Make it Easy to Leave, and More People Will Stay

For years, the fitness industry has relied on friction to retain members.

Long notice periods. Hidden clauses. Phone-only cancellations.

It worked… on paper.

But that model is now under pressure. Regulation is tightening around “subscription traps,” customer expectations are shifting, and the tolerance for opaque cancellation processes is disappearing fast.

We asked recently: what’s the last subscription you tried to cancel?
The responses weren’t about price or value; they were about frustration.

That’s the real issue.

The problem isn’t that people leave.
It’s how they feel when they do.

The old model: friction as retention

There’s a long-standing industry assumption that if you make cancellation harder, fewer people will cancel.

This is technically true... but commercially short-sighted.

Friction doesn’t create loyalty.
It creates resentment… and that shows up somewhere else:

• Negative word of mouth
• Lower trust at point of sale
• Reduced likelihood of rejoining
• Brand damage that compounds over time

People don’t forget bad exits.
And in fitness, where rejoining is common, that matters more than most sectors. 

Inductions for Everybody

How can we be more efficient and offer a standard service when onboarding new members? And how can we deliver more? The standard industry term is still induction, but many clubs are changing to ‘activation’, ‘welcome appointment’, ‘step 1’, ‘getting started’, etc. If we’re shifting mindsets, let’s use new terminology.

“All of our members have an induction” is often the response when we ask about retention strategies, particularly onboarding.

Club operators and owners believe that they really are doing their best to ensure all new members have the maximum chance of sticking around.

But when we dig under the bonnet, either through further discussion, or analysis of club data, it often transpires that fewer than half of new members actually attend some kind of onboarding appointment.

 

We’ve looked at this issue many times, with many clubs; from leisure trusts and councils, private clubs and independent gyms, even low-cost, low-staff gyms, where inductions really aren’t popular at all.

Balancing Retention Efforts and Resources: Making It Work with a Smaller Team

Retention has always been more cost-effective than acquisition, but in today’s climate, it's no longer just a smart strategy, it’s a financial necessity.

With rising operational costs, including increases in employer National Insurance (NI) contributions, many clubs and gyms are facing the hard reality of needing to do more with less. Staffing budgets are tighter. Teams are stretched. Yet the pressure to deliver results, including higher member retention, is greater than ever.

So how can your club maintain or even improve member retention without adding headcount or burning out your existing team? The answer lies in working smarter, not just harder. Here’s how...

Who should deliver Inductions?

How to increase induction percentage with limited staff – have everyone deliver them?

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know we encourage ‘inductions’ for new and returning members in order to improve early engagement, visits, habit building, and ultimately member retention. The question of who should deliver this important appointment came up at a recent workshop, and sparked an interesting discussion.

What’s an induction called?

Before we get into the discussion, and possibly some controversial hot water, let’s talk about the ‘induction’. This term is often used in the fitness industry, but more and more clubs are quite rightly using different names for this appointment, such as Activation, Welcome session, Step 1, Consultation. All have their merits, and we honestly believe anything other than ‘induction’ is a good name.

What’s in an induction?

Retention Starts with Culture: The Power of Member Interactions

After a positive start to 2025 for many clubs, February is about maintaining membership sales momentum, but more importantly, focusing on retaining all your new members (and the existing ones) as long as possible.

Filling a leaky bucket doesn’t make sense—stop losing members by focusing on retention, not just sales.

Retention isn’t about complicated strategies—it’s about talking to people, consistently and meaningfully.

Boosting Retention with Education: Empower Your Staff and Your Members

The more we explore the relationship between retention and education in health and fitness clubs, the clearer it becomes that they are deeply intertwined. In fact, a well-educated member is not only more likely to stay committed but also more engaged in their fitness journey.

As well as training, developing, and progressing staff, you need to educate your members on a wide range of topics, which helps with retention for both members and staff.

Staff Education - Technical and Soft Skills

Most staff have technical skills through training, whether a level 1, 2, 3, etc fitness instructor, or lifeguard qualifications, which have mandatory and regular updates to maintain safety standards.

Saving Cancelling Members - The Downgrade Save

Maintain engagement and payment on some level with members who want to cancel.

