle system in the same way. It allows its members to sign up, log in, download the app, and get discounts. The club also uses the Member Jungle system to help run its online club store.

The Picton Magpies Old Boys’ Club does not have to worry about integrating with a league-required system. As a result, they run their whole club and website with Member Jungle.

No matter what your sports club looks like or how it’s set up, the Member Jungle system can work with it and help it to grow and succeed.

Think of your league-required system as the Bunnings sausages; it’s the main event, it’s the thing you’re there for, but Member Jungle is everything else. Member Jungle is the bread, the sauce, the butter on the bread, the onions. Now, you may not want every one of those things with your sausage, but you will need some of them. Otherwise, you’re just holding a hot sausage in your bare hand like a lunatic. 

 

sausage

 

Look, my point is if you choose to have extras with your sausage, it will make the situation much easier to handle and more enjoyable for everyone around you. Member Jungle will make running your club much easier and much more enjoyable for all of your members and supporters. 

Now that we’ve briefly covered how Member Jungle can work with a sports club, let’s break it down and look at some specific ways it can benefit your club.

How Member Jungle Can Support Different Kinds of Sports Club Memberships

Member Jungle is a highly flexible system that can work with a wide range of sports clubs, regardless of the aspect of their membership that needs managing. It is excellent at managing the membership of your supporters. Whether you call it social membership, fan club membership, or simply a supporter membership, Member Jungle is well-suited to help you easily organise your supporters' memberships. It also makes it easier to provide your supporters with the rewards and benefits they deserve while helping you generate more revenue in the process. This means your most loyal fans will be incentivised to keep supporting your club, fostering a sense of community and loyalty that can increase attendance, merchandise sales, and overall financial stability.

Using Member Jungle, you can set up your club with a membership for your supporters; this will allow you to sell season memberships to your members, who can sign up and pay for their membership online via your Member Jungle system. Once they've paid, they will be able to start enjoying all the extra member benefits you give them. 

Obviously, deciding which member benefits are included in your club's membership is up to you. Offering discounts in the canteen or on merchandise, or providing free entry to games could be a good starting point. However, the specific benefits will depend on the membership fees you charge. You want to ensure that your loyal supporters get their money's worth but that you don't bankrupt yourself in the process. This should make you money, not lose you money. 

How You Can Use Member Jungle To Help Reward Your Loyal Supporters

As I’ve already said, how you choose to give benefits to your members is up to you, but let’s talk about how Member Jungle can make several of those ways more convenient. 

Free Or Discounted Entry To Games

If you want to give your supporters who sign up to be official members of your club free or discounted entry to your games, you can absolutely do that. There are even a few different ways you can do this. 

Firstly, suppose anyone who pays and signs up to become a member of your club gets a discount on game entries. In that case, you can organise this via the digital membership cards provided by Member Jungle. Each Member can get their own digital membership card with a unique barcode that they can display via the mobile app or from their Apple or Google Wallets. When they go to pay for entry to your games, they will be able to show their membership card so that the person doing ticketing can see that they are a member and give them the correct discount. 

It's that simple. They show their unique card on their phone, and the person knows to give them free or discounted entry.

The second way to ensure your members get discounted or free entry is even easier. However, it does require running your ticket sales through the Member Jungle event system. This means it's probably less suited to game day and more suited to other events, like supporters' days, presentation days, etc. If you run an event this way, you have the flexibility to set the ticket prices and determine the discounts for various membership groups. This will allow you to sell tickets to non-members at the full price online and offer members the appropriate discount when they purchase tickets online. Again, this may or may not work for game days, depending on how you organise things. Still, it gives you another really simple, easy way to sell event tickets and give your loyal supporters discounts.  

If you do run your events and sell tickets through Member Jungle, you will also have the option of making your events members-only, meaning only members can purchase tickets. This is a great way to organise exclusive events for your most loyal supporters and give those considering becoming members yet another reason to do so. 

Discounts At Your Canteen

Just as with discounted game entry, you can easily utilise Member Jungle's digital membership cards to give your members discounts at your club canteen. All your members have to do is show their digital membership card on their phone at the canteen to prove that they are eligible for a discount. If your club uses a POS system, Member Jungle can even have limited integration with it. This allows you to scan members' digital membership cards with your POS system to make tracking rewards and discounts easier.

For more info on how our membership cards can work with a POS system, check out Digital Membership Cards, POS Systems and Your Licensed Club

Discounted Club Merchandise

If you use the Member Jungle online store, you can sell your club’s merchandise online or in person while accepting digital forms of payment. There’s no need for a POS system. The system can be used to sell products, track stock levels, offer members discounts on products, and much more. 

If you provide your members with discounts on club merchandise, the discounts will be automatically applied to their carts when they check out from your online store. This is yet another way you can use the system to offer extra benefits and value to your members and help earn your club a little extra money in the process. 

For more on how this all works, see Why Your Club Needs An Online Store.

How You Can Use Member Jungle To Promote Sponsors

Member Jungle can make securing your club sponsors and keeping them easier and more profitable than ever. You can easily set up a membership level or levels in your Member Jungle system specifically for club sponsors. The way this works is you can set up a member level and call it Bronze Sponsor level (or whatever you like) you can then set the price of joining that level and what sponsorship perks someone will get if they sign up for it. 

For example, a sponsor who signs up for the Bronze level might get a banner ad on the website and a shout-out in the newsletter. While someone who joins the silver level might bet the banner ad and shout out, but also get their name on the back of the team's jerseys. Obviously, you can choose what rewards each level gets, and even if you want multiple sponsorship levels or just one, it’s totally up to you. 

You can see this in action on the Sponsor Page of The Picton Magpies Old Boys’ Club, seen below. 

 

Sponsor Page

 

As you can see, they offer three different sponsorship levels, each with its own rewards in return for sponsorship fees. They also have multiple sponsorship products, allowing someone to sign up for Bronze, Silver, or Gold for either a three-year term or per month. 

All this is automatic, too. They have set this up, and now sponsors can come to them, sign up, and pay completely on their own. That said, they can set these new sponsors to be auto-approved after they pay or to need to be admin-approved before they can process the payment, which is handy just in case you want to vet your sponsors first. 

You know, like it might be easier to take the refs seriously if they weren’t literally sponsored by Specsavers. 

 

refs sponsored by Specsavers. 

 

Like it’s funny for us, but if I were the referee committee, I’d have turned that one down. 

How Else Can Member Jungle Help Your Sports Club?

Those are all the important ways that the Member Jungle system can work alongside your sports club to make it easier to run and quite possibly more profitable. 

If you are looking for more information on how the main part of Member Jungle works, such as automated membership renewals, custom website, mobile app, online membership sign-up, and all that good stuff, please have a look at the following video: What is Member Jungle?

If that’s not enough information for you, have a look at What Is Membership Management Software For Nonprofits? - All Your Questions Answered.

 

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