--- title: "Sports Club Mailing List: How to Collect Subscribers and Segment Members | SportyPlus" description: "How to build a sports club mailing list that includes parents, prospects and former players as well as members, with sign-ups confirmed by email, imports you can stand behind, and member segments that keep themselves up to date." lang: "sr" canonical: "https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog/sports-club-mailing-list" --- 1. [Почетна](https://www.sporty.plus/sr) 3. [Blog](https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog) 5. How to Build a Sports Club Mailing List That Reaches Beyond Your Members ![How to Build a Sports Club Mailing List That Reaches Beyond Your Members](https://www.sporty.plus/_og/r/blog/sports-club-mailing-list.png) # How to Build a Sports Club Mailing List That Reaches Beyond Your Members How to build a sports club mailing list that includes parents, prospects and former players as well as members, with sign-ups confirmed by email, imports you can stand behind, and member segments that keep themselves up to date. A sports club mailing list should not stop at the people who already pay a membership fee. The parent who asked about junior coaching, the player who tried a free session in May and the 80 children at last summer's camp are exactly the people a club most wants to reach, and none of them are in the member system. This guide covers how to build a sports club mailing list that includes them: where the addresses come from, how to collect them so you can show each person agreed, and how to keep groups of members, such as "seniors" or "juniors on the academy membership", up to date without exporting a spreadsheet every month. Writing and sending the newsletter itself, including keeping news separate from promotions, is covered in [How to Run a Sports Club Email Newsletter](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter). This article is about the list. ## The problem: your member list is not your audience Most club software can email the club's members. That covers the people who have already joined. It misses most of the people a club is trying to win: - **Prospects.** Someone who filled in a contact form, played a trial session or stopped by the open day. - **Parents.** The person who decides whether a child joins the academy is often not a member themselves. - **Former members.** People who left can come back, especially when a new indoor season or a new sport starts. - **Event visitors.** Tournament entrants from other clubs, camp families and social-event guests. The second problem is inside the membership. A senior league invitation should go to members over 50. A junior coaching block is for parents of juniors. The usual answer is an export: filter the member list, download it, paste it into a newsletter tool. The export is out of date the day after it was made. New members are missing, and people who left are still on it. ## How clubs normally handle it **A sign-up sheet at reception.** It's cheap and it works on the day. Then someone has to type the addresses in, half of them are illegible, and nothing records what each person agreed to. **A form that feeds a spreadsheet.** A Google or Microsoft form on the website collects addresses. Nobody checks that the address belongs to the person who typed it, so a mistyped address or someone else's address goes straight onto the list. The spreadsheet then has to be copied into whatever sends the email. **A separate newsletter tool.** Mailchimp, Brevo and the like handle sign-up forms, confirmation emails and unsubscribes well. The weak point is the members: the tool doesn't know who is a member, who is 50 or over, or who holds a junior membership, so every member segment is an export again, and the club now keeps two lists that drift apart. ## The recommended approach ### 1\. Keep two kinds of list Almost everything a club wants to send falls into one of two shapes. - **Subscriber lists.** People who asked to hear from you about something specific: "Junior academy news", "Padel events", "Indoor season". They may or may not be members. The list is the set of people who joined it. - **Member segments.** Groups defined by a rule about your members: men over 50, women's team players, members on an off-peak membership, applicants who haven't been approved yet. A segment shouldn't be a list of names at all. It should be the rule itself, worked out again every time you send, so someone who turns 50 next month joins "over 50" next month without anyone touching it. Keeping these separate avoids the most common mess: a subscriber list that slowly fills up with members copied in by hand, and that nobody can remove people from safely because no one remembers who asked to be there. ### 2\. Confirm every sign-up by email When someone signs up on your website, send a short email with a link they must open to confirm, and only add them once they have. This is double opt-in. It does three things: - a mistyped address never makes it onto the list, so it can't bounce or reach the wrong person; - nobody can sign up someone else's address; - you have a record of who agreed, when and how. Under the GDPR, a club that relies on consent must be able to demonstrate it (Article 7(1)). A