The panel debates around the Xplor attrition report have brought leavers into focus again for the industry. This is great timing, given we expect more members will to be looking to cancel in the coming months. In addition to seasonal trends, the war on attrition is likely to step up a gear as the financial crisis intensifies and people look to tighten their financial belts (and loosen their physical belts as a result!)

We’re going to cover some of the data you should be collecting on leavers, particularly reasons and feedback, and then look at ways of saving members who want to cancel.

The Attrition Battle

We’ve talked about bringing absentees back in the last article (8/15). If you ignore your absentees, they’re more likely to leave, so the key message was to do something to try to bring them back. Even imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.

However, when members cancel, lots of clubs still stick their heads in the sand. If nothing else, it’s important to look at why and how members cancel. And to state the obvious, why and how are separate questions. Why is the reason (or excuse) that a few of your leavers tell you, or you find out through a call, cancellation form, or survey. How is the method, often cancelled at bank or payment failed, occasionally by letter, message, phone call, or in club.

Don't Let Leavers leave without a chase

Leavers are outnumbering joiners at many clubs this autumn. Clearly the rising cost of living and economic uncertainty is having an effect, but you need to find out more about why your members are leaving. There are two parts to this article, the first talks about the reasons to contact leavers, and then a real-life anecdote about cancelling a corporate gym membership.

Attrition on the rise

Lots of clubs have seen reasonable membership sales in September 2022, traditionally the second-best sales month of the year. Few had record sales numbers though, and membership attrition is on the rise across the whole industry.

One step forwards, two steps back - Retention ideas for Autumn 2022

For the last few years, many clubs have been running to standstill. As retention consultants, we often get called in to help shift this balance, reducing attrition to enable clubs to really grow their membership.

One-in, one-out

It’s been an incredibly tough few years for the fitness industry, and while there have been pockets of positivity as clubs have re-opened following COVID-19 lockdowns, operators and owners are still talking about new member numbers matching leavers each month. Members and prospects have more concerns, more alternatives, less time, and less money. And as clubs focus more on sales, the retention battle gets harder to fight, let alone win.

Unfortunately, it’s about to get tougher.

TO BOOK OR NOT TO BOOK

Fitness business owners are facing a conundrum at the moment. Booking your gym visit became the new normal for a lot of members during lockdown, but as restrictions ease, should clubs continue to make their members pre-book sessions, or let members visit ad-hoc?

There are a lot of strong opinions and debates on this topic. Customer choice is important, but you also need to consider the business needs and model, and how you can best serve the majority of your members, not just the hardcore (aka the loud ones!)

REALITY BITES

The fitness industry has buckets of positivity as clubs start to reopen. You need to plug the leaks now more than ever to ensure your fitness business survives.

New member sales at gyms in England have been very encouraging since reopening on 16 April. We expect to see a similar trend across the rest of the UK and Europe as lock-down restrictions are eased. Adding indoor group exercise will also bring a good boost to member numbers.

The fitness industry is enjoying the best April ever... but it's nothing compared with a good January.

You need to do two things to plug the leaks and fill your buckets. But first, let’s consider the problems…

8 Gym Re-Opening Lessons in Member Retention

Unless you run a brand-new club, this is not your first re-opening.
Some clubs have re-opened 3 or 4 times over the last 12 months.
And whether you are opening for outdoor exercise only, gym but no classes, or another variant, there are lessons to be learned each time you do it. 

GYM MEMBER RECOVERY… AND GROWTH

It is clear from all the conversations I have had with clubs in the second part of 2020 that the biggest issue facing the industry is getting members back. Many memberships are still frozen or suspended, and lots have cancelled. Furthermore, some members are still paying yet not visiting, and consequently are at high risk of cancelling.

Some industry research reports that most members will return (up to 88%). But the reality is that many have not yet. It is hard to remove bias from fitness surveys when they are mostly completed by the keen, raving fans of your facility. As clubs dip in and out of lockdown, member recovery is going to become a full-time, constant battle. Whilst it will feel like a battle, it is easier to re-engage your existing members than to find new ones.

To get more of your members back, you need to be smart and to work hard at it. You also need to have lower price options and accept that having lesser member revenue is better than nothing.

