8 Simple Ways To Keep Your Members At Your Gym For Longer – Free Webinar & Resources

15th April 20241st April 2022 by Harvey Clayton Wright

8 ways to keep your members for longer webinar

Across Ireland and the UK, membership retention has become an ongoing challenge for gyms.

As a gym owner, it can be tough to know exactly what steps you need to take in order to keep your members engaged, without disturbing your so called “sleeping members”.

As a gym consultant and fitness sales director, Shannon White has spoken with hundreds of gyms and health clubs on their strategies to keep their members with them for life.

In this webinar, Shannon has condensed her 8 best techniques for you to keep your members for longer – providing practical methods that you and your team can actually put into action straight away in your club.

Watch 8 Simple Ways To Keep Your Members At Your Gym

Get Your Complete List of Free Resources

You can find all the free resources mentioned in the webinar to download below and start utilising all of these strategies to increase your gym member retention and drastically grow your business.

All of these strategies are designed for you to implement right now, with no extra spend and without overloading your staff with more work and responsibilities.

Read All 8 Retention Tips For Your Gym Here

The following advice for increasing your membership retention is not just words to make you feel good, every idea we suggest here has been:

Tested by us in our own test gym – The Fit Club Redditch
Sourced from the thousands of clubs that we partner with, as we frequently keep in contact with their strategies and provide advice for them to implement.
25 years of wisdom and industry knowledge.

Our 8 methods are going to focus primarily on that customer experience side. We’re going to look at what you can control right now in the way you manage your members, work with your staff to create a great environment and handle your onboarding system to get more of your members through their first 6 months and staying with you for years to come.

Tip 1 – Get a 12 month contract in place and lock your members down

This might seem like a no-brainer but some gym owners are worried that having a contract turns potential members off. Instead of looking at it as a negative, turn it into an opportunity to offer a lower cost membership to incentivise people to join.

That also offers a guaranteed period of time that you know you’ll have a membership for.

There is generally three methods of payments that can be used to collect regular payments during a contract:

Standing Order
Recurring card payment
Direct Debit

Tip 2 – Increase your staff presence

The goal of any retention system is consumption. People rarely cancel or quit things they actually use. It’s much easier to quit a gym than it is to quit a relationship.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the first part of our onboarding, because that’s a huge factor in members making it past the first 6 months.

We’re splitting onboarding into 2 parts, which is your staff’s part to play, and then automating and rethinking your communications.

So how can you increase your staff presence with just the resources and staff you have now?

Be ready to review your staff’s responsibilities and cut out silly jobs – this is the most important part of freeing up your staff to focus on customer service!

Make member interaction a job responsibility, not a bonus.
Systematise making notes on members.
Create rewards for staff to do feedback forms (every good review gets a bottle of wine / the most feedback forms get a spa day).
Combine this with PTs to get more secondary sales.
Automate areas of your club to get members off the desk – add a turnstile/kiosk/reduce staff phone time by redirecting customer service through live chat or Facebook messenger.

Tip 3 – Making your onboarding automated – “The Member Journey”

Many gyms underestimate how long their onboarding process should be when it comes to their initial communication with their members.

Regular contact breeds a sense of familiarity and loyalty to your club.

You need to be very simple and direct in how you get your members from signing up to their first few sessions in the gym.

It’s not as easy as getting your members into the club and then they’re all set. You need to have an onboarding system which keeps your members coming back, discovering more of your facility and finding what works for them.

It can be very easy to underestimate just how much of a newbie your member is. We’re all gym experts here, so we often look at our club as if people like us are attending.

Your onboarding process needs to be longer, more explicit in what you offer and be with your members every step of the way to breed loyalty to your business.

This will also help some members overcome what we call “gymtimidation”.

This is a very basic outline of what an onboarding process should look like, but these are the touch points you can do:

Not everyone reads every email, so be comfortable repeating yourself and even sharing tips and advice within your emails. Better to repeat yourself than say nothing.

None of this has to require anything fancier than a pre-written email that’s useful, has a purpose and is interesting to read.

And when you automate it, you only have to do this once and free up your staff for that customer service in the club itself!

In short, make sure your onboarding process is simple, clear, covers every aspect of your club, and lasts into your members first few months.

Tip 4 – Get your numbers together

You need to do a full club review and have a system in place to allow you to get an oversight into your members and how they’re using your club.