confirmed sign-up with a date is far easier to show than a line in a spreadsheet. One small detail matters: make the confirmation a button on the page the link opens, not the act of opening the link. Some company mail systems open every link in an incoming email to scan it, and that shouldn't be enough to subscribe anyone. ### 3\. Import only what you can stand behind Most clubs have addresses sitting somewhere: last year's camp registrations, a tournament entry list, an old newsletter tool. Importing them is fine **if those people agreed to hear from the club**. Before an import: - check where the addresses came from and what people were told when they gave them; - record who confirmed the consent and when; - tag the import with where it came from, such as `summer-camp-2026`, so you can find these people later. The rule that matters most: **an import must never put back someone who unsubscribed.** Re-importing last year's spreadsheet is the single easiest way to email people who asked you to stop, and it is how clubs end up reported as spam. ### 4\. Tag people when they join Tags are cheap at the start and expensive later. Tag sign-ups and imports with what they are interested in and where they came from: `juniors`, `parents`, `padel`, `open-day-2026`. Then a campaign can go to "everyone on the events list tagged padel" without a separate list for every topic. ### 5\. Let people leave one list without leaving everything Every email to a subscriber list should carry an unsubscribe link for that list. Someone who no longer wants padel event news may still want the junior academy updates. For your members, the right switch is usually the kind of email (club news or promotions) rather than a list, because they never joined a list in the first place. ### A note on children A junior newsletter should be addressed to parents. In many countries, a child below a set age can't give valid consent to online services on their own; [the age of digital consent varies by country](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country), from 13 to 16 in the EU. If the sign-up page is for junior programmes, say on the page that it is for parents and guardians, and run it under the parent's name. [Linking juniors to their parents](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/manage-junior-members-and-parents) in your member records solves the same problem for members. ## A worked example A hypothetical multi-sport club with eight tennis courts and four padel courts, and about 350 members. **Lists it keeps:** List Kind Who is on it Club news segment every member with an email address Seniors segment members aged 50 and over Junior academy subscriber list parents who signed up on the academy page, plus last summer's camp families Padel events subscriber list anyone who signed up for padel events, members or not **Building them.** The junior academy page links to the academy list's sign-up page, and the club prints the same link as a QR code on the open-day poster. Over the open day, 64 people submit the form and 52 confirm. The other 12 never open the confirmation email, stay unconfirmed, and receive nothing. The club also imports 140 camp families from the camp registration spreadsheet, whose form had a newsletter checkbox, tagged `summer-camp-2026`. Nine of those addresses had unsubscribed from the list earlier in the year, so the import leaves them out. **Sending.** In October the club invites seniors to a new mixed-doubles league. The "Seniors" segment matches 61 members today. Next month it will match whoever is 50 or over then, with nobody editing it. For a padel junior clinic, the club sends to "Junior academy" narrowed to the `padel` tag instead of making a new list. ## How SportyPlus can help In SportyPlus, mailing lists sit under the club's emails in the CMS, beside the campaign composer. A list is either **Subscribers** or a **Segment of members**, chosen when it's created. A segment is the same member filter campaigns use (role, member status, membership type, gender and age), worked out again at every send, and its page shows how many members it reaches today. A subscriber list can open a **sign-up form on your website**: the club copies a link to a page on its own site, people sign up there, and they're added only after confirming from the email they receive, by pressing a button rather than just opening the link. Until then they show as waiting for confirmation and receive nothing. Admins can add subscribers by hand or import a CSV. Excel's comma and semicolon exports both work, with an email column and optional name and tag columns. Both require ticking a statement that these people agreed to receive the club's emails, and that statement is stored with the admin's name and the date as the record of consent. Anyone who unsubscribed stays unsubscribed: neither an import nor an admin can put them back, only the person themselves by signing up again. When writing a campaign, the club chooses **club users** or **a mailing list**, then narrows a list by tag or by member details for that campaign only. Narrowing can remove people but never add anyone who isn't on the list. The audience panel shows how many people will actually receive it, including how many signed up but haven't