New Member Comms: First of Four Free February Mini Masterclasses in Member Retention

If you missed our mini-masterclass on measuring new member communications at the start of this week, you can review the 10 minute video here.

The idea of these fast, focused, free sessions is to make you think about how you interact with your new members, give you some measures to check new member engagement, and show you how you can improve member retention. If we can help you to get your members to stick around longer, they'll get fitter and healthier, which is the end goal!

Watch next Monday's session on 'selling' inductions to new members live on facebook at 2pm, or register on the series crowdcast stream.

WHY SPORTS Future of Sport Conference 2018

We were privileged to attend the WHY SPORTS Future of Sport 2018: Activity and Employment Conference this week at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. With key messages around Kids Activity, Public Health, Education and Employment, there were many parallels and lessons to apply to the health club industry.

Kenny Gibson, Head of Public Health Commissioning for NHS England opened by talking about data and communication.

GGFit Mini Masterclasses Preview

2 minute preview of the forthcoming mini masterclasses running this Feb

There will be four free webinars, running every Monday at 2pm from 5th Feb.

register at crowdcast.io/ggfit, or like and subscribe at facebook.com/ggfit

GGFit Mini-Masterclasses for Improved Member Retention

In 2018 GGFit will be producing Mini-Masterclasses in Membership Retention. This extends our mission to increase awareness about retention initiatives that work, to educate the fitness industry and question the status quo, and to help you to get your members fitter, healthier and happier.

As well as getting lots of ideas as to how you can measure and improve your member retention, you’ll also learn how to implement those ideas. Plus, you can expect your staff to be more engaged and motivated, your members to stick around longer, and your bottom line to look more positive.

The format will be short, focused sessions for 5-10 minutes on a key retention message or initiative each week. These will be live-cast over the web on our webinar platform, as well as being live-streamed to Facebook. As such, all sessions will initially be free, but you can catch-up on previous sessions, and get reminders for future sessions if you register here.

GDPR – Sink or Swim, from the Sales & Retention Convention Nov '17

At last week’s Sales & Retention Convention, Regina Lally from Databasix delivered a great keynote on GDPR for the health and fitness industry. Feedback shows it was the most popular presentation of the day, justifying the prime position and time dedicated to the subject. 

Here’s a summary of key points… if you would like to see the whole presentation, then please sign up for the Webinar on Tuesday 28 November at 2pm (free to convention delegates, or £25 otherwise).

GDPR is about Accountability, Transparency and individual’s rights. 

Here are 4 myths (that we regularly hear) which are not true:

How to handle the membership end process - The Sales & Retention Convention

How do you manage the process of members leaving your club? Many organisations do nothing about leavers, sticking their heads in the sand. If handled well, the leave process can help turn members around, or at the very least, improve your chances of getting an ex-member to return

The first session at the autumn 2017 Sales & Retention Convention started where the last event left off, focusing on members who have perhaps been absent for some time, and now are trying to leave. We talked about the process that leavers should go through, the opportunity for dialogue or discussion with the member who wants to leave, and collecting and making use of critical membership data. If you want to hear this session repeated live, please check out the live webinar on Tuesday 21st November 2017.

Sport and Physical Activity is Life Changing - ukactive 2017 Summit Review

The ukactive National Summit 2017 : Inspirational on so many levels.

The ukactive summit at the QE2 conference centre on 1 November 2017 was a fantastic event attended by a capacity crowd of 700 delegates from over 300 organisations. The speaker line-up was impressive, with ukactive stalwarts Steven Ward and Tanni Grey-Thompson; Lords, MPs and politicians in Andrew Lansley, Tracey Crouch, Penny Mordaunt and Phillip Lee; athletes like Laurence Dallaglio, Darren Campbell, and John McAvoy, and several more knights of the realm.

Decent data is vital if you want to improve member retention. That's why we work with the DataHub

Lord Kelvin said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”, and hit on one of the key issues in the fitness industry. Ask a club manager what their retention rate is, and many will shrug, while others will quote an attrition figure from months ago. Follow-up by asking what they’re doing to improve their retention, and you’ll typically get more blank looks, or possibly something about inductions or 6-week programme reviews.

The Datahub aggregates data from thousands of facilities. Datahub clients get accurate, real-time reports on their retention performance, as well as Geo Impact, Social Value and Marketing Intelligence tools. Any other organisations can benefit from anonymised benchmark data to compare against their own performance.

Here are 7 data points that GGFit clients use as retention Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), with benchmark data powered by the DataHub.

How is GDPR going to affect Gym Membership Sales & Retention

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force in May 2018. It protects the rights of individuals, giving them control over how their data is handled, and aims to simplify the regulatory process for businesses.

How will GDPR affect gym membership sales and retention? The quick answer is that it’s going to make both sales and retention more difficult.

Tom Fishburne @marketoonist

There’s a lot of work to be done ahead of 25th May 2018, but you need to resist the temptation to put this off. In fact, the sooner you start, the better.

Sales & Retention Convention Autumn 2017 - Preview Video

So we got together last week at ukactive's offices in London to plan the presentations for the next Sales & Retention Convention.

We were joined by colleagues from Promote Leisure, as well as guest speakers from ukactive and Databasix. Find out what we'll be talking about on 14th November in this quick video...

...and then book your tickets for the convention here.