Find out who your sleeping members are, who your active members are, and even, how many members you have who are using the gym but aren’t paying by sharing codes or just by virtue of being a familiar face (this number will be higher than you think).

The more you know, the more you’ll know how to targetyour business’ problems!

Tip 5 – Community Building

It is proven that being active in your community and turning your gym into a social space increases retention.

So come up with some fun ways for you and your team to make your gym a social space, by hosting activities that involve the local community and make your gym a social space for your members, that they won’t want to ever leave behind.

The best thing is, this can all feed into your marketing to gather more new customers, so it kills 2 birds with 1 stone.

Always think about how you can recycle your retention strategies to appeal to new customers.

Tip 6 – Community Building

It’s becoming a huge trend that people want overall health advice, rather than just focusing on exercise.

Diet, mindset, mental health – you need to fully integrate yourself in your members’ life. If you only focus on exercise, then you can easily become a place that your members dread after a few off days.

Create resources, blogs, social media with simple and followable advice for your members. Stop them going on other Instagram pages and using other apps for this advice. Become the place they go for that advice.

And most importantly – Partner with local business to add more value

Be sure to add extra benefits. Partner with local businesses that specialise in health and wellness.

Dieticians, health food shops, doctors, physiotherapists – be active in making sure your club has wider benefits in the community, and give your partners the same benefits.

Tip 7 – Consider a member’s app

This is one of the more technical suggestions on this webinar, but if you want to make investments in your club, then this could be a technical route to go down.

The most cost efficient way to get one is usually through your gym software provider – for example at Ashbourne we split the cost of the app monthly which makes it more affordable.

The benefits of an app are clear:

Find new ways to contact your members – push notifications, texts.
Change your members mindset, allow them to track their behaviour and make it a challenge that they can stick to.
Make using your gym easier – book classes and book personal trainers.
Protects against “Gymtimidation” by providing online support like on-demand videos.
What’s key about this is only paying members can access the app, or you can create a special membership for it and sell just that. This online service model is still relevant even post covid.

And of course, you can achieve some of these benefits by expanding your website’s offerings, so there are ways to achieve similar results and services without developing an app at all.

Tip 8 – Find out why members have stopped coming to your club

More data, data, data – this is key to knowing what’s going on with your club.

Don’t leave it up to assumptions or industry wisdom to know what’s happening in your club.

Be direct with your members and send them out quick, easy feedback forms where they can identify their problems with your club.

We’ve already created a feedback form template in Google forms so you can start collecting that data right away.

As we’ve mentioned before, fitness professionals don’t think the same way as the average gym-goer or newbie. We need to understand those members better or else risk losing them to a cheaper and simpler club.

Don’t give them a reason to go to a large budget chain.

Bonus Tip – Change your gym’s layout

If you can’t upgrade your equipment (one of the biggest reasons why members stick with a club), then change your gym’s layout.

Freshen up the place, make it open and more inviting and clear to use for new members.

Look at your club and see if it’s inviting. Is the first thing a newbie will see is a squat rack being used by your gym veterans.

Get In Touch With Shannon At Ashbourne

Ashbourne is focused on making it easier for health clubs to grow their business and keep delivering their members a better service.

Ashbourne can manage every single aspect of your fitness business, handling everything from your payments to your website, entry and booking systems.

This gives you more time and freedom to focus on your members, revitalise your marketing and have time to actually manage your club properly.

And of course, Ashbourne are here every step of the way with free resources and advice to help your club be the best it can be.

If you want to discuss the future of your club, then don’t hesitate to set up a chat with our sales manager Shannon White and she can introduce you to our club management solutions.

Simple Ways To Improve Membership Retention

15th April 20241st July 2021 by Jasmin

Membership retention at gyms is something that has always been a challenge. With so many people choosing to embark on a fitness journey, it is no surprise that around half of people who start an exercise programme will drop out within the first six months.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an entirely different set of challenges were given to gyms in order to retain their members. Due to the overwhelming uncertainty it caused, many gym-goers opted to cancel their gym memberships for a range of reasons. Even with facilities reopening, there is understandably some hesitancy and reluctance for people to get back in the gym.

Getting new members in the door will always be important in order to grow your gym, but looking after your current active members and those members who were forced to leave due to worldwide issues, out of their control, is the true key to the success of your club.

