Pricing Rules
Session versus Package pricing is the most fundamental distinction that exists in Enhanced Registration. Camp Walden is a great example of session-based pricing. It costs $9,875 for Full Summer and $6,475 for First or Second Session. Liberty Lake, of course, demonstrates package-based pricing. It costs $2,975 to attend 5 weeks – regardless of which weeks – and $3,950 to attend 7 weeks. Generally, with package-based pricing, the price-per-week decreases as more weeks are selected to incentivize longer enrollment periods. Then, there are pricing affectors. Pricing affectors are other factors – like grade range, number of years at camp, or arbitrary identifiers (like Manhattan vs. Rockland County or YMCA Member vs. Non-Member) that act upon or change pricing for a specific group. A camp may have multiple affectors in place at once (i.e. different pricing for new campers in Kindergarten through 5th grade who live in Manhattan versus returning campers in 6th through 10th grade who live in Rockland county). Once a camp sets up its pricing model and affectors, we end up with a table of permutations. For instance, there may be one row for Session 1, First Year Campers, in Grades K – 5; another row for Session 1 Returning Campers, in Grades K – 5; another row for Session 1 First Year Campers in Grades 6-10; and so on. From here, we indicate very specifically, how much is due at the time of application (the deposit) and which financial line items should be applied to the camper’s ledger upon enrollment. The deposit, as well as each of those line items, can be date-based so that the system can automatically display the correct financial information while the parent is applying for camp online. This works great for common transactions like early enrollment discounts or pay-in-full credits that expire after a certain date. Once Paul and I figured this much out, we gave each other a fist bump and left the Design Cave for a few days. But the battle had only just begun.
Multi-Session Discounts
As camps have begun to provide more varieties of (and shorter) sessions, offering multi-session discounts have become a popular form of incen tivization. Of course, this type of discount would not make sense for people who use package-based pricing, as package-based pricing already incentivizes people to add more weeks by lowering the price-per-week. However, we’ve found that some camps with session-based pricing – particularly those with week-long or two week sessions – give families a break as they add more sessions. Once again, there may be some sessions – like Rookie Camp, for instance – that shouldn’t be eligible for a multi-session discount, and this is something that Enhanced Registration can handle easily. Additionally, some camps may want to offer a multi-session discount on a family basis (i.e. give 10% off when the family has at least 5 sessions, regardless of which campers are in those sessions), whereas other camps, may want to offer multi-session discounts on a per-camper basis (i.e. take 5% off for each camper once he or she is enrolled in two sessions).
“At Camp Walden, they offer early bird discounts for Full Session and First Session enrollments until July 31st, but it’s $400 for full and $300 for first,” I remember explaining to Paul. “Second session campers have until August 31st to get the early bird discount, and it’s also $300 off. If a parent pays in full at the time of registration, they also get those same amounts off one-time for each of those sessions. And then there are sibling discounts …” “OK, but what about Liberty Lake, where there’s a sliding scale based on the number of enrollment weeks, and pricing varies by age group. I think they have a 5% early enrollment discount and Kindergartners pay less than other campers,” Paul fired back at me. “And Deerkill Day Camp, where Manhattan families pay more than Rockland County because of transportation costs …” You get my drift. This is complicated stuff, and each camp must have the freedom to implement strategies to achieve its unique goals. No pressure.
I remember saying to Paul, “I just did an analysis of all transactions with the word ‘sibling’ in the description for the past 10 years and returned 72,964 results. Did you know that Kenwood-Evergreen has different sibling discounts for new and returning campers – and the amount varies depending whether it is the first sibling, second, or third?” “What makes one camper Sibling Number 1 and another camper Sibling Number 2?” Paul asked. Gulp. As it turns out, even that varies from camp-to-camp. Some camps consider the “first” sibling to be the one who’s been at camp the longest. Other camps think of the “first” sibling as the one with the first application in a given season, and still others think of the “first” sibling as the one with the highest tuition, so that he or she gets the smallest discount. “Now, check this out!” Paul exclaimed while I was listing in Excel all the different types of sibling discounts we had encountered so far. “This camp offers 5% to both siblings in the family when there are two siblings, 7% off to each sibling when there are three siblings, and 10% off to each sibling for four or more siblings.” I abandoned my list, and Paul started scribbling away on a whiteboard for a while before I chimed in, “Wait a second. What about things like Rookie Camp? Do campers who attend Rookie Camp for a weekend even count as a sibling? And percentage-based discounts… they shouldn’t discount camp store deposits and transportation, should they? For that matter, what if the camper already got an early enrollment discount? Should we discount only tuition or should we discount the already-discounted price?” We held in our tears – barely – and went back to the drawing board. By the end of the week, exhausted, we drafted up a Functional Specification for Sibling Discounts and delivered it to our development team.
Enhanced registration handles both camper-based and familybased multi-session discounts. No problem!
Promotional Code Discounts
Promotional codes are the most direct form of incentivization. Promotional codes are like coupons, but they are smarter than the old-fashioned coupons you might cut out from a newspaper. These coupons can be targeted so that they work only in very specific scenarios that you authorize. On top of that, a promotional code can have a maximum number of uses, so you can control the total amount of discount you are willing to give away. Have you ever had a shortage of campers in a particular group – say 3rd graders – and needed a targeted way to strengthen enrollment? That’s the perfect opportunity to create a coupon to incentivize parents of 3rd graders to sign up for camp. With Enhanced Registration, you can create a code that takes $200 off Session 1 registrations for the first ten 3rd graders to sign up. A parent can simply enter the code in the Camper Application to redeem the reward. After all ten promotional codes have been used up, the system will automatically stop making them available. So, get on Living Social and Groupon, just like Andy suggested in his interview, and start filling your empty spots by incentivizing parents with promotional codes!
Oh, and spoiler alert: Enhanced Registration elegantly handles all of it. Let’s break this down a bit to make some sense of it all.
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Sibling Discounts
It wasn’t long before Paul and I were back in the cave, banging our heads against the wall with our next challenge. This time, the focus was sibling discounts. All-in-all it took us a week of arguing to get to the bottom of it. It’s a miracle Paul and I still get along. “What’s so complicated about sibling discounts?” you may be asking yourself.
Haven't heard about Groupon? Check them out online at groupon.com
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