To get lapsed members back to a club, sort former members by why they left, then call only the segments whose reason has changed. On our illustrative model of 120 former members at a UK members’ golf club, that means phoning 90 of them. On the model’s mid band those calls bring back about 6 members, and 3.5 to 9.4 across the three assumption bands.
- Where the list comes from: the Hillier Hopkins Golf Clubs Report 2024/25 puts average leavers at the UK members’ golf clubs it surveyed at 56 in 2023 and 63 in 2024. That is 119 former members in two years at an average surveyed club.
- The asset: the Rejoin Segment Table below. It covers six reasons for leaving, an assumed rejoin rate for each in three bands, and a call-or-don’t rule for each segment.
- No public benchmark: no club body publishes a rejoin rate. The CMAA 2022 Finance and Operations Report publishes attrition only: a median of 4.3% for golf and country clubs, in a survey of 440 clubs of all types.
- Our own record, not a benchmark: LeadsNow’s Colliers-era database reactivation averaged 4.4% and peaked at 8.9%. No window or sample is disclosed for those figures, and they measure booked calls from dormant CRM leads, not club rejoins.
- Consent changes when membership ends: check whether you may still email or text a former member before the campaign starts.
Why does reason for leaving decide the rejoin campaign?
A lapsed member rejoins when the thing that made them leave has changed. A rejoin campaign therefore starts with the resignation record, not the mailing list. For each former member you need four fields: the date they left, how long they had been a member, the reason they gave, and their category (full, five-day, social, junior). A club that does not record the reason has to reconstruct it. Read the resignation letters, ask the pro shop and the bar staff, and mark the rest “unknown”.
This is the step most clubs skip. A single “we miss you” email to every former member treats a member who left over price the same as one who moved 400 kilometres away. It also treats them the same as one who left after a dispute with the committee. For the wider membership picture, including why lapsed members are the fastest lever to start with, see our guide on how to increase membership in a club. This page is the campaign itself.
How it works
The lapsed-member rejoin campaign
Clean resignation records
Record date left, tenure, reason and category for every former member.
Segment by reason
Split into cost, time, life event, relocated, dispute and unknown; hold disputes for the committee.
Call with the change
Phone the segments whose reason can change and name the specific change that answers it.
Invite back on site
Offer a returning-member round or evening before asking anyone to sign, timed before renewal.
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The Rejoin Segment Table: which former members to call
Worked example: 120 former members from the last two years, close to the Hillier Hopkins average of 119 leavers. The segment shares and the rejoin rates are assumptions, because no public data exists for either. Replace them with your own resignation records. Annual subscription is assumed at £1,600. Hillier Hopkins reports that a majority of members’ clubs now have subscriptions above the CASC £1,612 threshold.
| Reason for leaving (assumed share) | Records | Rejoin rate low / mid / high (assumption) | Expected rejoins low / mid / high | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost (30%) | 36 | 4% / 7% / 10% | 1.4 / 2.5 / 3.6 | Call. Offer a cheaper category or monthly payments |
| Time: playing too little (25%) | 30 | 3% / 6% / 9% | 0.9 / 1.8 / 2.7 | Call. Offer a lower-commitment category, such as five-day, off-peak or nine-hole |
| Life event now over: injury, new baby, work posting (15%) | 18 | 6% / 10% / 15% | 1.1 / 1.8 / 2.7 | Call first. A friend at the club or the captain makes the call |
| Relocated (15%) | 18 | 0% / 1% / 2% | 0 / 0.2 / 0.4 | Do not call. One email about a country or distance category, if you have one |
| Dissatisfaction or dispute (10%) | 12 | 1% / 3% / 5% | 0.1 / 0.4 / 0.6 | Hold. Contact only once the cause is fixed and the committee has cleared each name |
| Unknown (5%) | 6 | 2% / 4% / 6% | 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.4 | Call. Ask why they left before offering anything |
| Total | 120 | 3.1% / 5.8% / 8.6% | 3.7 / 6.9 / 10.3 | Call 90 (cost, time, life event, unknown) |
On this model, calling the 90 former members in four segments produces 6.4 of the 6.9 mid-band rejoins. The other 30 records produce about half a member between them. At £1,600 a year, the mid band is worth about £11,000 in first-year subscriptions. Spending your calls on the 75% of the list whose reason can change captures more than 90% of the expected rejoins.
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How long after someone leaves should a club ask them back?