Putting retention strategies in place in order to ensure your members aren’t tempted to leave is imperative – now more than ever.

1. Create a loyalty Programme

Do not get so caught up in chasing and trying to attract new members that you neglect the old guard. These are the loyal, 4 times a week gym members.

A loyalty programme is more important than any other marketing programme you have. If you treat the top 10% of your customers right, they will take care of most of your other marketing for you.

Keep the people who love you in love with you. Come up with loyalty programmes to make them feel appreciated:

Free Gold Member t-shirts for members that have been with you for an extended period.
If you have extra services at your club like massage therapists, supplements or a juice bar, give them a coupon for one of them.
Small touches can make them feel special – reward your members with free tea and coffee/ protein shakes. “I’ll get this protein shake for you John as a thanks for being such a loyal member.”

2. Build a Great Blog

Daily exercise tips, diet and nutrition tips, wellness, weightlifting, sports – comment regularly online about ANYTHING! A blog/newsfeed update keeps people up-to-date with what’s going on at your club. But more importantly, it builds a community link between your members and your staff and trainers. This further develops your customer loyalty.

Spread the writing of material amongst your team. Get your personal trainers to write about their particular areas of knowledge and expertise + their case study success stories in relation to results gained by particular members. All this is likely to lead to more training enrolments.

Encourage PTs to send out this info by email, even on Twitter and Facebook. This will lead to more referrals, which all leads to more business.

Most clubs say that member interaction is what separates them from chain clubs. But as these chains grow and their prices come down, independents have to work even harder at service. Most chain gyms have a receptionist who welcomes each member by name as they swipe in – they don’t know the name, they just see it on-screen. This is so powerful in terms of retention!

3. Get Personal With All Your Members

Do you know the name of everyone in your club? Could you greet each one?

It’s also not just about knowing everyone’s name, what can really separate you from the larger clubs is knowing more about your members. Know something personal – why they are here, the real emotional reason i.e. not just to lose weight but deeper than that. ”I want to lose weight so I can walk my daughter up the aisle without getting out of breath”.

Take an interest in what they like to do outside of the club. Get to know about members of their family – this will make them feel special/part of the club and that you really care about them.

Just asking general questions is not enough – “How’s the programme going?” will not get you an interesting answer. Compare this to, “How’s your training going for the London Marathon that you are running in April?” or, “How did your daughter get on in her dance performance?”

How much more powerful is this for retention? With a small membership this is easy, but how to stay on top of this info with hundreds or thousands of members? The best way is to use a software package that has an easy to use Notes section. This cuts out the impossible task of trying to remember all these details! With good entry software you and all of your team can know so much about each member and then really make them feel part of your club.

4. Include Details of Members in the Newsletter (With Consent!)

Remember that Newsletter we suggested you publish all those points ago? Well, you can use this to communicate with your members about the latest developments in and out of the club when it comes to their members. This could and should include success stories, charity initiatives, notable birthdays etc.

People, and especially members, love the lauding of their achievements. And you should as well! Go them!

5. Create A Community In Your Club

Engaging a member with events and activities shows that you are putting their needs and experience above that of profit for the club… but in fact, we all know that a happy member is a loyal member and those loyal members are what keep us making a profit.

Engage members in various ways to keep them motivated and to feel that the gym is their club, their “3rd space” other than work and home. Turn a group of customers into a community. Creating this community feel within your club will not only keep your members confident that you care about them as people (rather than just their exercise results) but they will also have a fear of loss if they do not attend.

Many members will turn up at the club even if they have no intention of training just to see what is going on. Create various challenges for members as well as social events. These activities cost very little to organise and implement but will save you a fortune compared with the marketing costs needed to recruit new members in place of those members you have lost.

6. Use Major Sporting Events To Your Advantage

Big sporting events can keep people at home watching TV so it’s important to turn them to your advantage instead:

Link spinning class challenges to the route of the Tour de France
Organise sweepstakes for events such as the World Cup
Create communal viewing of big sporting events on TV – it’s more fun to watch a big match in a group than on your own at home…

7. Coast-to-Coast Challenge

Create a map of the country and for each mile, a member completes on the treadmill they are able to move 1 kilometre along a predetermined route on the map. So, rather than someone just “going on the treadmill” they actually have an incentive to get across the country and complete the challenge.

