Member Surveys (Sales & Retention Convention pt2)

We’ve talked about surveys a few times on this blog (Engaging surveys for Gym Members, Member Surveys as a Retention Tool), so it was good to present a whole section on surveys at the Sales & Retention Convention.

There are lots of good rationales to run member surveys from getting insights and feedback, to scoring and improving your service, or just helping to tailor your member experience. Surveys are a great time and resource efficient way of having meaningful interactions with members. You’re not just sending them a message, but asking them to tell you what they think.

Member Retention Communications: Traditional vs Digital (Sales & Retention Convention pt1)

At last week's Sales & Retention Convention, Guy’s first presentation covered member retention communications. We discussed traditional comms channels (such as email, SMS and post), and digital channels (social media, blogs, vlogs, surveys and the web in general).

There’s clearly a big crossover between what we call traditional and digital, so another way to look at defining each is that traditional marketing is a push model, whereas digital is more pull. Members will receive traditional messages when you send (push) them out. Conversely, on digital channels such as social media, they will see content based on their likes, and previous comments and shares.

Sales & Retention Convention - Thanks

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Sales & Retention Convention last week. It was a great turnout with 40 people in the room from a wide range of leisure centres, gyms, and private clubs from all over the country.

One of the key themes was comparing traditional marketing with new digital trends and processes. A lot of ground was covered throughout the day, including lead generation, referrals, retention communications, surveys and reviews. Wayne Elliott from Feefo opened a lot of minds with the potential usage and pitfalls with online reviews, and how to build social trust. All the presentations linked sales and retention processes creating a joined-up approach for the fitness industry.

How to Make the Most from Make a Move - Part 2

The Technogym Make a Move challenge is a UK nationwide club challenge that encourages facilities using the MyWellness cloud to challenge their members to collect MOVEs. It is a team challenge, so it pits instructors against each other to find out which instructor team can collect the most MOVEs from 7th to 25th November.

If you missed the previous article about maximising your team, you can read it here.

Part 2 – Collecting MOVEs

You’ve got a whole bunch of members in your team now, but that’s no guarantee of collecting the most MOVEs. Here’s some quick tips on how to get up the nationwide leader-board and win the Skillmill:

How to Make the Most from Make a Move - Part 1

The Technogym Make a Move challenge is a UK nationwide club challenge that encourages facilities using the MyWellness cloud to challenge their members to collect MOVEs. It is a team challenge, so it pits instructors against each other to find out which instructor team can collect the most MOVEs from 7th to 25th November.

For motivation, there are 2 focuses on prizes. The winning team’s club will win a Skillmill, plus £500 in education vouchers. Although this will benefit the members at that club, there’s more prizes up for grabs for everyone who takes part. The top 20 participants nationwide will each win a Technogym goody-bag and training kit, plus online coaching and an Olympic training seminar. Finally, everyone who takes part will get fitter and healthier, and have more interaction with instructors, which will help them stay members for longer!

Part 1 – Collecting Members

So how to you get as many members to sign-up to your team? Here’s our top tips list for getting as many members involved in this (or any) challenge:

Why you should come to the next Sales & Retention Convention on 15th Nov

Spoiler alert: this article previews content for the forthcoming Sales & Retention Convention. If you’ve already booked your tickets, and like suspense, please move along. If not, read this and make your decision at the end…

There are massive benefits to linking your sales and retention processes. Primarily, your members will benefit, as they’ll stick around longer and get fitter and healthier. But this will also help your club’s bottom line, with more sales and better retention.

The Sales & Retention Convention: What are we talking about?

Dave Reeves and Guy Griffiths chatted about the topics for the next Sales & Retention Convention, being held on Tuesday 15th November at the Warwickshire. Read on to find out more, and to get your tickets...

Measuring member engagement

You know how many members you have, or how many are paying, at least. But just how engaged are your members?

There’s a bunch of metrics you can use with social media to measure engagement – likes, follows, clicks, shares, etc. But knowing how your active members feel about their experience in your club is critical to your business.

Your members have goals, how about your club?

Members are motivated by having a goal, and members with well-defined goals stay longer. But what about your club? Do you have some simple, but well defined goals for the short and long term?

