How Timeliness Drives Performance in Fitness Membership Sales

What if I told you you could increase your gym's monthly tours or trials by at least 20%?

And no, I don't mean by spending another couple of thousand on Facebook or Meta ads, but from your existing traffic levels. Well, it's become clear that this and much more is possible, so let's dive in and understand more.

Every day, visitors come to your website looking for answers or maybe even confirmation that you have a facility that will work for them. They arrive at different stages of the buying cycle, from those seeking final confirmation that you are the club for them, to others gathering information to determine whether the club suits their personal requirements. All of them share one thing in common: they want answers now, at a time when their intent is at its peak. This means they are most motivated regarding the subject matter driving their current action.

The key here is to capitalise on this moment of high intent. When potential members actively seek information about your gym, they are primed for engagement. Providing immediate, personalised responses to their queries can make the difference between securing a new sign-up and missing an opportunity.

However, research undertaken by the team at Keepme suggests that across 85 UK and North America fitness operators, the average response time is not just minutes, nor hours but can be days.

You don't need to be a genius to understand how this might impact a club’s opportunity to convert these visitors into the members they could become.

There are a number of reasons for the delay in response. These range from resourcing constraints to the expertise for some questions not readily available to the front-line staff responsible for answering. Then there's the simple matter of business hours. Many potential members engage outside of regular operating hours; indeed, for some businesses, most of their traffic comes from outside these hours, as their potential customers look to progress their interest when not at work themselves.

From our conversations with operators, it became clear that this is a genuine challenge that, if solved, could materially affect performance because research suggests that leads contacted within five minutes are 21 times more likely to convert. 

The advent of large language models (LLM) and generative AI has heralded a new era of customer engagement technologies. Gone are the days of static FAQs and simplistic chat functions, as it is now possible to meet customers on any channel of their choosing, whether social DMs, webchat, WhatsApp, or even voice.

With LLMs, an agent can be trained to understand your business and then be able to answer any question they are asked and take action. So, imagine a potential member who wants to understand the membership plans when they land on your website at 10pm one night. Your agent can engage them in conversation, answer that and any other question, and even offer them the opportunity to book an appointment for a tour, which it, in turn, arranges, sends a confirmation to the potential member, and updates all internal systems.

There is massive opportunity for optimisation in this area and over the next few blog posts we will look into this in more detail. Stay tuned!