Beyond the AI Buzz: 4 Practical Marketing Takeaways for Pickleball Clubs

A couple of weeks ago, I attended HubSpot’s UNBOUND Conference, an annual event that brings together go-to-market leaders for three days of ideas, learning and networking focused on AI, sales, marketing and technology.

This is the third year I’ve attended the conference, and every year I walk away with countless insights into how innovative companies are acquiring and nurturing customers, marketing their businesses and improving ROI.

I am not a HubSpot power user. In fact, we recently downgraded our plan to one of the lowest tiers. That said, I still highly value the conference due to the insights gleaned into how the innovative companies are approaching growth and marketing strategy. With that in mind, here are the most practical takeaways from the conference for pickleball club operators.

Editor’s note: If you have any questions about these takeaways, I’m happy to share my notes or any additional context needed. Just reach out at rachel@peakemedia.com.

1. AEO and SEO Best Practices Are Essentially the Same

Many companies are asking: How do we appear in AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude? According to Marcel Santilli, theCEO of GrowthX.ai during his session “What 10,000 Hours of AEO Taught Us,” there is no established science, at least at this time, to support a definitive answer. Companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI share little detail about how their systems select and present answers.

However, Santilli explained there are experiments you can run to determine whether your content is influencing AI answers. Start with the questions your buyers actually ask, then see which sources the tools cite and whether your company appears in responses without being named in the prompt. Repeat those checks under consistent conditions to look for meaningful patterns.

His caution: Treat the results as directional. A visibility score from a handful of prompts cannot tell you how often real buyers encounter your brand. The more valuable work is to publish clear, useful answers on your own site, build credibility beyond it and keep improving the content based on what you learn.

These are the same principles that apply to good SEO. Publish thorough answers to the questions your audience asks, connect related pages, review them often and keep your positioning consistent. Santilli recommended gathering questions from customer conversations, market research and your team’s expertise. Group related questions, then prioritize them by relevance, demand, intent and whether you have a credible answer.

Again, this is good for SEO and AEO, which is encouraging for anyone trying to keep up with all the AEO hype.

2. AI Summaries Are Changing How People Consume Emails

One of my biggest surprises at the conference came during Jay Schwedelson’s session “Do This, Not That: Fastest Lifts in Content, Offers and AI,” when he discussed AI email summaries in services such as Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook.

As a result, some recipients may get the gist of a message without opening it, potentially affecting open and click-through rates. He also cited a problem with accuracy, saying “64% of AI email summaries misrepresented the original message.”

To make sure the summary picks up the actual offer or request, Schwedelson shared three best practices:

• Put essential information in selectable text, not words embedded in an image. He said image text and alt text won’t be pulled into these summaries.
• Use bullets and clear text links. In the data he presented, AI email summaries frequently drew from bulleted content.
• Focus on the first 150–200 characters: state the action, what you’re offering and the deadline, if there is one. He said this approach was associated with a 19% lift in click-through rates in his recent data.

Ultimately, Schwedelson is highlighting utility over beauty. You do not need to send highly designed, post-card inspired emails. Focus on impact, ensuring the most important information is at the top, with clear directions for the audience on how to engage. 

3. Top Companies Are Using AI to Amplify Human Efforts

One theme across the sessions was using AI to speed up work that teams already do, giving people more time to focus on customers.

In the session “Build an AI-Driven GTM Engine (Step-by-Step),” Sumner Vanderhoof, the CEO and co-founder of Propensity, shared that even AI-driven sales organizations rely on people. He suggested using AI to make company knowledge easier to access, remove time-consuming tasks and give teams more time with customers.

For a club, that could mean moving from an idea for a new program to a testable offer more quickly.

What does this look like in practice? Let’s say a club has open courts on weekday mornings they’d like to fill more consistently. The team could:

1. Gather what it already knows: booking patterns, beginner program attendance, member feedback and nearby competitors’ public offers.
2. Use AI to find plausible audiences and offers: for example, a beginner introduction for retirees, a flexible daytime league or corporate team outings. These are hypotheses to test, not conclusions AI can prove.
3. Create several campaign versions quickly: a landing page, email, social posts and front desk talking points for each offer.
4. Run a small test: promote one or two offers to a defined local audience and track inquiries, first bookings and repeat visits.
5. Feed the results back in: ask AI to summarize which messages drew interest, where people dropped off and what to change for the next test.

This process makes the club’s own data easier to use, and gives staff a way to develop ideas and spend less time assembling materials. The club team still chooses the audience, checks the claims, speaks with prospective players and decides whether the bookings justify expanding the offer.

4. Show the People and Moments Behind Your Club

Daniel Disney’s session, “A Repeatable LinkedIn Content System That Actually Drives Pipeline,” made a point that fits pickleball especially well: give people more than a steady stream of promotions.

Disney encouraged marketers to utilize social media and video to show the people behind a business, share moments from behind the scenes and mix useful information with content that makes people smile.

Pickleball clubs have plenty of those moments already. Think of the first rally in a beginner clinic, the energy before a league match, a coach celebrating a player’s progress or staff setting up for an event. With permission from the people featured, a quick phone video or photo can give someone who has never visited a better sense of what it feels like to play at your club. A short tip from a coach or a player’s account of their first visit can be just as useful.

Disney’s advice was to vary the goal, topic and format of your posts. Some can help beginners, some can introduce your team and some can invite people to an upcoming program. Notice what sparks conversations, then make more of what your audience responds to. You do not have to turn every post into a sales pitch.

Lastly, one of the most refreshing insights from the conference was that foundational marketing practices still work, despite all the buzz around AI. Yes, things are changing fast. But pickleball clubs can still grow by answering the questions players actually ask, creating experiences they want to return to and building relationships that lead them to bring a friend.

AI can help you do some of that work faster. It can’t tell you what your players value unless you take the time to listen.

Rachel Chonko

With over a decade spent covering the business side of sports and fitness, Rachel Chonko brings a wealth of experience and a true passion for active communities to Peake Media. As Editor-in-Chief, she’s focused on helping pickleball clubs and fitness facilities thrive, from guiding growth strategies to showcasing the latest industry trends. Rachel also hosts the Club Solutions Magazine Podcast, where she interviews leaders in fitness and pickleball to share insights and success stories with the wider community to give her listeners a competitive edge.

After taking up pickleball herself, Rachel has come to appreciate the sport’s unique blend of social connection and active living — a mix that’s perfectly in line with her editorial philosophy. Connect with her on LinkedIn, or check out her articles below for a deep dive into the energy and culture driving pickleball’s rapid rise.