Summer is a time of year that many independent gym and fitness club owner’s dread, whether it is due to attendance falling, members going on holiday, or workout routines dissolving into a haze of social plans, the direct debit list can start to look a little thinner for all that fun and sun.
July consistently records some of the lowest membership engagement of any month in the fitness calendar, and for smaller clubs without the marketing budget of the big chains, that gap between income and expectation can be genuinely stressful as you start to wonder how you are going to win all these members back.
The good news is that summer is manageable. We here at Ashbourne have been dealing with summer issues for the entirety of our near-30 years’ operating in the fitness industry. And as a membership management company that also runs our own clubs, we know that the gyms and clubs that come through it well are the ones that stop trying to pretend the season is not happening and start building and planning around it.
Retention comes before recruitment
We all know that keeping members often costs a fraction of what finding new ones does. Depending on the facility, acquiring a new member has been estimated to cost anywhere from five to twenty-five times more than retaining an existing one, which often means the summer retention question deserves more attention than the summer sales question. Get the existing membership base engaged and the rest becomes easier.
The most effective retention tool for summer, used well in boutique studios across the US and increasingly in the UK, is a structured challenge. The format can be simple: twenty classes in thirty days, forty in sixty, a bingo card on the locker room wall with classes as the squares. The point is not the prize at the end. The goal is the gamification of attendance and consistency, not only encouraging but actively rewarding participation. For members playing the game, it will mean conserving and maintaining more of that all-important routine through a disrupted schedule.
These challenges will require not only planning but the enthusiasm of your staff. People are very good at working out if something is authentic fun or ‘organised fun’ (everyone’s least favourite). If instructors are not mentioning it in class and front-of-house staff are not tracking it with members, the challenge sits on a noticeboard and does nothing. Make it visible, make it slightly competitive, and make sure the members who are doing well hear about it.
Gyms holding events give members a reason to show up
Summer is a great time to trial new ideas and add attention grabbing events to get even inconsistent members back into your facility. Whether this means adding some limited-time classes that runs only in specific summer months, a social event after a class so everyone can take advantage of those longer evenings, or a seasonal partnership with a local business. These give your members a one-off reason to attend your gym, all the more important when you are contending with a fracturing schedule or an evening in a beer garden
Outdoor sessions have obvious appeal when the weather holds. Bootcamp and brunch in a local park, yoga on a nearby green, a group run with a partner running shop. The instinct to stay inside and protect the floor space is understandable, but members who would not come to a standard class in August will often turn up to something that feels like an event. The informality of an outdoor session also builds relationships between members in a way a normal class rarely does.
Themed classes bring in people who would skip a regular session. A 90s (or you/your staffs decade of choice) nostalgia playlist workout, a partner class that members bring a friend to, a session tied to a calendar moment like Father’s Day or the summer solstice. None of these require significant resource. They require someone to plan them far enough in advance that there is time to promote them properly. Never underestimate the power of a wall calendar near the entrance to motivate members. People enjoy being part of somethings and many gym members have a competitive streak you can easily bring out.
For any independent gym or fitness club with the space and inclination, there are any number of evening and weekend events that can be held to help reinforce that sense of community in the quieter months and give members a reason to stay connected even when their schedule gets derailed by summer.
Flexible summer membership options
The members who cancel in summer often do so because their usual membership structure does not fit a season where they might be away for two weeks, present but unpredictable for another three, and back to normal by September. It is better to offer your members something that addresses the reality of their situation rather than trying to hold them to a situation that does not.
These options could vary from a longer seasonal pass running from late May to early September works well for members who want to train consistently through summer without a rolling contract, or on the other side, a pause option for those who won’t be able to keep their commitments due to holidays and other disruptions. A class pack with no expiry, or packs that reset on use rather than by date, give any members who are travelling frequently over this period a reason to stay in the system rather than cancel and restart.
It is about finding ways to keep members invested without making them feel trapped or pushed into sub-optimal decisions.
And these are not the only options available; there are discounted guest sessions on a specific day of the week which some independent gym operators have had remarkable success with. This is a regular slot where members can bring a friend for a reduced rate, drive referrals at a time of year when traditional marketing performs poorly. Members who bring someone with them are also more likely to keep coming themselves.
Timetable and operations in summer
One of the most practical things a gym can do in summer is reduce its class schedule to reflect actual demand. Running a full timetable to empty rooms is not only expensive, but it can also be understandably demoralising for your instructors. Summer is a perfect time to review your class timetable, whether it is consolidating sessions and dropping the poorest-attended slots, or going back to basics and focusing your collective energy on the classes that fill-up consistent or creating new one based around demand and member feedback.
Social media in summer
Summer is when social media content is easiest to produce and most likely to be seen. With more holiday and energy, many of your members and prospect members will be active online and more likely to engage with post, especially if they are relevant to the season or recent events.
This can help fill a content calendar quickly, with event photos from outdoor sessions, challenge progress updates, shout-outs to members hitting milestones or instructor/staff features with personality. Any of these can help build a sense that the gym is alive and worth being part of even for members who have not visited due to holidays or increasingly hectic schedules now that school is out.
Tagging members in posts gives them a reason to share the content, which extends the reach beyond the existing membership. A member who shares a post from the gym is doing marketing on the gym’s behalf, and it costs nothing.
The instinct in a slow month is to post less. The opposite approach is usually more effective.
The bigger picture
Summer does not necessarily mean a drop in revenue, but it does require a different approach, with greater focus on retention, events, flexible offerings, and community building rather than just the standard acquisition-focused approach.
The independent gyms and fitness clubs that treat the summer months as an opportunity to deepen relationships with existing members tend to come out of September in better shape than the ones that spend the summer waiting for it to be over.
Most of the strategies we have talked about on the blog today are low cost and do not require too much effort to implement. The real danger to your bottom line, if there is one, will come from not safeguarding your members during this time of increased disruption and membership cancellations.
Here at Ashbourne Membership Management, we have been helping independent gym and fitness club owners not just survive but thrive during turbulent times for three decades.
Whether it is managing and chasing membership payments, installing innovative access controls, or creating, setting up, and maintaining their websites, we have ensured that thousands of gym owners have been able to spend more time growing their business.
If you want to see how a company made by and for independent gym owners could help you deliver even more value to your members, don’t hesitate to book a demo with our in-house, UK based team today.
Fair Rates For Fitness
If you are reading this, you’ll forgive us if we assume you are someone who cares about the UK’s fitness industry. If so, there is something we’d like to mention, something important to all of us working and operating within the fitness industry.
Here at Ashbourne Membership Management, we have been proud to work in this dynamic, innovative sector for three decades. At time of writing the UK government has decided to increase business rates as part of the latest budget. While we are always happy to pay our way, we believe that these rates do not acknowledge the incredible benefit that independent gyms and fitness clubs bring to society.
Every party manifesto claims that they want the people of the UK to be healthier, happier, and more active. But when the time comes to match action to rhetoric, our industry is too often left out.
So, if you want to make your voice heard alongside the hundreds who have already acted, follow the link here to Fair Rates for Fitness, a campaign being championed by our partners over at the Gym Owner’s Forum.