If a member completes two miles a session then in two sessions a week they would complete the challenge in 8 months. For members on rolling contracts, this helps to keep them at the club.

8. Run Topical Workout Clubs

As we said earlier, is the Tour De France on? Guess where your Spin-Club is racing today. Is the F1 at Monaco? Let’s go for a ride around Monte Carlo.

The Olympics? The London Marathon? The World Cup? Mr Universe?

When Covid-19 isn’t raging there is always something on the sporting Calendar. It is your job to incorporate these events and advertise them ahead of time.

9. Organise A Friday Coffee Morning

In most Fitness Clubs and Gyms, Friday is the quietest day. Offer a coffee morning in reception or in a dedicated coffee area. This will boost secondary spend as well as increase member interaction. Consider going to them yourself to allow members to give feedback in a neutral environment straight to the person who matters and can affect change.

10. Create The Best Layout For Your Reception Area

Make sure your reception desk is properly equipped to handle customer complaints or issues and prep your staff on standard procedures. Make sure you follow through in a timely manner when any issues do come up.

Gyms that hire people with a willingness to help will attract and retain more customers than a gym that offers 75 different kickboxing classes but whose employees won’t flinch when people have a complaint or service issue. The ability to relate and empathize with your members is just as important as professional certification.

11. Professionalism and Excellent Customer Service Are Your Priorities, Always

This will significantly increase your customer loyalty. Members are demanding more from their health clubs today. They expect to be able to talk to qualified individuals that are willing to listen and help. As we have reinforced before, your staff are some of your most powerful assets

Customers are most satisfied when they interact with self-aware and compassionate people who have the ability to show empathy and optimism.

Nearly all of your members will appreciate a gym that offers staff that listens to complaints instead of a gym that offers 100 treadmills.

12. Retention Rates: Pay Attention To Your Data

For many years, larger gyms have ignored the retention issue and it has proven detrimental to their growth, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, their reputation.

Ask anyone who has been to a large, automated Gym for any length of time and they will most likely have an impersonal story of horror about these soulless and uncaring establishments.

Large enrolment numbers mean nothing if these members are not sticking around for their third or four-month.. It’s the revolving door of fitness. Five come in and 15 go out. Larger gyms don’t always pay attention to this because it’s harder to do.

For smaller gyms, you have an advantage. It’s easier to keep tabs on people and make sure that the core crowd is returning month after month.

13. Be As Visible As Your Staff If Possible

As the owner of the gym, you should strive to be as visible as a Gym Instructor on the floor.

Your staff should work as a team, with the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction and as such we have focused a lot on the guidance you can give them in meeting these aims.

However, at times your gym instructors may not be equipped to handle certain situations, so you as the gym owner should be ready and available to lend support. Showing your strength and versatility as a team and your ability to solve any problem. This will create an impression and a reputation for professionalism and excellence that is not easily forgotten.

14. Failure, Feedback and Asking How You Can Improve

In business, humility is a virtue. We do not get everything right the first time, every time. As much as we try and in the Gym and Fitness Club business, this is no less true.

Machines will be over-used or break, members will be stressed and won’t achieve their goals with the best will in the world, the coffee might be luke-warm on coffee Friday.

It isn’t about the mistake or the short-coming, it is about how it is addressed. Ask your members how you can improve and focus on improving the most often identified areas.

If members see your Gym or Fitness Club shifting based on their advice, it will make an impression that won’t soon be forgotten.

15. Target ‘high yield’ customers

Conduct a membership survey with an incentive for participating. The most valuable information about how your brand is portrayed is going to come directly from the target of your brand message, your members. You should use this information to find out what areas require improvement and also to build on and perpetuate areas of strength.

Operators who measure retention using ‘length of stay’ are ahead of the game as they are able to analyse key member characteristics in their data in order to identify which types of members stay the longest. Understanding which members stay longest and pay more over the course of their membership life will allow you to plan for future years and will influence sales drives etc.

16. Identify High-Risk Customers

Major Gyms and Fitness Clubs have been conducting detailed studies and analysis into ‘high risk’ customers.

This is a form of agile customer retention that can prove highly effective in identifying and retaining flagging members.

Meaning those customers most likely to cancel at a given point in time.

These studies show that when it comes to retention, prevention is far better than cure. Identify existing members who are at risk of leaving so that there is more time to intervene before they make the decision to leave.

