Optimising each stage of the member journey ensures you are providing the best member experience possible throughout the member lifecycle, resulting in increased club revenue and better retention. In this blog, we explore each stage of the member journey, from prospect right through to club advocate, and how technology can play a crucial role in enhancing the experience at every step.
Stage 1: Attracting Prospects
Having a solid member acquisition strategy in place with the right technology is crucial to attracting new prospects. We recommend that your member acquisition strategy includes the following:
Optimised Website
Your website should be optimised for lead generation and conversions, period. One way in which to do this is to implement online joining and online guest enquiry features that integrate with your club management solution. Not only does this make it easier for prospects to submit enquiries and join online, but it also means that all prospect data is captured and synced to your club management software, making it a far easier task to follow up with prospects and move them through the sales funnel. Your website should also be mobile optimised, as around 70% of online search is conducted on mobile devices.
Mobile Guest Sign Up
Whilst online joining and online prospect enquiry features are still very relevant, it’s crucial to meet your prospects where they are and that’s through their mobile device. By providing mobile solutions, you are making it easier and more accessible for prospects to enquire and sign up, helping to boost your member acquisition, as well as setting your club apart from the competition.
The FitSense Member App provides a feature that allows your prospects to sign up to your club as a guest, allowing them to get a better idea of the services you offer and familiarise themselves with your club and club community before they commit to a full membership. It’s a proven strategy that significantly increases the probability of your guest converting to a full member.
With mobile technology like FitSense, guests can be up and running in just a few minutes. Not only that, they are automatically signed into their FitSense Member App account and can start using the features straight away, such as class bookings, mobile QR check-in, social feed and goal setting/tracking.
Another great benefit of providing mobile guest sign up is that you can communicate with your guests via mobile push notification. When you pick up your phone, the first messages you see are push notifications, which makes this communication channel very powerful. You can use push notifications to send joining offers, information about new classes, equipment, and other facilities as well as engaging fitness related tips to keep your guests engaged with your club and primed for conversion.
Email Marketing
Traditional email is still one of the most effective ways to form a relationship with health-conscious people who may be interested in your services. Email marketing is perfect for sharing club news, offers and promotions such as seasonal joining offers or complimentary guest passes.
If you’re not using email marketing as part of your member acquisition strategy, you’re missing out on an invaluable opportunity to “connect” with potential clients.
ClubWise offers an integrated Campaign Manager feature that allows you to create and send your own ad-hoc campaigns via Email and SMS, as and when you want. The ClubWise Campaign Manager tool has recently been enhanced to include industry-leading features that ensure beautiful, professional-looking emails every time. It’s simple and fast to use with a drag and drop content editor, so your prospect emails will look great with little time and effort! You can find out more here.
Not only that, the SMS Marketing feature allows you to receive replies directly into an integrated task list, not only offering another valuable communication stream between you and your prospects but ensuring you have structured follow-ups planned in automatically.
Member Referrals
Member referrals are a great way to utilise your club’s strongest asset, your members. The power that word of mouth holds really is something that can’t be paralleled. A happy member is a great way to promote your club, plus it’s a totally free marketing and sales tool.
But that’s not to say large amounts of referrals will happen on their own. It’s a good idea to get a strong referral programme in place, such as FitSense Rewards, which enables your members to earn points for every referral, which can then be exchanged for tangible rewards. Incentivising your members to make referrals is both a simple and effective strategy, additionally, it will show your members that you appreciate them.
It’s important to make your referral schemes measurable, particularly if you are regularly using different incentives. You need to keep track of what works best and if you can, why it does. FitSense Rewards will provide you with all the insight you need, so you can track, monitor and adjust.
Stage 2: Convert
Mobile Conversions
A good place to start is utilising technology that makes it quick and easy for your ‘guests’ to convert to full members. Your guests should now have a good idea of the services you offer and will be familiar with your club and club community, making them very hot prospects and primed for conversion. The transition process to member should be easy, convenient and accessible.
As we mentioned earlier, the FitSense Member App provides a feature that allows your prospects to sign up to your club as a guest. After the guest period has elapsed, FitSense automatically prompts the guest to ‘Join Now’, automating a core part of the sales process. Once your guest has made the decision join your club, they complete the simple in-app joining process. Any joining related promo codes can be entered during this 3-step process. This technology ensures the whole guest to member conversion has been a seamless, completely paperless and convenient experience.
In-App Joining
In-App Joining should not just be reserved for guests. Offering a convenient in-app joining solution presents a great opportunity to maximise conversions and automate the full onboarding process.
