interview NEIL KING
The commercial director of management contractor SLM talks to Kate Cracknell about its goal of one million active customers
I
t was a startling set of data that shaped the current SLM business plan, according to commercial director Neil King.
“We segment our customer base – not
only our Everyone Active members but also ‘pay as you go’ users – into different activity blocks. ‘Multi-active’ customers are those who visit our centres eight or more times a month; ‘active’ come between one and seven times a month;
‘lapsed’ haven’t been in the last month but have been in the previous three; and fi nally ‘inactive’ customers haven’t attended in the last three months. “In May 2009, we had a customer base
of about 600,000 – and only 3.3 per cent were multi-active. Meanwhile 20.7 were active, 21.3 per cent lapsed, and 54.7 per cent inactive. That data wasn’t 100 per cent accurate, as it relied on people swiping their Everyone Active cards through the turnstiles on entry and we only had about a 60 per cent capture rate at that stage. However, it did give us a shocking insight into our customers’ activity behaviour and a valuable starting point against which to benchmark ourselves.
“We knew we needed to understand
our customers better – who they were, how often they were coming to us, what activity they were doing – so we could communicate at a personal level with each individual to encourage them to become more active, more often.” At this point, SLM was already partway
through a three-year business plan. Launched in April 2008 following the offi cial launch of its customer-facing Everyone Active brand the previous month, the plan focused around a pledge to build SLM’s customer base to one million people, all on a single database. That goal was duly achieved, thanks both
to improved data capture methods and to a number of new centres taken on under the Everyone Active brand; by May 2011, SLM had reached 1,059,743 customers. Even more ambitious is the
company’s new pledge, sitting at the heart of its current three-year plan: to get one million active members by March 2014. “We hope to grow to two million members, with 50 per cent of those in either our multi-active or active categories,” explains King.
a digital solution By May 2011, the stats had already improved – 7.1 per cent multi-active customers, 32.9 per cent active, 20.8 lapsed and 39.2 inactive. But, stresses King: “We still need to improve further.” Integral to this is an understanding
and acceptance of the way people exercise. Says King: “Based on our research, people simply don’t go to a leisure or health club fi ve times a week – fewer than 1 per cent of our customers come to us that regularly. Yet we have the challenge of trying to get people to be active fi ve times a week – ‘5 x 30’. “Those activity guidelines might have
changed recently [see p30, and HCM Aug 11, p3], but the essential message hasn’t changed. The new guidelines
Basildon Sporting Village opened on 30 April – the next month, SLM confirmed it had passed the one million member mark
32 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital october 2011 © cybertrek 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84