Fall off in attendance, lack of engagement in classes, the signs aren’t hard to read. It is up to you and your staff to develop strategies to re-engage members in an organic, naturalistic, and unobtrusive way.

17. Understand Which Members Are No Longer In Contact and Learn How To Work Around This

Assign responsibility and set up a plan. Your first step will be to identify which member of staff will have responsibility for this area. Track your members so that as soon as they are out of contract you offer them a renewal deal to encourage them to stay. Be careful not to wake any sleeping members who are on rolling deals as you might just remind them to cancel.

Undoubtedly, there will be members who fall off the wagon a little bit. Do your best to try and capture these members early on. If you track attendance, it’s easy to run a report of last visits and call the members you haven’t seen in a while. Monthly newsletters, email campaigns, postcards, and regular Facebook or blog posts are other ways that you can keep your gym fresh in members’ minds and even recapture those you may have lost.

18. Stay in Touch

Leading on from the last point. It is important to stay in touch with members throughout their membership, albeit in a meaningful way.

Do not spam them with propaganda and bulk emails. A member should see a notification from your gym or fitness club and be enthused that they have received some quality content. Not another mindless TGIF spam email.

As a service, you exist to add value to your members’ lives and this is no exception.

Fill your emails with interesting events, promotions that are relevant, human interest stories that will ignite their passion and opportunities to improve themselves or their community.

19. Improve Your Technology and Research

Members want to feel that their gym has the latest and greatest, both in practicing principles and in equipment.

The reason they aren’t lifting dumbbells at home is because they want the best equipment and expertise at the lowest price. You need to make sure your staff and your equipment is the best it can be on your budget.

If you know you aren’t able to afford expensive new gym equipment, make sure your staff focus is even stronger to compensate and ensure your members are getting value for money.

20. Achievements Board

Not all achievements are equal. Everyone has a different journey and a different path to take.

Mary might just be interested in making sure she can still run a single kilometre without stopping and John might want to deadlift three times the weight of Mary.

Both of these achievements are important to both individuals and both should be celebrated, with their consent.

If Mary is consistently hitting her goals, then fantastic, and if John has just managed to up his game from 3 Marys to 3 and a half Marys, then excellent! (Though he should probably stop measuring success in Marys).

21. Communicate With Members Everywhere

Your Gym or Fitness Club will have certain areas where you have a captive audience. This includes a treadmill, the reception desk, and more pragmatically, the toilet cubicles and changing rooms.

Use these areas to place posters that reinforce the message and story you want to get across.

Use your latest product or PT package and keep the info up-to-date. Members will be compelled to read the message and you will increase the chance that a member will decide to purchase that extra product from you.

22. Monitor Your Competitors and Their Pricing Levels

No man is an island as John Donne said, and neither is any business.

Don’t ignore what your competitors are doing price-wise. Your pricing decisions should be based on real market analysis, so keep an eye on what they’re charging for various membership types.

23. Allow Members To ‘Freeze’ Their Memberships

From time to time your members might have a genuine reason for not being able to attend the club. Rather than letting them cancel, allow them to freeze their membership. However, if you just agree to the freeze, the member might at the end of their freeze period stop their direct debit, try to cancel, complain or ask to extend the free. If you set up a system you are far more likely to reintegrate them back into the club.

Contact the member at various stages throughout their freeze period:

a) At the start of the freeze confirm the terms of the freeze and check the members contact details.
b) During the freeze contact the member to remind them you are still there and try to encourage them back earlier.
c) Before the freeze ends to reduce admin, cancelations and encourage them back to the club.

Over the past 5 of our blog posts, we’ve armed you with 100 tips for recruiting and retaining members, there is only one obstacle standing in your way to running a successful club: implementation. It is time to get some of what we have detailed here underway.

You’re a smart gym owner or you wouldn’t be reading this guide. You realise that everything boils down to getting and keeping members. You know you need to sort out your marketing, software systems, payment, collection, retention strategy, and more.

But you know all that, and the problem has always been having the time to do it. Who can you trust to allow you to have more time to focus on getting more members?

Ashbourne Membership Management has the solution.

Get in touch for a full demo of our software or to simply have a conversation about how we can help you and your gym achieve its full potential.