confirmed. Every email to a subscriber list carries a one-click unsubscribe for that list alone, and members of a segment keep their usual switches for club news and promotions. The step-by-step setup is in the [mailing lists help page](https://docs.sporty.plus/en/interface/emails/mailing-lists), and the composer is described on the [email campaigns](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/email) page. ## Practical recommendations - Write down who you want to reach that is not a member today: parents, prospects, former members, event visitors. Each group usually becomes one subscriber list. - Create segments for the member groups you email repeatedly, and stop exporting them. - Put the sign-up link wherever interested people already are: the junior programme page, the booking confirmation page, the open-day poster as a QR code, a [social media post](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/social-media-for-sports-clubs). - Say on the sign-up page what people will receive and how often. "Padel events, about twice a month" gets more confirmations than "Newsletter". - Before importing an old spreadsheet, find out what those people agreed to. If you can't tell, invite them to sign up instead of importing them. - Tag every import with its source and year. - Look at unconfirmed sign-ups now and then. A high number usually means the confirmation email is landing in spam, or the sign-up page isn't clear about what happens next. ## Related questions **Is double opt-in required by law?** The GDPR doesn't name it, but it does require a club relying on consent to be able to show that each person agreed. A confirmed sign-up is the most practical way to do that, and it keeps mistyped and borrowed addresses off the list. **Can we import our members into a subscriber list?** You don't need to. Use a segment for members: it is always current, and members already have their own switches for club news and promotions. Keep subscriber lists for people who asked to join something specific. **Should non-members be able to see member-only content in the newsletter?** Treat a subscriber list as public. Anything that should only reach members, such as AGM papers or member pricing, belongs in a campaign to a member segment. **What should we do with people who never confirm?** Leave them unconfirmed. Don't email them, and don't add them by hand. If they still want to hear from you, they can sign up again. **How many lists is too many?** When you can't say in one sentence what each list is for, you have too many. Most clubs manage with one or two subscriber lists and a handful of segments, using tags for topics within a list. ## Related SportyPlus guides - [How to Run a Sports Club Email Newsletter: Club News, Offers and Opt-Ins](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter) explains what to send once the list exists, and why news and promotions need separate opt-outs. - [How to Manage Junior Members and Their Parents at a Sports Club](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/manage-junior-members-and-parents) covers reaching the parent rather than the child. - [Age of Digital Consent by Country: What Sports Clubs Need to Know](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country) explains when a child can sign up for something on their own. - [Social Media for Sports Clubs: What to Post and How to Post It Everywhere at Once](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/social-media-for-sports-clubs) shows where to share the sign-up link. --- **Reach the people who aren't members yet.** SportyPlus keeps subscriber lists, member segments and [email campaigns](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/email) in the same system as your [memberships](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/memberships) and [court booking](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/court_booking), so the list is never a stale export. ## Повезани SportyPlus водичи - [How to Run a Sports Club Email Newsletter: Club News, Offers and Opt-Ins](https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter) Most clubs send one undifferentiated "club email". That is why members unsubscribe from everything after one sale. Split news from promotions and both get read. - [How to Manage Junior Members and Their Parents at a Sports Club](https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog/manage-junior-members-and-parents) Most clubs have juniors on the books under a parent's email, a shared login, or no account at all. Here is a structure that works for the parent, the child and the club's records. - [Age of Digital Consent by Country: What Sports Clubs Need to Know](https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country) The GDPR age of digital consent is 13, 14, 15 or 16 depending on the country. Here is the full table, what the rule does and does not cover for a club, and how to handle a 12-year-old signing up online. - [Social Media for Sports Clubs: What to Post and How to Post It Everywhere at Once](https://www.sporty.plus/sr/blog/social-media-for-sports-clubs) Most clubs end up with a Facebook Page, an Instagram account and a members' chat group. The hard part is not the content — it is posting the same thing everywhere.