How to Build Member Loyalty

Do you want to build member loyalty but don’t know where to start? Are you struggling to acquire, engage and keep your members? Are you devoting countless hours to developing programs and offering incentives in your club that just aren’t sticking? Are you standing out against the competitors in your area?

As club owners and operators, these are questions you are faced with on a daily basis. With the start of a new fiscal year looming, you may be considering what your financial and marketing plans are for 2015. The secret sauce is to create loyal members starting sooner rather than later. A loyal member is your link to generating more leads, spending more money and engaging in more programs at your club.

Now is the time to start thinking outside the box and addressing your problems with solutions. The start of a New Year always brings in a new set of members looking to attain their goals for the New Year. Meanwhile, your existing members refresh their perspectives on their health and wellness goals. Instead of them trickling out the door and being completely gone by mid-February, it is time to capitalize on that opportunity. The question is: How to do this in the most effective, successful way possible?

Implementing a unique rewards program into your club makes generating referrals, driving retention and creating an opportunity for additional revenue easy. Most importantly it drives ongoing member loyalty.

The proof that a rewards program works is in the statistics. Rockwell Collins Recreation Center, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rewards members with additional points for having 12 or more check-ins during a month. During the second 4-month period of the loyalty program being launched, they saw a 20 percent increase in the number of members using the facility 12 times a month or more, over the number of members that accessed the facility the same amount of times in the first 4-month period. The rate at which members were using the facilities 11 times or less per month increased by 36 percent in the second 4-month period of the program. Rockwell Collins also saw a 45 percent increase in members using the club 12 times or more in a month for two months in a row.

Gold’s Gym Hudson Valley in New York had 973 current members refer a new member in the first six months of their rewards program.

Since implementing a rewards program, LECOM Medical & Fitness Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, had members reward friends and family with guest passes, and more than 70 percent of guest passes generated in the past 12 months resulted in new member activation.

Another factor that has driven the success of rewards programs in clubs is the unique branded programs that are available to offer — as a club owner and operator, you pick the behaviors to reward for, you pick the value of the points for the behaviors, you pick the rewards. Clubs are able to offer a variety of rewards from name-brand products, personal training, massages or club-branded logo and apparel.

Utilizing an outside company to power your rewards program makes the process quick and easy. Most rewards programs can be implemented into your club to start rewarding your members in less than 30 days. Within just a few months, you will start seeing results. Start creating loyal members now, before it’s too late.

This article was written as a collaborative effort by the FitRewards team made up of Erica Milcarek, Pam Farish-Ozoroski and Maria Parrella-Turco. For more information on FitRewards, visit fitrewards.com.