Marketing To Pick Up Members During The Slow Months Of Summer

What is marketing about if not finding new customers? And when business is at its slowest surely that is the time to shift down a gear and get the marketing efforts going properly. Marketing is about customers, who they are and what they want, as well as how you can mold your business to pick up some new members. You can bring in new members who want what you have and to do it at the lowest possible cost to you in the process. Of course, marketing takes an investment of time and energy, if not capital. If you are [...]

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Retention Tips To Beat The Attrition Of The Slow Season

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 [...]

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Boosting Revenue Is Great But Keep It Simple

I Am About To Contradict Myself Strange as it may seem, this is a rebuttal to my previous post about boosting revenue. Yes, increased margin is good, but too much of a good thing can take your gym off focus, especially in the early days. Some of the most successful companies have the simplest offerings, i.e., they stick to what they do best. In that post, I gave a list of different things that gym owners and managers can do to boost revenue, based on the various points on the profit and loss statement and how you can leverage them [...]

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Turbocharged Integration

We turbocharged our integration with MailChimp!: We now send the following additional information to MailChimp so that you can run your most targeted email campaigns ever: account status, birthday, visits in the past 30 days, visits in the past 90 days, and visits in the past year. Send a notice to your inactive members to get back in the gym, or just wish them a happy birthday! If you haven't set up a MailChimp account for email lists, it's time to start! Need assistance? Ask us - we're happy to help! Save

New Shortcuts!

Keyboard Shortcuts!: We've added several useful keyboard shortcuts to help you get around Insight quickly! Simply type the '?' key on any screen in Insight to pull up the list of shortcuts. You can also access the list of shortcuts by clicking on the '?' icon on the toolbar and then selecting Keyboard Shortcuts.

Chip Card Readers Roll Out And Follow Up Opportunities

Do The Dip With Your Credit Card Chip How are you doing with taking credit cards at your gym or studio these days? The term is "dip"; you dip your chip card to pay now. That is, of course, if your gym is using the EMV chip card slot on the merchant terminal, rather than still swiping the magnetic strip. As a quick reminder, magnetic strips are "bad" because they carry your account number and information in the open, for anyone to read. And that is what criminals have been doing; they are reading the unscrambled account information on magnetic [...]

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Look at the camera!

Take member pictures right from our website!: Now when you click on an existing member picture or the 'Set Picture' image on any account, you can take pictures with any webcam you have attached to your computer or the built in camera on your phone, iPad, or laptop!

Steve Jobs – So Many Lessons But Let’s Look At Just One

I recently finished reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which I thought was a fascinating life story. There are so many things about this guy that pertain to any business that it's an irresistible topic to tackle on the Gym Insight Blog. But I promise to visit the subject only one time, unless there is a call for an encore in the comments of course. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple computers, Next, and Pixar Entertainment was a complicated person to be sure. On one hand, he had a genius for design and business. Jobs had an amazing eye [...]

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New Auto Renew Option!

If you would like your term and prepaid accounts to automatically convert into open ended (paying monthly, weekly, annually) accounts at the end of their term all you have to do is select the Auto renew option. Start by pulling up the account that you would like to automatically convert into an open ended account and then click on the Edit button. From the edit account screen you will see the Auto renew check box. If you check that box, the option to specify a Renewal amount will appear. The Renewal amount is the monthly amount that the converted account [...]

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3 Points For Better Gym Membership Retention

The Virtuous Circle Of Improved Retention Since the topic of membership retention is still fresh on the pages of the Gym Insight Blog, let's talk about the strategic points to hold on to your customers a little longer. No doubt, you have some idea of what you are doing well and what can be improved, and there are uncounted sources of ideas for retention on the Web, but it never hurts to have an over-arching strategy in place, right? The Upside Of Improved Gym Member Retention As an example, if you can increase your retention rate from ninety-two to ninety-five [...]

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Lifetime Customer Value Calculation And Why It Matters

Think About What Each Customer Means To You Individually, unless you have a specialized studio that caters to an elite clientele, each customer is just a marginal element of your monthly revenue. Not that you should ever think of them that way literally. Instead, you should look at the big picture: The total value of a customer is quantifiable, and once you've measured it, you can systematically improve it. Who cares about lifetime value? If you own a gym, or you manage the operations of a small gym for someone else, you need to care about such things. Customer lifetime [...]

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ACSM Worldwide Survey And Trends For 2016 In Review

Fitness Trends For 2016 It's about time once again to review the trends that are in the ascendant and what has changed in the last year or two in the fitness industry. Fortunately, we don't have to guess or dig too deeply. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) produces a survey of the top twenty trending issues in the minds of fitness professionals. If you haven't done so already, you really should view the results of this year's survey at this ACSM link. We have looked at trends before, and it's a fascinating pastime to watch how the market [...]

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Finding Your Retention Rate and Why It Matters

Back To Basics Yet Again Even in this digital-first era, when it comes to operating a business, it still all boils down to the basics. By this, I mean a few specific skills and functions that we have addressed in some detail over the years, here on the Gym Insight Blog. But being basics, they never suffer for a little repetition. Of these, membership retention stands out as one of the most critical factors. Small progressive improvements can take you from a struggling small business owner, sleeping in the back office, to the top of your local marketplace. The economy [...]

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