*Remember you can also download all 100 of our proven strategies to attract and retain members completely free! Available here

This Is How You Retain Gym Members In 18 Simple Steps

15th April 202413th November 2019 by Harvey

Having a strategy in place to retain gym members is the only true way to keep your fitness business healthy and growing.

On average it can cost 7x more to convert a new member than to retain existing gym members. Focusing on accumulating new members instead of aiming to retain your current gym members is the business equivalent of having a leaky bucket.

Would you rather plug the holes in the bucket, or constantly just keep filling it with water in the hope you can keep it topped up?

Topping up instead of fixing the underlying problem simply causes excess stress and pressure on your marketing and staff. A long term customer who spends a year at your gym is worth 12 members who only spend a month. It’s for this reason why a focus on membership retention is so important.

This Is How You Retain Gym Members in 18 Simple Steps

So instead of chasing after the next new customer, let’s take the stress away by giving you tried, tested and practical ways for how to retain gym members and grow your fitness business.

1) Survey your existing members and find out what they want from your gym

Let’s start at the root source of the problem. People don’t just leave their gym membership for no reason.

There’s always a reason and most of the time, it’s the gym’s fault. So let’s find out what those problems are without any guess work or assumption. It’s completely acceptable to ask your members what they want from their gym.

It’s a win-win, as they get better service and you improve your membership retention. So whether you send out an email with an attached form, or catch your members at the door, create a survey asking your members what you can do better. You might be surprised by the results and discover problems you never even knew existed that are easy to solve.

2) Give your members a “road map” to keep them focused

While gym memberships are a great way to get healthy, the one big downfall is that they don’t get you healthy and fit without some work on the member’s end.

If your member lacks motivation, then you can have the best gym in the world, but they won’t want to use it. The best way to keep a member out of this head space is to give them direction.

Create road maps and training programs that your members can access as part of their membership. The more clear and realistic goals you give your members, the higher your membership retention will be.

3) Have a great introduction and on-boarding process

Part of giving your members a great road map is getting things off to a good start.

Make sure you have an effective system in place that lets new members learn the basics and know what they need to do to get the most from your gym. A great on-boarding process is vital for retaining gym members.

4) Let your members pause their membership

If you stop members from being able to pause their membership, then they’re going to cancel it.

A paused membership is temporary.

A cancelled membership is forever.

Simple as that!

5) Allow your members to downgrade or change their membership

It’s always better to keep someone at your gym because they want to be there and not because they’re being held there through an agreement.

People’s gym requirements change all the time, so try to offer flexibility in their membership. If members want to upgrade, then fantastic. But even members that want to downgrade and stay with you are still more valuable than a cancelled member, or a member who can’t wait to leave.

6) Keep an eye on members who are losing motivation

This requires a bit of extra attention on your part, but it can be worth it.

One of the key reasons for losing membership retention is that a member loses focus and motivation.

Even if you give them a great road map, that doesn’t mean that they will use it.

So be on the lookout for members who are starting to flag. You can even install a turnstile system that will keep track of when members come to the gym, so you can track how much your members are using their gym membership and send them a helpful email or approach them to help keep them on track.

7) Let your members know the exciting things going on at your club

You want your members to always feel like there’s something going on at your gym. Always another event, class or resource to help them improve their fitness and give them the best gym experience.

So keep your members updated about what’s happening at your gym. If you can keep your members interested in what you have to offer for the next month, that’s another month for you to retain gym members.

8) Give your members tools, templates, tips… Be a part of their healthy lifestyle

Giving your members a way to manage their healthy lifestyle is just as important as their training.

So try to offer as many extras as you can with their gym membership. From diets, to scheduling their fitness and workout plans – give them access to resources that go beyond their time at the gym and give the gym membership even more value to your members.

9) Give your members a fitness app

This is the next step up from templates and tools, but the modern gym goer loves using fitness and health apps to keep track of their healthy lifestyle on the go.

By providing an app as part of your gym membership, you give your members not just extra value, but also the convenience to use all your amazing health tips, techniques and tools on their mobile device, all in one place.

One of Ashbourne’s services gives your members access to your own personalised app, which we’ve already built for you. You can find out more about it here!

10) Celebrate your members achievements in an open forum

You know what’s better than just giving your members fitness goals?

Giving them recognition for those goals!

