How Would You Grade Your Camp’s Summer Marketing + Communications Performance?
Before you jump into enrollment for Summer 2027, take a little time to look back.
How did your camp’s marketing and communications perform this summer?
And yes, those are two different things.
Communications helped current families navigate and feel connected to the summer. Channels include emails, reminders, updates, photos, phone calls, and conversations with camp leadership.
Marketing helped prospective and current families understand the value of the experience and gave them reasons to choose, and keep choosing, your camp.
Both deserve an end-of-summer review before you commit headspace and resources to retention and new camper recruitment.
Grade Your Communications
Start with the experience of your current families.
Pull your summer emails and look at open + click-through rates, frequently clicked links, and the messages that generated the most questions or replies. Then go beyond the data.
Ask:
Were families getting the right information at the right time or the time in which you committed to communicate?
Were emails clear and easy to skim?
Were 1:1 calls and small-group outreach used strategically?
What questions did parents ask over and over again?
Did new families receive the extra communication they needed to navigate their first summer?
Talk to your office staff, nurses, camper care team, and others who interacted regularly with parents. Ask them what families seemed confused about, appreciated, or wanted more of.
Evaluate Your Marketing
Now look at the content you created while camp was happening.
Start with photos and video. Don't ask whether you captured enough. Ask whether you captured the right things.
Do your photos and videos show the ideas you market all year?
Do you have strong content across different ages and programs?
Counselor-camper interactions?
Genuine moments instead of just posed group shots?
The ultimate question: Could you use what you captured this summer to show a prospective family why they should choose your camp?
Next, look at your social media content and engagement. Did you post a variety of content, stories, and information that exemplified the entirety of your camping experience? And, did people show you that they cared?
Your summer is your best opportunity to collect the proof behind your brand promise.
Take Stock of Prospective Families
Don't overlook the families who were watching camp from the outside.
Who toured or attended an open house, family event, or other recruitment program? Who submitted an inquiry but didn't take the next step?
Review what happened after those interactions.
Did every prospective family receive timely follow-up?
Was it personal or automated? (or both)
Did someone reference something specific about their child or visit?
Did you give them a clear next step?
Look at conversion data by event and activity. Then talk to counselors and staff members who led tours and met prospective families. What questions kept coming up? What made families excited? Where did they hesitate?
Those insights should shape your fall recruitment messaging.
Assess Retention Outreach
Retention is marketing, too.
Pay particular attention to families with older campers. The reasons parents choose camp for an eight-year-old aren't necessarily the reasons they'll keep choosing it for a 14- or 15-year-old.
Did you help parents see how the experience evolves as their child gets older? Did you show leadership, independence, mentorship, deeper friendships, or the pathway from camper to counselor?
If you're waiting until re-enrollment season to explain the value of your teen and/or programs, you're waiting too long.
Build Your Report Card
You don't need a complicated report. Make a copy of this template and give yourself a grade in a few key areas:
Parent communications
Personal outreach
Prospective-family follow-up
Photography + video
Storytelling
New family engagement
Retention marketing
For each one, identify three things:
KEEP: What worked and should become standard practice?
STOP: What took time without adding much value?
START: What was missing that you should build into next summer?
Turn what you learned into your fall recruitment plan, retention strategy, content calendar, photo and video shot lists, parent communications plan, and next summer's SOPs.
Summer isn't just when you deliver the camp experience. It's also when you communicate its value, and collect the stories and proof you'll use to market it all year.
