mywellness challenge club - Rugby World Cup Challenge

The Rugby World Cup (RWC) is a good excuse to run a long team challenge. This challenge can get a little complicated, so it’s up to you how far you go with this at your club.

(We're running this for a few clients; if you'd like us to set-up and manage it for you on your mywellness system(s), please email info@ggfit.com)

The basic premise is for members to join a RWC team, and then collect the most MOVEs. Some teams will have more members, so take average MOVEs per member per team.

Why do we still try to get new gym members to swim?

Does your new member process still include reference to swimming? 

(Don’t have a pool? Don’t skip this article, there’s still valuable content, just read down to paragraph 3…)

Many clubs still go overboard trying to get new members to use their pool, selling the benefits on joining, and mentioning it in new member email comms. Sure, the pool has a big cost overhead, but convincing new gym members to swim is a waste of breath or email content 99% of the time. Swimmers do tend to stay longer, but persuading gym users to swim is a thankless task*.

Swimming in Zambia (ZambiaTourism.com)

Why gym rejoiners need an induction

Have you been a member before? The question to a new joiner seems so innocent, but it is potentially opening up a big loophole* to dodge out of one of the cornerstones of member retention…

A couple of new clients this year, when asked about their new member induction** rate quoted “around 80%” (a figure based on feeling, rather than data). They go on, “and we’ll be hard pushed to do any better, because the other 20% are re-joiners”.

Why don’t re-joiners get an induction, we ask? “They already had one”.
This opens up so many questions… When was their last induction (last year, 10 years ago)? How was it? Did they really have one (can you prove it)? And so on.

Parents Sports Day at the Summer Fair

We just ran a parents’ sports day at our PTA summer fair. Originally, this was because there are no Mums' or Dads' races at the kids’ sports day (probably for good reason!), and because it’s a great opportunity to raise money for the PTA.

However, it also brought more people along to the summer fair, got them there earlier in the day (and ensured they were thirsty). In a wider context, the event was great for raising awareness of activity through the school, and creating a lot of fun for the kids.

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

Tour de France - inclusive and engaging mywellness challenge

Here’s one of the challenges we’re running in the mywellness challenge club this July. At first, it seems like a challenge for keen cyclists. But with a couple of simple twists, you can make it appealing to all members who visit your club. 

Le Tour is the biggest bike race in the world, and unless you have no bikes in your facility, you’d be missing a trick not to run a cycling challenge in July. It needs a little extra explanation if you include both twists, but it’s worth the extra interaction with members for the fun factor and social media exposure that you’ll get.

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

Another Amazing Active Uprising in Manchester - 2019

For the second year, the leaders, trailblazers, and influencers in the fitness industry gathered in Manchester for Active Uprising. This is ukactive’s annual conference, bringing together powerful keynotes from inspirational thought leaders, along with business and leadership sessions, ActiveLab, and an awards dinner.

Huw Edwards, acting CEO of ukactive opened with news of the new MoU with Sport England to accelerate the movement towards getting more people more active more often. There are 5 focus areas; digital, inclusion, campaigns (in coordination with providers), infrastructure (public & private), and workforce.

Jack Connors then introduced the 2019 ActiveLab cohort,

How member feedback helps to improve retention – directly & indirectly

Customer feedback is becoming more of a focus for every business and in every industry. The annual survey is so last year, and while Net Promoter Score is still relevant, the score itself is losing value compared to the comments and feedback that customers are supplying through survey tools and also through social media channels.

The feedback itself should be reason enough to seek out member interaction, but there are a bunch of additional benefits that we’ll explore through this series of posts.