Engaging Surveys for Gym Members

Surveys are a great way of garnering opinion, but when used effectively, they can be a really great member engagement tool. They can help to reinforce the value of your membership, act as a forum for feedback, and even turnaround leavers or ex-members.

Types of Survey

Quick status questions on twitter and facebook are simple ways of getting more interaction – comments rather than just likes, which can help to open dialogue. On facebook pages or groups you can ask more structured questions with multi choice answers – easier for your fans to interact as they don’t have to type a response, and easier to monitor and publish results.

Sending surveys by e-mail, either embedded or with a link from a newsletter or in-club card is the next step up. Beware too many questions (small and regular is better), and don’t forget to set up the WIIFM (What’s In It For the Member).

More complex solutions are built into apps, website homepages, or can even be completed in the gym on your cardio workout screen.

Failing that, the good old clipboard in club still works, you just need to work harder collecting the information and then have someone do the data entry before you can analyse it.

Segmentation

Here are some ideas of segments or timings that you could be surveying:

• Prospects – anyone who’s visited lately
• New members – end of first 4 weeks
• Active members – all recent visitors
• Leavers  - quick questionnaire
• Leavers – one month later survey
• Ex-members – leavers from last 12 months

Rewards

For some respondents, the WIIFM is knowing where they fit in the club demographic, so make sure you publish your survey results. Others will need more encouragement to complete even the simplest of surveys, but rewards can run from the free (guest cards, free month’s membership, free annual membership) to the more expensive (headphones, trainers, sports vouchers, or holidays) which are more likely to be a prize draw than one per respondent!

It’s good to analyse the results of your survey, publish them for everyone to see (including those who didn’t reply this time around). You might even feedback to staff or management and adapt your service accordingly. The real measure is engagement, and how you can get more members engaged next time around. How many responded, or shared the survey. And how many of those took up the offer, or re-joined as a result of the survey?

We also talked about surveys in this 2011 post.