If you have social media for your fitness business, or even just a cork board on the wall of your gym, then make your members feel special by recognising their greatness. Create a member of the month award, or even keep track of your members’ personal bests. It’s amazing what this kind of recognition does to help build a community, give your members a bit of extra competition to keep them motivated and help you retain gym members for longer.

11) Premium products will help your retain gym members

Your members are always aiming to improve their health and fitness, so you need to keep up with what they need.

Look at your current membership tiers and try to design a premium product that your most dedicated members can upgrade to.

It won’t ever be your best selling product, but it allows for you to make extra money and also give your members a greater incentive to stay at your gym and not go looking for a gym that can offer them more of what they need.

12) Keep everything nice and simple for your members

Providing your members with professional tools, road maps and extras is great, but an equally important lesson to learn is to not overwhelm them.

If you give your members too much to focus on or take in, it’ll quickly kill their motivation.

So while coming up with amazing ideas for extra help to give to your members, also think about how you can break that down, to deliver your members extras in the best way possible.

13) Schedule classes and training so everyone has the chance to join

People’s lives run on very different clocks and you can never be sure when a member will be available to use their gym membership.

There’s nothing worse for a member than feeling like they’re not able to get the most from their membership and are being shortchanged by classes that are taking place during hours that they’re working.

So make sure to vary when you host classes to be sure all of your members can get the most from their gym membership.

14) Consider longer opening hours to help your membership retention

In the same vein, people will be far more likely to retain gym memberships if they have flexibility for when they can visit their gym. 24/7 gyms have become much more popular in recent years, so one of the best ways to improve membership retention is by giving your members that competitive choice for when they visit.

One of the cheapest ways to make your gym open longer or even for 24 hours is by installing a turnstile which restricts non-members from entering the gym, so you can stay open longer while keeping your running costs lower. Installing turnstiles and the software to automate your gym is cheaper than you think and Ashbourne can help you get up and running.

15) Try online classes as part of their membership

If you can’t host classes at hours to suit all your members, then you could try hosting online classes.

Not only is this great for your marketing, as you can give prospective members sneak peaks at your fitness and coaching services, but it also gives your members even more ways to enjoy your health & fitness services when the gym is unavailable to them, once again, increasing the value of their membership.

16) Have automated follow-ups for failed payments or expiring credit cards

One of the best way to retain gym members is by actually having them pay for their gym membership.

Failed payments and expired cards are responsible for a huge number of cancellations.

It’s not only inconvenient for you to miss payments from your members, but it’s also a hassle for them as they have to once again give you all of their card details, usually when they’ve arrived at the gym and are ready to go.

To give your members the easiest time possible, set up a CRM that tracks your members payments and then email them automatically to let them know that their card is about to expire and needs to be topped up, to avoid any nasty surprises for your members. Ashbourne Membership Management can even handle all of this for you!

17) Get your members paying by direct debit

Direct debit is the easiest and cheapest way to make sure that your members pay on time, with a method that is convenient to both them and your business.

At Ashbourne we love direct debits and we’ve been focusing on helping gyms set up direct debit payments for over 20 years. Ashbourne’s service includes handling all direct debit admin and debt collection, so gyms can focus on other important things. It’s one of the most sure ways to increase membership retention than any suggestion on this list.

18) Always follow up with an “exit survey” for members you do lose

Much like how you should survey your members while they’re at the gym, try to implement an exit survey for your members when they cancel.

If a member is leaving, they’re far more likely to be open about why they’ve cancelled their membership, giving you better information and data on how to retain gym members in the future.

How To Improve Your Health Club Member Retention With Direct Debits

15th April 202424th October 2019 by Harvey

When it comes to setting up a new payment collection system, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that its more hassle than it’s worth.

It’s too complicated.

It might drive loyal members away.

I don’t mind collecting the money each month.

My system works fine as it is.

On the face of it, those are all good reasons and can be very convincing when you only think of a fitness business direct debit as just an alternative payment method, that can be easily replaced by cash or card payments.

But what if we told you, that direct debits improve member retention at gyms dramatically. You might not believe it and think that the two are completely unrelated.

But we can assure you that over 20 years of handling direct debits for the fitness industry, we can prove to you without question, that a fitness business direct debit will increase your member retention significantly.