Members with goals stay longer

SLL Olympic Challenge - Congratulations to the winners!

Congratulations to North Herts Leisure Centre, Silsoe Community Sports Centre and Archers Hitchin for placing first, second and third respectively in the recent SLL (Stevenage Leisure Limited) Olympic challenge. And well done to all sites that took part, and all the members who competed and won prizes.

ThinkDigital Event in Barnsley #DigitalRetention

A big thank you to eGym and Club Manager Central for inviting me to talk at their Think Digital event earlier this week in Barnsley.

A good turnout of delegates included health clubs and gyms in the private and public sectors, as well as a handful of industry consultants and press. Most were looking to learn more about digital retention, mixed in with some fun and competition around the Tyke Karting track in the afternoon. The mix of educational streams and demos, and the linkage between sessions received great feedback from delegates.

I presented an educational session on data driven member retention.

Uniting members and making teams with Pokémon Go – Part 4

Now that you are all set and and your members are raring to go, its time for your club to join a team to take over your local PokéGym.

Using Pokémon GO to get active is not a new concept, but integrating it into your health club or gym can help you to retain members, inspire fitness through a fun new concept and maybe even catch a few new members along the way.

In this article we will explain to you a bit more about PokéGyms and battles, as well as giving you a few ideas on how to integrate these aspects of the game into your club’s Pokémon program.

Catching, Hatching and getting your members moving with Pokémon GO

Improving health club retention with Pokémon Go – Part 3

In the last article we gave you a few hints on how to integrate Pokémon GO with your health club marketing plans.  Not only will this help with member retention, but it also gives your club a steady social media content stream that is highly engaging.  If you would like to know more about this secondary benefit, get in touch with our team or download the full Pokémon GO guide. If you need to go back to basics, check out our 1 minute getting started guide for health clubs.

So in this article we’re giving you ideas and methods on catching, hatching and exercising for your new Pokémon GO programs.

Is your club a PokéStop or PokéGym?

If your club is already a PokéStop or PokéGym, then you should find more Pokémon nearby, and can also attach lure modules to attract more (read on to find out how). Let members and non-members know with posters and social media posts, and have your staff (create master Pokémon trainers) educate members about the game.

Getting your club ready to play Pokémon GO and improve your health club retention – Part 2

By now, you must have heard of Pokémon GO – the latest app craze to hit our mobiles this summer! But if you haven’t read this quick guide first.

Over the next few articles GG Fit will tell you exactly how you can get your club on board with Pokémon GO and use the game to help your member retention.  First, you will need to get your club ready.  Here’s how…

Locating your nearest PokéStop or PokéGym

First up on your to-do list is locating your local PokéStops or PokéGyms.  It could be that you are one!

What is Pokémon GO – a quick guide for Health Clubs

Here’s your one-minute guide to Pokémon GO…

Pokémon GO uses a mobile phone’s GPS to locate the trainer’s position on a local area map, showing Pokémon activity, PokéStops, and PokéGyms. When you find a Pokémon, you can view it in augmented reality, so the creature appears against the real-world background, whereby you can take a screen shot to share with friends.

How to use Pokémon GO to improve your health club retention – Part 1

Are any of your members playing Pokémon GO?
{hint: the answer is Yes!}

Whether you think it’s a fad, a bandwagon, or the solution to the obesity epidemic, there’s no doubt that Pokémon GO is here. It’s grabbing headlines, and people are signing up much faster than for anything else.

We don’t like jumping on bandwagons at GGFit, but we do believe there are ways that Pokémon GO can help improve member retention at your health club...

In short, the game is another reason to interact with more members, to drive more people into your club, and to get them more active.

Education

For starters, you have an opportunity to educate people (members, prospects, staff) about Pokémon GO. If you’ve not played it yet, click here toread our 1 minute guide to the game.

Do your members enjoy being single?

This is a guest post from Joshua Uwadiae of WeGym...

When your members buddy up they will stick around longer, see more results and you will make more money.

Members who make a friend at the gym are 40 per cent less likely to cancel their membership, according to the TRP 10,000 report. 

Team sports naturally engender a social atmosphere and make friend-making easy, it's less natural to strike up a friendship with a stranger on the treadmill next to you. This is why operators up until this point have never been able to scalably influence this process. 

