On Wednesday 28th February, ClubWise held a customer pop-up event with special guest speaker Dr Paul Bedford from Retention Guru.

The event was designed to provide you with insights on the biggest challenge facing clubs today – Retention, as well as provide the knowledge and tools to help you retain your members for longer. Julian Matthews, Managing Director of ClubWise, presented the latest retention boosting technology from ClubWise along with upcoming product releases designed to help you win the retention battle, including a fully integrated app-based rewards program and ClubWise Mobile – an app developed to get your team members on the gym floor and interacting with your members.

The ClubWise mission is to focus on providing solutions that assist our customers to be successful. Developing products and features designed to improve your member retention is a big part of that mission, and we have recently engaged Paul to provide useful input based on his expertise. Paul is renowned for his knowledge and research around the subject of retention and bases his advice on solid data derived from numerous worldwide studies. On top of this, Paul has a master’s degree in exercise and health behaviours and has been advising us on the most effective ways to communicate to members in both method and language, to motivate and encourage a regular exercise habit.

Despite the snow, we had a good turnout with clubs coming from all over the country, including Scotland! We hope you got home ok Anthony!

“I had a great day and it was well worthwhile coming down. Really excited about some of the things you are developing for us!”
Anthony Murray – Peak Fitness 4 U

The event provided many valuable takeaways for the clubs that attended and we’ve outlined some of the key points for those of you that didn’t make it down:

1. The currency for every club is ‘visits’

Paul explained that visits are the number one predictor of membership retention. The more visits a member makes, the longer they stay. Dr Bedford advised that rewards and incentives are an extremely effective tool, as the member will gain tangible rewards for visiting the club, generating motivation, excitement and encouraging commitment.

The FitSense member app can help

As a solution, ClubWise offers a multifaceted approach to encouraging regular visits that result in a habit. One of our key product innovations is FitSense, a fully integrated member app. Simon Brown, Product Success Consultant for FitSense, works directly with our customers to obtain feedback on usability and improvements, as well as provide training. Simon spent some time running through a demonstration of the current FitSense product, showcasing the main features and benefits.

Julian Matthews and Andy Brown – ClubWise Product Owner, then spent some time presenting the brand-new features in FitSense Version 2, which includes a fully integrated rewards program. FitSense Rewards incentivises visits by rewarding points for every check in.

For new member in the first 4 weeks, you are able to set the points level higher, to encourage members during this crucial time. Points can also be earned on class bookings and class participation. The Rewards program provides you with crucial insights into member activity, so you are able to quickly identify if new members need a little additional support and encouragement in their first few weeks and beyond. FitSense Rewards has many benefits aside from encouraging member visits. Take a look at the graphic below:

How FitSense Rewards works

FitSense Rewards is extremely simple to implement and manage. You simply set up a voucher in ClubWise Mobile and your members can then redeem their points in FitSense.

Create Vouchers in ClubWise Mobile

Members can redeem Points in FitSense

Julian and Andy’s presentation of FitSense Version 2 at the event generated a lot of excitement and anticipation among attendees with many asking when this new feature will be available. More information around the release will be coming, so keep your eyes peeled for those announcements.

2. Regular Member Engagement made easy with our revised Active CRM

Regular member engagement, particularly during the first four weeks of joining should be a vital part of your members journey. ClubWise is currently revising its Active CRM journey based around Paul’s principles of best practice. ClubWise tapped into Paul’s knowledge around member psychology to ensure every engagement promotes that next visit, particularly within the first 4 weeks.

Joanna Taber, the Marketing Manager for ClubWise, is working with Paul on the revised templates. These will be mobile optimised, branded with your logo and designed to allow embedded videos. The language used in each communication is based on Paul’s psychology expertise and each communication will hit at the most crucial trigger points. The revised Active CRM schedule will be available to clubs in May.

3. ClubWise Mobile – Facilitating regular member interaction

Dr Bedford highlighted the importance of regular member interaction. It sounds simple but without the time and right technology, this can be a very difficult task to keep on top of.

Paul shared the following statistics:

The probability of making a visit next month if fitness staff talk to you during a visit this month:

Members who report not being spoken to by either reception or fitness staff are more than twice as likely to cancel as members who are regularly spoken to by staff. Freeing up staff from admin tasks allows them more time to interact with every member.

With this in mind, ClubWise has made some significant developments to ClubWise Mobile, allowing you to carry out key club management tasks on the gym floor using a tablet or a smart phone, aiding crucial member interaction and providing valuable opportunities to engage and support your members.

Andy Tate, one of our Product Success Consultants, showcased the brand-new features, as well as some exciting upcoming features that are yet to be released. Attendees at the event were able to see how ClubWise Mobile aids crucial member interaction on the gym floor by allowing you to search for a member record on the go, as well as view and update the member profile. The app also displays check-In messages and alerts next to the member record, making interactions at Check In meaningful. Andy went on to demonstrate how easy it is to take a member photo and add it to the member record. ClubWise Mobile also provides both a day and week view of your class timetable with instructor details and class availability and includes a feature that allows you to book a member into a class, right there and then. You can find more information here: (www.clubwise.com/clubwisemobile)

ClubWise Mobile In App Joining with Digital Signature Technology

Julian Matthews joined Andy Tate to showcase some of the exciting new features of ClubWise Mobile including In App Joining with digital signature technology. This exciting new feature will be available soon, so again, keep your eyes peeled for launch announcements.

Brand new Access Control Solution

Julian also took the opportunity to share details of our new Access Control solution and partnership with All Right Now. ClubWise made the decision to develop our own software to provide an end to end approach meaning we manage the solution fully, with All Right Now providing the hardware required. The solution works on multiple methods including QR code (integrated into the FitSense app, to provide a cost-effective option), proximity (card or fob) and biometric. The PC is not required to run solution and full redundancy is soon to be available.

Finally, before closing the event Julian gave attendees a first look at some of the other key features we are working on for future release. This included Embeddable Online services, one of which is an embedded booking timetable, which will allow your members to book sessions directly through your own website.

Did you miss this event?
Don’t worry, we will be hosting another Retention event with Paul in April. Details will be released soon. Can’t wait? Register your interest here and we will prioritise your space!

If you would like to discuss any of the products and features mentioned above with a member of our team, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected] or call us on 01844 348300. Or you can visit our website at ClubWise.com

For more information about Paul you can visit his website here: