As a business owner or club manager in the fitness industry, you’ll likely notice short spells of losing customers. The reasons for them leaving will vary and is normally beyond your control, but one excellent method of minimising your churn rate is by communicating effectively with your members.
In today’s post, we’re going to share our tips on how you can better communicate with your members using online methods of communication.
Use emails, text and push notifications to your advantage.
87% of UK adults own a smartphone, meaning you have an ideal line of communication that goes directly to your members. Sending out emails, texts and push notifications directly to your members’ smartphones makes sharing information much more efficient. Increases efficiency (both for you and your customers) leads to improved member experience.
If one of your classes is cancelled, sending a quick text from your management system to the class attendees to notify them stops any confusion. Most importantly it prevents those attendees from travelling down to your club only to find their class is cancelled. You can even send them a follow-up to let them know when the class is next scheduled to go ahead or how they can claim a refund.
Sending these notifications digitally allows you to cut back on paperwork and printing costs – that means your gym noticeboard can be used for more exciting things, such as showcasing member achievements!
Think about how you speak to your customers.
Communicating with your customers is one thing, but communicating in the right way using the right tone is another thing entirely. Your customers are begging to be spoken to in a friendly, helpful way; so think about how you can do that in a text or an email. Keep it kind and informal, but keep it professional.
Failure to communicate with your customers for long periods of time will make them think that they’re unimportant, so they’ll be more vulnerable to being swept away by your competitors. You can stop this from happening by regularly checking in with your customers to see how they’re getting on at your club, perhaps even ask them if they’d like any assistance in reaching their fitness goals (which is a great opportunity to upsell an additional service). In doing so, you’re showing that you genuinely care about your customers and you value their business.
By maintaining a helpful and friendly tone, your members will find you much more approachable. If they feel like they can approach you, they’ll be far more comfortable letting you know if they’re having any issues with their experience. Therefore, they’ll be at a much lower risk of cancelling their membership without warning.
Add value to their experience.
Be mindful about what you’re sending your customers – the last thing they want is to have their inbox full of emails from your club about things that aren’t relevant to them. Sending them tailored promotional offers once in a while is fine (as long as it’s in line with GDPR of course) but make sure it’s relevant to them and their fitness goals.
For example, if you run a HIIT class and you’re thinking about adding more of them to your diary, send an email to your current HIIT class attendees and ask them what they think. You’re showing them that you value their input, but you’re also adding value by offering them the opportunity to get an additional class per week.
You can also send your customers relevant tips and advice to help them get the most out of their time at your club. Again, it means that you’re enhancing the customer experience. Consider sending out a monthly newsletter or a weekly motivational text message to keep the communication consistent.
Solid, consistent communication with your members has a multitude of benefits – from creating happier customers to reduced churn rates at your gym. Choose which channels are most effective for your business and start by sending out a couple of tests – see which one gets the best response and go from there.
This blog post should give you some great techniques to help you build stronger communication with your members.
Want to learn more about sending member communications directly from your CRM system? Speak to one of our product experts today!