How can you help more of your members buddy up and make friends?

Point of Sale Referrals (increase retention with sales!) - Guest Post

This is a guest post from David Reeves of Promote Leisure, who presented at the inaugural Sales & Retention Convention earlier this year.

I want to share with you one of the key focus points that was discussed on the day; how to present and get lots of “Point of Sale Referral”, which will translate into sales, if prospected correctly. 

Point of Sale (POS) referral is to ask a new member for the names of friends, family or work colleagues who may be interested in joining the club. This is done at the moment when the excited new member joins, hence why it is called “Point of Sale” referral.

Olympic and Paralympic Challenges

The Rio Olympics run from Friday 5th to Sunday 21st August, and the Paralympics from Wednesday 7th to Sunday 18th September. Both are great opportunities to run challenges at your club, but with a month to go, you'll need to move fast to be ready...

Member messages: SMS or Email?

Leisure Management System providers and partners continue to push email as the best member communication channel. But who is it best for, the system, the club, or the member?

Email is low cost, easy to implement, and can contain lots of content. But open rates are often low, unsubscribes higher, and there can be a tendency to include too much content for certain messages.

For your monthly newsletters, email is great. But for short, critical messages that you want all targeted members to open and read, SMS is a much better option.

Maximising ROI from Events with Lead Forensics

When it comes to events and exhibitions, Lead Forensics is the tool that can guarantee a return on your investment. Click here to find out how it works, or read on to get some conference tips and tricks.

Before:

Before the show, preparation is key.

Generating more corporate leads for Health Clubs with Lead Forensics

At a time when corporate wellness is in the news headlines, the fitness industry has a great opportunity to show how it can deliver better health and well-being to organisations. 

A good deal of GGFit health club clients are using Lead Forensics to identify corporate membership opportunities. And they are getting great results… signing up new corporate accounts, realising more business from existing accounts, and helping more corporate employees to become more active.

The Retention Convention 2016

While some of the presenters didn’t quite come up to the high standard of last year’s retention convention [joke], this year’s event had some great content over 2 days in Birmingham, and a real international feel.

Arron Williams talked about the boutique market, and how members at boutique clubs are basically getting hooked on exercise as a drug. The flow genome project video was a very interesting side-line, but overall, we need to remember that boutique clubs are not just Soulcycle and Barry’s, but also the local Pilates/Yoga studio, or Zumba in the church hall.

Feedback from the Sales & Retention Convention

One of the best ways to improve your member retention is to link your retention initiatives with your sales processes and scripts. Sell the actions and experiences to your members, and then deliver them!

This is what we presented at the Sales & Retention Convention last month – a joined up approach to getting more members into your club and getting them to stick around longer. In these brief blog posts, we’ll try to sum up a couple of hours’ presentation in a few hundred words.

Everyone who attended received a copy of the presentation link – if you would also like to review the slides, please contact us

Delegate feedback from the event was very positive, here’s what some of the attendees said:

Selling CLASSES at the Sales & Retention Convention

The second retention session started with selling fitness classes. Again, all the research shows that members who attend classes are more engaged and stay longer.

Some members get into fitness classes straight away, others take some convincing, and some swear classes are just not for them. By selling classes, we’re looking to speed up the convincing process, and convert some of the non-believers.

To do this, you need to know which classes will appeal to these members and ensure there are no barriers to getting new (and existing) members into classes.

How to get members to join a class?

Selling INDUCTIONS at the Sales & Retention Convention

One of the best ways to improve your member retention is to link your retention initiatives with your sales processes and scripts. Sell the actions and experiences to your members, and then deliver them!

This is what we presented at the Sales & Retention Convention last week – a joined up approach to getting more members into your club and getting them to stick around longer. In these blog posts, we’ll sum up a couple of hours’ presentation in a few hundred words.

The first session on selling retention was about selling the induction. Put simply, members who have inductions stay longer on average. How much longer depends on the club, quality, and a variety of other factors, but broadly speaking, members who have inductions, stay longer.

So why do we need to sell the induction? It comes down to experience...

