Now you have re-opened your doors, you’re no doubt busy looking at ways to rebuild your membership base and fill the revenue hole that multiple lockdowns have left in your business. Although it may be tempting to implement an aggressive membership sales strategy right now, a better and more cost-effective option is to review the current member experience across all touchpoints and perform a “gap analysis” to identify where and how you could both improve the member experience and increase current membership yield to boost your bottom line and plug the revenue gap.
This may seem like a long-term strategy rather than a short-term fix, but it can actually be both. According to The Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one, so it makes sense to focus your energy on cultivating a loyal membership base in the first instance. By doing so, you are far more likely to generate additional yield from your membership base, resulting in a welcome boost to your revenue. But don’t just take our word for it. According to Dimension Data, 84% of organizations working to improve customer service report an increase in revenue in as little as a few weeks.
In this blog, we will be sharing some quick, easy-to-deploy tactics that will help you drive member loyalty and subsequently increase current member yield. Let’s dive in.
1. Provide Personalized Health Assessments
Fitness and wellness goals can feel overwhelming to set, let alone accomplish. What goals are attainable? What does my body need? How do I make and measure progress?” Your fitness club team can demystify the process and help members chart a path toward better health.
A great place to start is offering body composition analysis for a small fee. Aside from boosting membership yield, the impact on member loyalty and overall retention is huge. Many leading advisers on retention for the fitness industry talk about the importance of communication with members; you don’t have to read much of the work done by Guy Griffiths or Richard Earney to realize “creating a culture of feedback” has an incredibly positive impact on member retention. Partner with you members on their health and fitness journey. Open up that dialogue. Communication and engagement build the member retention you’re looking for.
Providing health assessments through body composition analysis starts this process for you all by itself. You have the initial consultation, followed by the development (if required) of a personalized training plan (which you can either package up and charge for separately or tie in with the cost of the health assessment) based on these health metrics. Naturally, regular check-ins follow this. Before you know it, you are communicating and feeding relevant information back to members on a regular basis. You can then choose to tie any other amount of messages, information or offers into this program and really develop that relationship with each and every member. It really is a “two birds, one stone” initiative!
2. Retail Items
Selling a range of relevant retail items in your club is an effective way to increase revenue from your current members, and with ClubWise, you have the tools to do so with minimal effort. On many products, industry mark ups can be very high, providing plenty of opportunity to boost your bottom line. Whether it’s protein shakes and bars, electrolyte drinks, or even branded merch, your members will appreciate the convenience of being able to purchase these items at your club.
The key here is to make it as easy as possible for members to purchase retail items and perhaps most crucially, develop a system that doesn’t require cash. A great way of doing this is to set up a digital store directly in your Member App with an integrated credit and debit card payment solution. This makes purchasing far more accessible to members and delivers a quick, contactless, and hygienic way to purchase the items they need.
3. Free Mini-Personal Training Trial
Personalization is the industry’s buzzword at the moment, and for good reason. You will notice that personalization is a common theme throughout this blog, with body composition analysis, tailored workout programs, and communications. However, for a truly personalized experience, you don’t get better than personal training (PT). Personal training has the ability to create more positive member experiences. A good, well-thought-out PT model in your club can significantly increase your revenue. But how do you encourage your current members to buy Personal Training? Give them a free taste.
Unsurprisingly, members who have never used PT before are most likely deterred by the unknown. They are unsure how it works and what it costs (isn’t personal training something rich celebrities have?). They may be nervous about putting their money and trust into someone they don’t really know and who doesn’t know them or understand their goals, who might judge them for their ability levels or try to push them too hard. They may see a personal trainers as someone who creates tough exercises like a drill sergeant. Correct the misconceptions by offering a free mini-PT session. You can provide members with the opportunity to learn about how the personal training sessions work, experience the benefits, and, understand all the ways a personal trainer can support their fitness journey. Be sure to follow up with members who have taken advantage of the free session to maximize conversions.
4. Boot Camps and Workshops
The idea behind boot camps and workshops is to maximize seasonal opportunities that inspire renewed motivation and eagerness among members to reach specific goals more quickly. These chargeable packages provide immediate revenue that improves your cash flow. A great example is a “summer body boot camp,” targeting those members that want to get in shape for swimsuit season. To make it even more appealing to current members, ask them what types of programs they would be interested in participating in and deliver what they want. By doing so, you are showing your members that you care about their needs and goals and are proactively looking for ways to help them get the results they want, quickly.
The beauty of this initiative is you can get creative and target seasonal downturns to bump up revenue all year round.
With ClubWise, you can easily add packages to the digital store in the Member App, which members can book and purchase using the secure in app payment portal. As the Member App is fully integrated with ClubWise, you get full visibility of sales directly in your ClubWise Dashboard.
5. Raise Your Prices
This may seem like a controversial move at this point in time, and you may be thinking, “I need to keep my members, not drive them away with price increases!” However, as long you’ve been delivering an exceptional member experience, a subtle and carefully calculated price increase will do wonders for your gym’s financial health with little impact on member retention. Still not sure? A recent study by Esteban Kolsky showed that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience. Say no more, right?
The key here is to ensure you communicate your new pricing with plenty of advanced notice. Keep it brief; explain why the increase is necessary to continue delivering the high-quality services members love and expect from you.
Implementing a price increase could present administrative challenges depending on how you’re set up and what software you use. Ideally, you’ll want an easy and streamlined process that lets you implement price increases for specific member segments in bulk.
ClubWise is working towards providing a more streamlined solution to enable us to work with club owners to administer bulk price increases for current members. The solution includes the ability to apply bulk increases quickly and easily to a number of different membership segments, for example, all members currently paying £20 p/m, OR all members on a silver membership.
Communicating a price increase to members becomes an easy task using the ClubWise Campaign Manager tool. ClubWise displays clever prompts within the price increase workflow to remind you to send a campaign to the appropriate member list — which will already be set up for you.
For more information on how ClubWise can help you deliver an exceptional member experience, increase loyalty, and drive revenue, book a ClubWise discovery call today!