No published data answers this, so here are working rules to test against your own records. Under six months, contact only members who left for a reason that has already changed: a new category, a fixed problem, or the end of an injury. For anyone else it is too soon, and the call reads as pressure. Six months to three years is the main window. The member still knows people at the club, and their reason may have expired. Beyond about five years, treat the person as a new prospect who happens to know the course.
Time the campaign to land before your subscription renewal date or the start of the playing season. A real date gives the offer a real deadline. Never invent one. A “rejoin by” date that is not tied to anything the club actually does is the kind of pressure a lapsed member recognises at once.
What should a rejoin offer include?
Three things, in order of how much they matter:
- The specific change. “We now have a five-day category at £X” to the time segment. “Monthly direct debit” to the cost segment. “The new greens are open” to someone who left over the course. The change is the offer. Everything else is packaging.
- A returning-member re-entry term. Decide in advance whether returners pay the joining fee, part of it, or none. Waiving it in full has a cost: it teaches members that resigning and rejoining later is free. Limiting the waiver to members who left in good standing within a set period, such as three years, keeps that in check.
- A low-risk first step. A returning-member round or social evening, with a named person to meet them. Do not ask anyone to sign before they have been back on site.
How initiation and joining fees are structured more generally is covered in our page on country club initiation fees.
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Can a club still email or text a lapsed member?
Sometimes, and the answer can change once the membership ends. In the UK, the ICO describes a limited “soft opt-in” for your own previous customers. It applies only if they were given a clear chance to opt out when their details were collected and in every message since. In Australia, ACMA’s guidance on inferred consent rests on a person having “a provable, ongoing relationship” with the business, such as being a member. A former member’s relationship is, by definition, no longer ongoing. In the US, the FTC and FCC set the rules for commercial email and calls. Check your own regulator before the first message. This is general information, not legal advice.
The practical consequence: in many campaigns the phone call and the posted letter carry the first contact, and email follows once the former member has said yes.
What about past guests and event attendees who never joined?
They are a second list, and they run on a different rule. A guest-day visitor, a society-day golfer or a function guest who never joined has no reason for leaving to segment by. They also have no prior membership relationship to rely on for consent. Segment them by what they came for (golf, dining, events, a corporate day) and by how long ago. Invite them back to the same kind of thing before you mention membership. Keep this list out of the rejoin campaign’s numbers. Mixing the two lowers the apparent rejoin rate and hides which list is actually working.
Clubs that sell corporate days and functions as well as memberships face a three-way sales split. That split is covered in our page on lead generation for golf clubs.
What does running a rejoin campaign cost a club?
Mostly hours, and they fall at awkward times. Illustrative workload for the 90 called records, assuming three call attempts at five minutes each including logging: 90 × 3 × 5 minutes = 22.5 hours. Add about 6 hours to clean the resignation records and one returning-member event. Former members answer in the evening and at weekends, which is when a general manager is also running competitions and functions. That is the part that breaks first.
Our own record on dormant-list work is the Colliers-era database reactivation: a 4.4% average and an 8.9% peak, measured as booked qualified discovery calls from dormant CRM enquiries. It was not a club campaign, and no window or sample has been disclosed for it. Read it as our history, not as a rejoin benchmark. The method is written up in our 4.4% dormant-lead reactivation case. How LeadsNow runs this kind of campaign for clubs is described on our business clubs and masterminds lead generation page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good rejoin rate for lapsed club members?
No club body publishes one. The CMAA 2022 report publishes attrition (a 4.3% median for golf and country clubs), not rejoins. Our illustrative model gives 3.1% to 8.6% of a two-year lapsed list. Every rate in it is an assumption to replace with your own.
How many lapsed members does a typical golf club have?
The Hillier Hopkins 2024/25 survey reports an average of 63 leavers in 2024 and 56 in 2023 at UK members’ golf clubs. That is about 119 former members over two years at an average club.
Should a club waive the joining fee for returning members?
Waive it for members who left in good standing within a set period, and charge it after that. A full, unconditional waiver teaches current members that resigning and rejoining costs nothing.
Should a club contact members who left after a complaint?
Only after the cause has been fixed and the committee has cleared each name. Contacting them earlier risks reopening the dispute, for an assumed rejoin rate of 1% to 5%.
Can I email former members of my club?
It depends on your country and on how their details were collected. The UK ICO’s soft opt-in guidance and Australia’s ACMA rules on inferred consent both set conditions. Check them before sending. This is general information, not legal advice.
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