LetsMoveForABetterWorld - Celebrate - GGFit Tips (5/5)

Technogym's Global Challenge for 2016 is well under way, and while it's a little too soon to see what the final results will look like, you need to start to plan your celebrations, and you should also be celebrating along the way...

Assuming all your members, guests, staff, and community are fully engaged, you'll be keeping an eye on your internal leader boards, as well as the global leaderboard for where your club stands in the country ranking, and where your country stands in the global ranking. Here's some more tips:

LetsMoveForABetterWorld - Backward Compatibility for Wellness - GGFit Tips (4/5)

A few clubs have not yet upgraded to the MyWellness Cloud, and still use the Wellness system. Unfortunately, it's not possible to take part in the Let's Move global challenge, but you can still run simple challenges, and even compete against other clubs.

If you are one of these clubs, and want to set-up a challenge to compete with other clubs who are part of the same group or family, then try a distance challenge. Here's how:

LetsMoveForABetterWorld - Engage! GGFit Tips (3/5)

Technogym's Global Challenge starts on 1st March 2016, but you need to be prepared by now (click here for 14 tips that you should have already done). Most importantly, you need to have registered by this Thursday 18th Feb. 

download your bespoke marketing from the tools section of  the Let's Move site

All the details are on the Let's Move microsite, but here's what you should be doing in the 2 weeks running up to the challenge to ensure you get everyone involved:

How to ensure your PTs enhance member retention

This is a guest post by Lee Cain of HFE (Health and Fitness Education), the UK's leading provider of personal trainer qualifications and fitness instructor courses.

How important are Personal Trainers (PTs) in determining member experience and retention?

Most new members will have some interaction with a personal trainer and that experience will play a critical role in defining their early impression of the gym. This is why inductions are so important for new gym goers.

LetsMoveForABetterWorld - Prepare! GGFit Tips (2/5)

The overall aim of #LetsMoveForABetterWorld is to get more people moving, promote activity, and make the world a better and healthier place. It’s a great way to encourage your members to move more, and to bring their friends down to contribute to your club’s moves. Taking part will also raise the profile of your club in your community, boost your social media presence, motivate your staff, and what’s more, you could win some very cool prizes! 

Full details are on the Let'sMove microsite, but read on for a quick summary as to how you should be preparing right now…

LetsMoveForABetterWorld - Intro - GGFit Tips (1/5)

The 2016 edition of Technogym’s #LetsMoveForABetterWorld Global Challenge is coming next month, and if your facility uses the mywellness cloud, you need to take part. If not there’s still some top tips and lessons in these posts, so please keep reading…

Please note, if your club is on the mywellness cloud, but not licensed for the Challenge app, go ahead and register, you’ll get to join and try out challenge while Let’s Move is on.


We’re going to follow this post up with 3 articles on getting the most from Let’s Move…

How do you know if your new members this January will stay?

We hope you’re having the best January ever, getting lots of new (and returning) members into healthier and fitter lifestyles, and growing your membership base too. You’re hitting the numbers now, but can you get a barometer reading on how long your January joiners will stick around for? 

Of course, if you’re following all the retention advice, each and every new member will be having a welcome session (induction), at least 4 interactions in the first month, welcome messages and follow-ups, and attending a class. Everyone follows your member journey to the letter, right?

How are fitness brands repositioning due to rising competition?

We’re often asked what’s happening in the fitness industry, for advice and recommendations outside of the relatively narrow field of member retention. The best way is to attend all the fitness networking events that you can, read print publications such as Health Club Management, Workout, FitPro, and keep an eye on any relevant blogs and online sources. But if you want a concentrated fix of the state of the market right now, check out Ray Algar’s latest report on the Health Club Industry Mid-Market.

Double your joining fees in January

January rolls round again, and the gym campaigns start with banners, flyers, emails, and text messages. The airwaves are buzzing with the same old hackneyed offers of no join fee, join for £1, half price first month, first month free, all during the busiest month of the year. But could you make more money in the short and long term by breaking the mould and charging more?

Any other industry would double the joining/start-up fee in their busiest month, check out the handy “when’s school half-term” service provided by a well-known family holiday provider below. We’re not saying it’s morally right, but they know when people want to visit, and they make the most of it.

When's school half-term?