Retention, Retention, Retention!
It seems like retention is one of the biggest topics here at the Gym Insight Blog. Well, it is a critical issue that you absolutely must address. That’s because holding on to your membership is the difference between success and failure in any people oriented business; it’s the difference between sleeping in the back office and purchasing a comfortable home with the profits from your successful fitness center.
Your marketing goals must be to gain new customers and hold on to the ones that you already have, these are two complementary but different functions in marketing your business. Winning new members is all about discovery and curiosity; new members will give you a chance once. Holding on to your customers is all about keeping them interested and satisfying their needs, which is often easier said than done.
Momentum To Power Through The Distractions
Wherever you go, there you are; by which I mean accept wherever you are now and build on your position with improvements, incrementally. The appropriate improvements in even the smallest details of your business, policies and procedures can have a disproportionately positive impact on your retention performance. The cycles of the season keep rolling along, and there is always something that will limit the potential of your small gym business when your focus is elsewhere.
Perhaps it would be better to describe the slow patch gyms often have in July and August as the period when your members’ attention is elsewhere. In the warmer months of the summer, interest goes to other things, and the great outdoors beckons for many who would otherwise head to their local gym or fitness studio. It is at times like this that you can make the most difference to your membership retention, by pulling that attention back to your facility.
Suppressing The Summertime Attrition To Raise Up Retention
Consider this: If you can hold on to them in the slow times where distractions abound, it will have an exponentially positive impact on your overall rate of retention. Why is that? It’s because they are more likely to stay throughout the year if they hang on through the summer.
That extra retention means that you have longer to market additional services and training to them. You will over an extended period, and with a slight nudge, keep them with you at the right time which can give more than a marginal incentive to stay; if they make it through the summer, they are more likely to make it through the whole year.
Make It More Than Routine Analysis
It is always easier to turn to software and the dashboard of your gym management software system to get answers about how to improve retention. That is a good thing. When it is your livelihood on the line you owe it to yourself to use every tool at your disposal.
Take action thinking up a creative plan that brings members together and puts them in social contact with one another. Organize events that allow your gym to be the center of the social lives of your members. If they get to know one another, they are more likely to renew their memberships, just to maintain the social connection.
Convert to auto renew and let them ride it out
It is all a numbers game when you encourage members to use the Auto-Renew Option from Insight; you can get some members to make an automatic commitment to renew. Also, the Gym Insight Retention Tool is there to alert you to the clients who are at risk of dropping out. Insight’s cloud-based software also performs the function of affirming the relationships that you have with your members.
Yes, we have been posting a lot about the topic of retention lately at Gym Insight. But that is because it is such vital issue and something where you can affect the most benefit through active efforts in the short term.
Customer retention is more than just catching the losses before they happen, if you apply a proactive approach, you can generate the kind of energy that helps to keep members and turn them into the best marketing team you could want. If you can increase the positive energy in your gym community you will make your fitness business more attractive; you will generate a buzz that feeds upon itself to become a self-sustaining force.
Bibliography
Fagan, Lawrence. Finding Your Retention Rate and Why It Matters. March 22, 2016. https://blog.gyminsight.com/3741-finding-your-retention-rate-and-why-it-matters/ (accessed March 29, 2016).