Boost Your Gym Membership Retention: A Killer Strategy Guide for Maximum Success

There are tons of tips out there on how to boost your gym membership retention. But it’s hard to find a guide on how to create a killer gym retention strategy. In this blog, we try and redress the balance by telling you how gyms came to design membership retention strategies that work for them.

Firstly, let’s break down the crucial elements that go into any gym retention strategy, and look at how you can optimize them for maximum retention. There are some core elements involved in building a solid member retention strategy:

• Crunching the numbers on members who are at risk of attrition, or “churn”

• Creating member outreach campaigns to boost member retention

• Overhauling your fitness offerings to catch at-risk members

• Regularly monitoring and assessing member sentiment

Design a retention strategy for your gym

Now, there is no one-size-fits-all gym membership retention strategy you can magically apply to your site. Each gym is different and your retention strategy will have to factor this in.

If you run multiple gym sites, the first thing to do is to get a solid understanding of the membership retention needs of each facility. Each gym will have a different set of customers, different priorities, and perhaps even different budgets and resources. What works for one facility might not work for another.

The first thing you want to do is take a look at your retention across all your venues.

Pull up your membership details and analyze which demographics are at risk of churning.

Here are some at-risk groups to consider:

• Under 35’s

• People who work out on their own

• People who haven’t attended in the last week

• People who haven’t been active in 30 days

• People who have a falling attendance rate

• People with low NPS scores (more on this later)

You need to start categorizing your member lists for a more targeted approach – it will help!

Is your membership plans up to scratch?

You should also monitor how effective your current membership plans are.

Segment your members by plan type and compare and contrast attendance rates. Send out surveys to see how members find their current plans. Action any feedback you can to make your plans work right for your members. Having an inappropriate membership plan is likely to end up with members leaving for one of your rivals. And you don’t want that, especially if you could have avoided this outcome by adjusting your membership offerings.

Sound like a lot of hard work? Well, the good news is that there are tools made exactly for this job, like Keepme which can automate this part of the process for you. Utilize the best CRM for gyms, equipped with AI technology, to categorize members based on their demographics and engagement levels easily.

Spruce up your fitness offerings

It’s important that you have the right range of workout classes and fitness programs to suit your members’ requirements. It’s a good idea to send surveys to find out what your members want from your gym and make any relevant changes so that working out in your gym is an attractive proposition for your members.

Outreach campaigns

By now you should have an understanding of retention and attrition data across your gym location, and you’ve made all the infrastructural changes you can (if people are complaining about filthy changing rooms/ faulty air conditioning, etc., you should sort that out pronto).

The next step is to separate all this retention data into different risk groups. Although you should have an outreach plan that reaches every member, you should create content that specifically targets at-risk groups.

Running engagement campaigns is an ongoing process. Over time you should monitor whether your members’ retention scores improve or get worse, and change your campaigns accordingly. Often the problem will be that you’re not being targeted enough and your messages may be too generic.

Implement effective outreach campaigns using advanced gym marketing software, designed to generate quality leads for gym memberships.

Put your Net Promoter Scores to work

You are probably familiar with the concept of Net Promoter Scores (NPS), the measure of whether your members are “promoters” or “detractors” of your gym.

You should send out NPS surveys to your members and then segment your members by NPS score.

Detractors could then be sent to your outreach team for some TLC, whilst promoters can be used as contacts for testimonials, or to be part of a referral scheme, and so on.

Conclusion

As you dive into the world of fitness membership retention strategies, you'll discover a multitude of factors to consider. Remember, each gym has its own unique strategy. Don't worry though, the tips in this article are here to point you in the right direction. By taking a segmented approach to your data analysis and consistently monitoring retention risks and NPS scores, you'll be well on your way to crafting a winning strategy that gives your gym an edge over the competition. And hey, here's a friendly reminder: when you harness the power of top-notch gym management software and CRM systems, you'll be able to streamline operations, supercharge lead generation, and skyrocket your retention rates. So let's work smarter, not harder, and make your fitness club a success!