Our sailing club stumbled into the greatest promotion (and money maker) this summer, that I thought I'd share here.

There's an internet coupon service called "Groupon" which offers drastically discounted deals for one day only, emailed to their subscribers. Our membership chairman came up with the idea of selling "An Introduction to Sailing" 3-hour sailing lesson/experience, at "normally $100, discounted to ONLY $35" (the club to get $20 of that). He figured it might get 50 or 60 folks through the door. OVER 530 people bought it!

We've been scrambling all summer to get those folks on the water. I just took a couple out last night on my Wave, as the high winds were too much for the monohulls.

The format we use is: spend 1/2 hour rigging and describing the boat, 2 hours on the water (alternating skippers), then 1/2 hr putting the boat away. Simple enough?

It's pretty much the same thing we do for free at our open houses; but if you put a dollar value on it, and "sell" it at a discount, people will flock to it!

We made over $10,000 on the promotion, and have had over 50 "Groupers" then join the club to take the full two-week training class, about a dozen have bought boats, and more say they'll do it next year!

I'm not pushing Groupon, there are other similar companies out there, but if we can use an agency like that to promote sailing in an unexpected way, so can you!