How to get over the January blues if you work in the fitness industry in 2021

The two things that successful club owners and gym managers will be doing in January 2021

Boris Johnson brought Blue Monday* forward by three weeks this year. Traditionally the third Monday of January, when Christmas has faded, debts are at their worst, and it is dark and cold. He moved it from 18th Jan to 4th Jan, starting at 8pm, with the announcement of the return of lockdown in the UK. This meant the closure of gyms, and a return to home schooling. The idea of dry January was kicked swiftly into touch by many people, not just parents of schoolchildren.

Know Your Numbers - Gym Owner Monthly Article Nov 2020

An old saying goes “If you want to improve something, you have to measure it”. Yet very few fitness businesses really know their numbers. This is an industry-wide issue, not just related to independent gym owners. Systems and dashboards help some clubs, but you need to define your key performance indicators (KPIs) and use them to know your business better and drive it forwards. 

There is a wealth of data available to businesses today, which is why the ‘key’ in KPIs is important. These are 5-10 key metrics that allow you to understand the state of your business. Some will be a combination of other figures, and you may need to drill-down into the detail, but these key metrics give you a performance headline. 

These numbers are absolutely critical to running your club, showing what is working, and what, where, or who you need to pay more attention to. Without accurate numbers, you’re driving blind, basing decisions on guesswork and intuition.

How to Develop a Successful Customer Feedback Strategy

Here's the Elevate session that Guy chaired earlier this month with Andy Glover (Places Leisure), David Hopkins (Proinsight Mystery Shopping), Paul Roberts (MyCustomerLens) and Lucy Findlay (Elevate)

It was a great session with lots of learning for all.

Why is feedback so important? Andy talked about immediacy, expectations, prioritisation, and mindset at Places, and discussed their brilliant response rate to member surveys.

David explained how compliance and brand are as important as the process for a lot of Proinsight clients.

Paul said that succesful companies are now listening more, not only to customers, but to staff, prospects, and ex-members.

With emotions driving more behaviour, its more important than ever to be close to your key stakeholders - members and staff.

Feel free to add any more questions you have in the comments...

PT WITH ME IS GREAT BECAUSE…

Imagine if all your clients had to complete a tiebreaker in a quiz or competition. How would they complete the above phrase? How do they see you? Why do they train with you? And does what you sell match what they are buying?

Good listening is one of the most important skills if you are going to be an excellent personal trainer. You need to listen to your clients’ needs, which are constantly changing. Let’s explore how you can learn more from them, and use this feedback to help your business to grow and evolve.

Understand your market and your clients

More Member Feedback - Ex-member feedback 5/5

We’ve talked about joiners and leavers, however, you will have limited numbers on both of these processes, depending on your sales and retention numbers. Your active member database should offer a larger data set, but it’s often your ex-members that can reveal a lot. Whether or not you have asked for feedback as they left, it’s nearly always worth surveying your ex-members – those who left in the last couple of years, say quarterly. Again, ask open questions, find out what they’re up to now, what are their current fitness goals, where they are exercising, how often, and other more general info that shows you’re still interested in them.

What we’ve learned from ex-members’ feedback

More Member Feedback - Cancellation feedback 4/5

Feedback from cancelling members can be the most powerful information that an organisation can get their hands on. Don’t be like a couple of clubs we know that don’t ask for leaver feedback because it will all be negative, and don’t ignore the negative reviews. You are missing out on all the information that you need to improve your business. 

We are not talking about leave reason here (moving away, anyone?) but genuine user comments about what has led them to choose to cancel. A phone call (if you have the resource) is great from a customer service perspective, and absolutely the best way to try to turn around a cancellation request, but the anonymous (or not) survey where an ex-member or leaver can leave some constructive comments will garner lots more honest opinion.

More Member Feedback - First appointment feedback 3/5

A great place to start collecting member feedback is the first appointment of a new member. Asking what they think or feel after this visit shows you care and gets the new member in the habit of giving feedback. If the first appointment is with an instructor (induction, class, etc) then the instructor should tell the member that they’ll be getting a feedback request and should fill it in. This will boost open, click, and completion rates.

Learnings from new member feedback