How To Improve Member Retention With A Fitness Business Direct Debit

There are actually several reasons for how a direct debit will increase member retention at your health club, so let’s quickly sum up the 4 prime reasons why a fitness business direct debit will keep your members around and paying for longer.

Number 1: Direct Debits Mean That Members Can’t Miss Payments

Your members are busy people with busy lives. As much as they might love your gym, it’s unlikely that the first thing on your member’s mind every month is the due date for their gym membership, when they also have their mortgage, rent, car payments, water, electric, gas, council tax and all manner of bills coming out as well (usually by direct debit may we add).

It’s only a matter of time before they forget. This means that not only do you have to start actively chasing your members for money (which can quickly leave a bad impression), but it also stops the responsibility resting on you every month.

In fact, between 3-5% of card payments fail each month due to cards expiring or being cancelled, so that leaves an even higher potential for this happening, even without your members meaning it to.

And when a member misses a payment, it means they don’t have access to your gym and therefore, it’s a chance that they won’t come ever again.

Number 2: Direct Debits Mean That YOU Can’t Miss Payments

Much like your members, your health club business is made up of people and people make mistakes.

If you’re having to keep track of every single payment from every single member, then it’s only a matter of time before you start making mistakes.

And whether malicious or not, if you’re not chasing your members to pay, then in most cases they won’t.

At the end of the day, your service and the reason you started a health club business in the first place was to spend your efforts helping members improve their health and fitness, not chasing them for missed payments. This extra admin can easily put a strain on your team and mean that only do you potentially miss making income, but that your service falters because you’re too focused on admin rather than training.

Number 3: Direct Debits Are More Convenient For The Customer

By its nature, direct debits are more convenient. No one has to remember them or pay attention to them.

Every month, like clockwork, their gym membership will be taken out of their account, with no awkward conversations, no chasing and no one keeping track of it.

It’s perfect and leaves you and your members free to focus on their exercise and health, rather than financials.

But most importantly, it creates a better relationship with your members as you can focus on providing them with a better service and overall there’s less anxiety around money for everyone.

Plus it means that if they want to upgrade or change their membership in any way, you can just update it on the system and the direct debit is changed for good, without anyone having to remember it.

Number 4: Direct Debits Make Your Club MORE Valuable

Netflix is an online streaming service with no contract that allows customers to cancel their subscription at any time.

Every month, millions of people don’t find the time to watch Netflix.

Every month, millions of people pay for Netflix that they’re not watching.

This is the power of Direct Debit!

Now, this example isn’t meant to demonstrate how customers are stupid or that direct debits take advantage of customers. Your members are extremely savvy and make an important and weighed financial decision when they choose to join your gym. They only have a limited amount of money and yet they see the value of your gym and invest some of that limited income into your business.

That’s an amazing testimony of how good your gym is!

But every month is not the same and that’s why we bring up the Netflix example. Some months, your members won’t have time for the gym and they won’t be in the mood.

In the same way, millions of people pay for Netflix, even though they aren’t watching anything. It offers no value to them during these periods and yet they continue to pay for it and most importantly, they don’t feel ripped off.

They still value Netflix enough to keep their subscription, even though they don’t use it.

That’s the psychology of a direct debit. It changes the way your customers view money.

If you ask a customer to pay each month, some months your gym will have no value for them because they’re unlikely to use it. However, a direct debit means that your gym becomes a permanent feature of their lives. A direct debit means that your gym is a fact of life, a convenient service that they can use whenever they want.

Your gym is simply there!

It’s as easy to go to your gym as it is to turn on the TV and catch a quick show on Netflix, or turn on the tap and have a glass of water.

By stopping your customer from having to weigh up the value or need for your gym each month and instead make it a convenient and easy service that they can use without having to think about it, then the value of your gym goes up in your customer’s mind. It’s an amazing glitch in the way that humans think about the way they value things, but it’s one of the most powerful reasons why setting up a fitness business direct debit allows you to retain members.

Ashbourne Can Help Your Health Club Retain More Members

For 20 years, Ashbourne has been at the forefront of helping the fitness and health club industry collect their payments through direct debit, to retain more members and cut their administration drastically, to keep them in business.

We have hundreds of gyms that we manage and help stay in business through the power of direct debit and our dozens of other management tools.

If you’re interested in setting up a direct debit service for your health club or fitness business, then contact us today and one of our team can show you just how powerful direct debit can be for your fitness business.