Love Your Leavers (Gym Owner Monthly Nov 2019)

This is a copy of the retention article from Gym Owner Monthly Magazine November 2019. You can read the original article and the rest of the magazine here.

Feedback from cancelling members can be the most powerful information that an organisation can get their hands on.

What can you tell me about your leavers? 
“They are moving away?” 
What else do you know about them? 

This is a common conversation I have with gym owners every month.

They say things like, “20% told us they were moving away. We know nothing about the rest” 
This does not mean that most of them are moving away. It means you know nothing about most of your leavers!

MAKE A MOVE CHALLENGE - for Technogym UK clubs

For clarity, the MAKE A MOVE CHALLENGE is a Technogym UK challenge, managed by Technogym UK for connected MyWellness clubs in the UK.

We've supported this over the last few years, with tips and advice for UK clubs to get the most from the challenge and to engage, motivate, and retain as many of their members as possible. You can read all the related posts here.

mywellness challenge club - Make a MOVE

"Make a MOVE" is a very popular Technogym UK challenge that pits club teams against each other to collect the most MOVEs. This article talks about the challenge that we're running for some clients, but you can find many more posts about Make a MOVE here on this blog.

Here's a 3 minute video explaining the Why, How and What of Make a MOVE:

Keeping people engaged - eGym article in CIMSPA magazine

Pleased to see some of our research featured in CIMSPA members magazine this month.

A study conducted by an experienced independent retention specialist has highlighted the significant positive impact the eGym training solution has on member usage and member retention.

Onboarding - Leave No Member Behind (Gym Owner Monthly Article Oct 2019)

On-boarding is the most important part of the member journey. If you get it right, your members will stick around longer, saving you time and effort chasing absentees or dealing with cancellations. Although only around 10% of your members will be new at any point in time, it's worth putting in up to 50% of your effort into on-boarding. Try to leave no member behind.

Think about your new members’ first experience. What standards do you have in place to ensure the joining experience is excellent, and how do you measure success? Simple things like a welcome message can give you early engagement insights. A welcome session [aka induction] will help retention. Other good examples of first experiences might include a first group exercise class, body composition analysis, new member challenge, myzone workout, or PT session. Choose 2 or 3 key actions that you will try to get every new member to experience, and then measure engagement.

Click the image below to read the whole article on Gym Owner Monthly...

eGym Roadshows – insightful education workshops across the UK

It was a pleasure to be involved in the eGym insights roadshows in September 2019. We met with eGym clients, prospects and partners up and down the country, and had some great discussions and debates. While the brief was to deliver educational content to “activate your gym for success” we learnt a lot from the delegates too, and from our fellow presenters, of course.

Kerstin Obenauer (eGym Country Director UK) opened each event with introductions and a request for delegates wants and needs for the day. Nearly all attendees were looking for ideas and experience around sales and retention, and of course, several were keen to hear of the latest eGym developments.

mywellness challenge club - Row the Atlantic/Channel

Obviously, there's a big difference, but the aim is to get as many of your members to aim for a target and row that distance as a club/chain. This is not about competing, but all members and staff coming together as a team to achieve a common goal; the distance. With Sarah Thomas just swimming the Channel 4 times non-stop, this is a good current news story.

October Rowing Challenge

The Atlantic is 4,263km, the English Channel is 34km. Pick Australia to New Zealand, or Sydney to Hobart, Liverpool to Dublin, or any other local strait, and have all your members contribute to the target.

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.