September can bring a wave of rejoining members to independent gyms and fitness clubs up and down the country. As the seasons change, people who let their attendance, and then their membership, drop away over summer start thinking about their return to the gym. Between their annual leave is all but used up (or reserved for Christmas) and the nights closing in again, the conditions are perfect for a seasonal influx.
So let’s take a look at what independent gym owners and managers can do to make the most of this.
A Manual Problem
The processes and procedures that an independent gym has in place for both joining and rejoining will play a large part in determining how many people from that influx become member of their facility, and how many become another lost sign-up.
Wanting to rejoin isn’t the same as rejoining. These are people who have already walked away once. If the process to come back is even slightly awkward, that’s often reason enough to walk away a second time, so the sign-up journey needs to be about as simple as it can possibly be.
That means getting rid of print-only joining forms and joiner callbacks that might take a day or two to arrange. Even a visit to the front desk during specific hours might be enough to derail their return. Every extra step gives them time to change their mind, find a competitor’s site with an easier joining process, or simply forget about joining a gym at all.
For gyms still running things by hand, this should be a real point of concern, because it is a scenario that means there is very real money being left on the table.
But it is certainly not the only reason that independent gyms and fitness clubs should switch from processing memberships and payments manually. The margin for error, human and otherwise, is huge. Member data can easily become scattered across spreadsheets and papers. Details go missing or get entered twice. Payment details can expires and there is every chance no-one will notice for a week, if they notice at all.
And at that point, no-one on the team has a clear understanding when it comes to which members need chasing and which are fully paid. Individually these can pass by without much pain, but taken together this can represent a significant loss in revenue, one few independent fitness facilities can afford.
And if the gym wants to fix these issues manually? That requires a wasted day of reconciliation, matching a bank statements against a membership list in an unnecessary game of cat and mouse.
And An Automated Solution
It is a position many independent gym owners have been in before, often because they’ve managed to draw a lot of members in quickly. Because most of the time, this is a scaling issues, one that comes from a gym expanding beyond the systems that were put in place at launch. A notepad and a spreadsheet work fine in the early days, but it is a system that will fall apart once a gym has hundreds of people joining, pausing, upgrading and rejoining at once.
A gym built around simple automated systems handles these problems in an entirely differently way.
Most prospective members will be able to sign-up and pay for their member online with only a few clicks of a button. It won’t matter whether someone is manning the front desk or if the facility is even open at all.
All the membership options are laid out clearly enough that the prospective member can choose one without needing someone to explain it to them. Joining or rejoining can happen near-instantaneously, at wherever and whenever the motivation strikes, without a member of staff raising a hand.
Payment via direct debit will be set up in a couple of minutes and can be easily updated. Not only that but access updates the same day, so nobody turns up to find their card doesn’t work despite having paid and a confirmation e-mail, automatically sent, lands in their inbox straight away.
What used to take half a team, chasing payments, updating records, checking who’s paid and who hasn’t, now runs on its own. The gym’s management still has full oversight, but they just don’t need days of reconciliation to get it.
September is one of the flashpoints where these system get pushed to the limit. A rush of sign-ups lands all at once, and either the system can deal with it or the admin starts piling up. Gyms running manual processes feel every extra rejoin as more work stacked on top of what was already there. Gyms with the right systems barely notice the difference.
Now here is the story of how Base Gym experienced this first hand.
Base Gym
Sean now runs Base Gym across two sites, Bristol and Yeovil, but for years he ran his gym the way many independent owners do: manually, member by member, hoping nothing slipped through. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case.
“The main thing that has helped growth is in terms of retention. Because of the system being quite easy and managed, customers don’t fall off if we can’t get payments. It is all more professionally run and has more legislation behind it. The gym grows just by Ashbourne keeping on top of my members. Keeping their payments up to date compared to a manual system where members would fall off.”
— Sean, Base Gym Owner
That single change, that payments were being chased automatically rather than manually, did more for Base Gym’s growth and revenue than any marketing push. Under the old system, a missed payment could sit unnoticed. By the time anyone caught it, the member had usually already stopped coming. Sean wasn’t losing members through dissatisfaction. He was losing them through admin attrition.
Moving to Ashbourne removed that risk entirely. Direct debits run consistently in the background, renewals happen on schedule, and Sean and his staff no longer spend their time chasing collections.
With their automated system, Base Gym holds onto members it would’ve been unable to keep on the books previously.
Not only that, the system also changed how the two sites work together. Members move between Bristol and Yeovil without friction:
“Multi-site integration has been made easier with Ashbourne. When they get to the other gym they just scan their fingerprint as normal. Nice from a customer perspective, much more streamlined.”
— Sean, Base Gym Owner
Base Gym is a fantastic glimpse at how automation can unlock opportunities that were previously unimaginable with a manual system. Base Gym continues to go to strength to strength, and your facility could as well.
Because here at Ashbourne, we have helped countless independent gym and fitness club owners achieve exactly what Base Gym has accomplished over the last five years. Scaling is one of the biggest problems an independent gym owner can face and Ashbourne can help, no matter how big the numbers involved.
So whether it is managing and chasing membership payments, installing innovative access controls, or sleek BI Dashboards at the click of a button, there are countless ways we can help gym owners to sustain and grow 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 without losing any control over how your facility is run, don’t hesitate to book a demo with our in-house, UK based team today.
Fair Rates For Fitness
If you are reading this, it is highly likely 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.
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.
Nearly 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.
