For many clubs, member usage is second only to sales as a prime indicator of club success. Failure to get new members regularly visiting your club, especially within the first few months, reduces the likelihood of keeping them as members in the long term. All the marketing in the world isn’t going to drag a disinterested, de-motivated member back into your club.
The best way to improve retention is to actively engage your members from day one. Getting a grasp on club usage, and establishing a plan to engage new members, takes planning and consistency, but it will pay you large dividends.
Naturally, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Good check-in practices will collect the information you need. Running the same reports consistently each month will show you patterns of usage over the months and help predict which members you are in danger of losing. You’ll want these usage reports to identify low users:
• Usage Ranges Report: Run this report each month by a Join Date range to capture new members with low usage during a finite period of time, and to generate a list of members who should receive retention calls. You can also run a list of new members with high usage and spiff them. Don’t ignore high users – all members need attention to keep them engaged!
• Retention Report: This report, also run by the Join Date, will show each member’s usage broken down by month, over the past six months. This is a great tool for seeing a pattern of reduced attendance. Often, a member who “falls off the wagon” due to a busy time in their life, or an interruption in their routine, can return to their old pattern of regular usage with just a friendly call – noting their lack of recent use and expressing concern.
With these reports in hand, you can use your system for personal contact. Phone calls are best; emails and mailings alone won’t be enough. If you do not have a retention coordinator, your fitness trainer may be a good resource for this task. Who better to make these calls than a trainer trying to build a client base? The increase in your personal training payroll budget could be well worth the increase in retention.
A little advance planning is helpful. Keep these points in mind when contacting your club members:
• Verify Member Contact Information: Be certain your membership sales reps are verifying your members’ home, work and email information upon sign-up. Missing contact information equates to poor contact results.
• Access Member Information Prior to Calling: Have your trainers access your contact management tracking system within your software prior to calling. They should familiarize themselves with the reason the member joined in the first place, and any other pertinent notes that may assist them with discussion points. What a wonderful time to gently remind the member why they joined by working it into the conversation.
• Create a Call Form with a Script: Create a form that the trainer can use when calling. Include possible questions along with a blank area for taking notes.
This way, a trainer will be well-armed with questions to engage the member in conversation.
• Note Contacts on the Call Form: Although calls may be placed during the day, you are more likely to reach a member in the evening. A message left on an answering machine does not help. If the trainer does not reach the member, he/she can note that on the call form and try back at another time.
• Empower your Trainers to Make Decisions: Allow them to offer a free training session to the member whose usage was very low – your cost of an hourly wage for this one session may be worth keeping a member over the long term. You may want to limit the number of free sessions a trainer can offer per month in order to keep your marketing budget in control.
• Encourage your Member to Bring a Guest to the Club: If you are not using a “bring-a-buddy” program, mail your members some free passes. Sometimes all they need is companionship.
• Log Contacts into your Tracking System: Be sure the trainer logs his/her findings in the Log Notes area of your tracking system for others to view in the future.
Using your club check-in system as more than a security system will help you increase retention and will increase your usage numbers. Be certain your club management software has the tools you need to accomplish this. If you consistently follow this type of program, you will prevent attrition by engaging your members from the onset of their membership. It’s much easier to save an existing member than to find a new one.
Kate Dumas is a Sales Associate at Twin Oaks Software. She can be contacted at 866.278.6750 x 296, or by email atkdumas@tosd.com, or visit www.tosd.com.