FitSense In-App Joining delivers a seamless journey from sign up straight into your clubs community, where members can instantly immerse themselves in everything your club has to offer through their member app, from booking classes, scheduling visits, earning points for rewards and familiarising themselves with your clubs culture.
The FitSense Member App is one of the first member apps to introduce this feature. Click here to learn more about FitSense In-App Joining.
Stage 3: Engage
New members often start out on their fitness journey with great intentions but keeping them engaged is one of the biggest challenge’s clubs face. The figures show if a member attends your club less than once a month, they are at a very real risk of cancelling their membership. The first three months really can be ‘make or break’. Therefore it’s crucial to have the right technology in place, technology that works to automate engagement and allow you to really focus on providing a great experience.
Member App
By having a member app on their phone, your members have much more control over their fitness journey, even outside of the club. A member app allows your members to check their progress wherever they are at whatever time of day, set goals, plan and book their workouts around their schedule and keep up to date with other members along with the latest news and events at the club. By providing your members with this level of control over their fitness journey, they feel more empowered, more motivated, and ultimately more engaged with your facility.
On top of this, a member app really helps to improve communication between your club and your members with the ability to send members mobile push notifications and feed items. This is a great way to reach your members as they always have their phones with them, so are far more likely to read the messages. As previously highlighted, you can use this communication channel in many ways, from promoting new classes, setting member challenges, and providing general club updates.
Technology that Measures Engagement
During the Engagement stage, it’s important to track and monitor member activity and engagement. By having a solution in place that allow you to easily monitor member engagement, you will have insight into ‘at risk’ members and can take a proactive approach to re-engaging members that are starting to drop off the radar.
Using a solution that automatically alerts you to ‘at risk’ members based on a drop in activity levels, will save you valuable time and allow you to direct your attention to the members that need it.
The FitSense RAG system is a perfect example of this technology. It tracks member activity recorded through the FitSense Member App. The RAG system then categorises your members based on activity levels, identified by FitSense Points accrued. Categories are Red, Amber and Green.
The RAG system places emphasis on the Red members, which are deemed High Risk based on their activity levels. These are the members who have developed sporadic habits and are starting to drop off the radar. You are alerted to the member RAG status in the ClubWise Check-In screen, both web and mobile. By identifying these members and acting before they become inactive, you have a much higher chance of re-engaging them.
Stage 4: Delight
Good clubs become great clubs when they master the transition from Engage to Delight. This stage includes more of an emotional component and is more focused on nurturing long-term relationships, whereas the Engage stage is more focused on building traction, increasing attendance and community engagement. The goal of Delight is to create raving fans who you not only retain, but who also act as a consistent source of referrals.
Be visible to your members
This stage demands meaningful human interaction – albeit ‘socially distanced’ interaction. Flexible mobile club management technology allows you to interact with your members more freely, helping you to build long term relationships. ClubWise Mobile is a perfect example of this, and provides staff with a truly mobile solution, allowing them to perform club and member management tasks on the gym floor, making them visible to members and able to interact far more easily. ClubWise Mobile also includes conversation prompts and member notifications, so your team can strike up meaningful and timely interactions.
Delight members through smart fitness technology
Body composition analysis
Offering smart fitness solutions that work to provide members with insights into their performance, progress and results is an effective way to keep your members motivated and on track, thus increasing their length of stay. A good example of such technology is Body Composition Analysis.
Body composition analysis sessions allow you to incorporate more human interaction, as you can spend time explaining the measurements and working with your members on a tailored fitness plan based on their results. This means your members are getting a more personalised service, which delivers better results and better results mean delighted members.
By allowing your members to record, track and monitor their body composition progress directly in a member app, the results of their hard work in the club will be visible and accessible at their fingertips, leading to higher motivation levels and strong sense of achievement.
Group Heart Rate Classes
Capturing real-time heart rate data makes your members aware of their fitness performance and motivates them to exercise in the ideal heart rate zone and train more effectively, meaning your members are getting better results and reaching their goals more quickly. Better results mean delighted members.
Group heart rate zone training also creates a fun but challenging environment and instils an element of competition, which is great for keeping your members motivated, and feeling part of your club’s community. Check out the fully integrated, app-based Group Heart Rate Training solution from ClubWise.
Optimising the member journey at every stage is crucial to the success of your club. We have highlighted some of the key technology solutions from ClubWise that help you do this. For more information on how ClubWise can optimise the entire member journey for success, book a no-obligation demonstration today!
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