As you might know if you’ve previously run a charity event, one of the most time-consuming aspects is dealing with golfer issues with regards to their starting positions, teammates, payments, etc. All these interactions may seem small, but they can certainly add up and take away from the time you are able to dedicate to marketing your tournament and outreaching prospective sponsors. So, not only is talking to golfers/participants wasting your time, it could also be costing you money—and for a charity event money is precious.

By integrating an event website into your tournament, you are already cutting out a lot of that extra time. The initial registration process alone (without a website) can eat up a lot of hours, and multiply that by golfers…it just isn’t efficient. So, let’s assume you take the first step and set up a website.

A lot of confusion can arise when registering individual golfers—which team do they belong to? What if there are stragglers at the end? One of the simple ways to rule out this confusion right off the bat is to include golfers or participants in a team registration. That way, those who are positive of their group can go ahead and register as a foursome and include all the golfer information in the process. When a registrant signs up for a “Foursome” for example, you can include 4 golfers in that registration which will prompt the registrant to include golfer names and emails. This will make things so much easier in terms of keeping groups together and gaining all the information needed to contact the golfers in a single mass email.

A huge component in not wasting time tracking down your golfers is including automated emails. This will provide the golfers with the reassurance they need when registering that they do have a place in the event or tournament. When you sign up for a BirdEase site, these emails are built right in, so you don’t need to do anything extra on your part. Your registrants and golfers will receive this email, and so will you whenever someone signs up. This can help with keeping track of golfers (and you can even download automatic reports that will have all this information in the same place.)

This email is very valuable to the registrant and the golfers, because it also allows them to access their registration and confirm that all their details are included. They can also edit their information provided they have created login information.

As previously mentioned, the registrant signing up for a team will be prompted to input golfer names and emails. If you would like more information to be included during the registration process (for example, “shirt size”, or “how are you affiliated with the charity”, or really anything you might need to make your life easier), you can add a custom question and choose to either apply it to the registrant or to the golfers.

This information will all show up on the reports. The answers to the custom questions will all show up on the Tee Sheet if related to the Golfers and Full Report if applied to the main registrant.

Here is a huge time saver: sending mass emails! We’ve alluded to the fact that reports will automatically be generated with golfer information. One of those reports is simply “golfer emails”, which can be uploaded directly into the message center located in the Event Manager in order to send out mass emails (and of course, save time and money!)

The BirdEase message center gives event managers the option to not only create custom messages, but also import email lists right from the site. So, rather than reaching out to each golfer individually, the emails can be imported with the click of a button. The Message Center tool will pull information right from the Golfer Emails report, making it simple to communicate with everyone at once.