September changes the routines and habits of members before they’ve noticed it happening. Whether it is the school run starting up again and alarms getting set an hour earlier, or the regular commutes settling back in, the end of Summer brings change.
For a gym, this is the best kind of shift, because it is a type of encouragement that doesn’t cost a penny in marketing. Members are more likely to walk back through that facility door because their lives have started shifting, and we will work out how any independent gym or fitness club owner can make the most of this trend.
Because for the last few months, Summer has been working against habit and routine for many members in clubs up and down the country. Holidays break up what was once a normal week, school runs disappear and weekends get booked up quickly. The fixed points of the week that allowed time for a quick workout or a class are suddenly adrift in a sea of commitments and exceptions.
Independent gyms and fitness clubs can usually feel this on the gym floor before it even shows up in the data. Classes start to thin out a little as everyone goes on holiday and cancellations can start to add up when members realise they will be away for half of the month. A class that was full in June starts looking half empty by August. The worst part for the data-minded out there is that there’s no single reason for it, just a hundred small reasons spurred on by more free time and more sun.
For most independent gyms and clubs it isn’t even a sign that anything’s gone wrong. Just part of the ebb and flow of the year.
And while we have covered many ways to make the most of these shifting patterns across the Summer, as August draws to a close it is time to look down the path to Autumn.
The Autumn Shift
Autumn means that life slows down for a lot of members. Children return to school and parents get their mornings back as a result. Offices fill up again after a quiet August and that means the rhythm of the commuter population is restored.
For some members (or ex-members), this means the gym slots back into the day the same way it did in May. In some ways September is like a little January but without the pressure of new year’s resolutions pushing in members that are likely to fall away. All of this can make September a strong month for gyms that know how to use it.
The darker evenings matter more than some owners realise when it comes to their members habits. Once the clocks go back and the afternoons lose their light early, the members who ran outside or walked after dinner are likely to start looking for somewhere else to spend that hour.
A warm, well-lit gym becomes increasingly appealing in these circumstances. Owners who think ahead about their lighting and their class times stand to appeal to these seasonal preferences and reap the reward. This effect can be compounded by communicating this plainly in messaging, drawing attention to the evenings and the comfort of a fitness facility is an easy way to speak to prospective and ex-members. It can be hard to see into the head of a member, but we all experience the same weather and the same seasonal trends. Speaking to the common desires those trends heighten is an easy win for many gyms.
If New Year and the January Joiner phenomenal is a focus on ‘break with the old, bring in the new’, September should be marketed as ‘get back to old habits’. The 2/3rd mark of the year isn’t the point where someone wants to reinvent themselves, but they might want to get back on track. And someone who fell out of the habit in June or July doesn’t need convincing that training matters. They need a reason to get back into the groove this week instead of putting it off again.
September is a good chance to shout about what has changed over Summer at a facility. Over the last few months we put out many articles about how independent gyms and fitness clubs could put the summer lull to good use.
And if a gym has been following that advice, there should be plenty to shout about. It isn’t enough to just say ‘we are still here, come join us’, it is about showing off what has changed, and what is still as good as it ever was. Make your ex-members curious, make them want to stop in and see what has happened since their last visit in May.
For the members who never clicked cancel, challenges work well to engage them. These are the members who just had their attendance wane but kept on paying. Just because they are still on the books, doesn’t mean they are to be neglected. Members don’t magically stop leaving the gym just because we’ve hit September, and a member with spotty attendance is still a risk.
An eight-week programme that takes you up to November/December can provide an incentive for those members looking to be at their best in preparation for the Christmas gauntlet. Goal-based messaging has proven time and time again to be a great way to engage and re-engage members and the seasons invariable govern the concerns and priorities of members. The headlines will always be ‘Summer Body Ready’ or ‘January Recovery’ but that doesn’t mean they are the only instances of seasonal-member focus.
So rather than pushing a discount, gyms that talk about building consistency before winter, or preparing for a specific event in November or December, are speaking to what many members are already thinking about. Let your messaging meet members in the headspace they already occupy, it will work better than any attempt to force them into a different headspace.
Rejoining
Rejoin campaigns work best when they’re timed against individual timelines rather than sent out as a single blanket push in early September. A member who paused in April is in a different place than one who cancelled outright in July, and treating every lapsed name the same way flattens an advantage that’s actually there in the data. Gyms that segment by how long someone’s been gone, and by why they left if that’s recorded anywhere, can send something closer to a real conversation than a standard mail-merge. Someone who froze their membership before a holiday needs a nudge to switch it back on. Someone who cancelled after losing a routine needs a reason to believe this time will hold.
The timing of a message can be as vital to its success as the message itself. A rejoin campaign that lands in the first week of September, while school runs and commutes are still settling into their new shape, catches people while they’re already rebuilding a routine elsewhere in their life. Wait until October and that window’s mostly closed. The habit has either reformed around something else or it hasn’t reformed at all.
Onboarding is where a lot of that early advantage gets lost. A returning member who books a class in her first week back and finds it full, with no clear waitlist or alternative offered, has just had her first experience back confirmed as friction rather than progress. The gyms we’ve seen hold onto the most rejoining members are the ones that check in after the first visit. Not just with a ‘how was the visit’ survey, but an e-mail, a text, or a call, depending on their preferred method of contact. It is normally just a quick message asking how it went, but it can make a strong impression on a joining or rejoining member.
Key Takeaways
One of the most common mistake gyms make in autumn is treating it like January. The messaging gets copied over with a little find and replace on a few keywords, the same discount structure gets carted out, and no-one capitalises on the actual seasonal motivations the members are feeling
September members aren’t chasing a radical change, they are trying to get back to normal. And many prospective, ex, and current members will respond better to the messaging that reflects that.
September isn’t a time of seismic shifts, it is a time of readjustments and getting back on track.
The second mistake is focusing entirely on winning back lapsed members while letting current ones drift. Retention doesn’t pause just because acquisition looks easier this month. A member who’s been quietly attending all summer still needs the same attention as the one being coaxed back through the door, and a gym that only has eyes for the comeback story will find its steady members eventually stop being so steady.
Autumn hands gyms a genuine advantage, and it is an advantage that can be obtained only be recognising how the seasons effect the flow of members lives. Through a combination of data, feedback and intuition, any independent gym can turn September into a net-gain month.
Across nearly thirty years in the fitness industry, we’ve helped thousands of gym owners turn months that should’ve been a net-loss into a net-gain. Here at Ashbourne we don’t just provide a membership management system, we provide a team that can help you take your independent gym or fitness club to the next level.
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 us here.
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.
