RETENTION SERIES
KEEPING IN TOUCH Ignore absent members at your peril, and use your
ex-member database as a prospect list and a resource for feedback, says Guy Griffiths, in the third and final part of his series on retention and the member journey
A
bsent and ex-members are two under-used segments in many clubs’ databases. Not only can they provide
critical business information on how you could adapt or improve retention, but these member groups can also be a great source of sales. Fear is the main reason why these
members are not contacted: club operators worry about awakening dormant members, and are concerned that they will receive negative feedback from people who have left. But sticking your head in the sand is a much riskier strategy; if all your dormant members cancelled tomorrow, your business would be in serious trouble, and if you don’t know why members are leaving, how can you expect to make people stick around?
In the same way that the member
journey should not end after the fi rst few weeks, you need to plan what happens when a member stops visiting, and after they leave.
Pay versus stay Let’s start with measurement. Knowing your average membership length is a good place to start, but ‘length of pay’ is different from ‘length of stay’. Consider a member who stops paying in month 12; it’s no good contacting them in month 11 if they last visited in month seven. At GGFit, we often work with length of stay – ie first to last visit – as it’s a truer identifier of member engagement and allows you to affect retention more directly. Another useful metric to understand is the average time from the last visit
FIGURE 1: CONTACTING THE ABSENT MEMBER
Absent 3 weeks
We miss you
Still absent 4 weeks
Where have you been?
Still absent 5 weeks
speak Call message
Follow-up message
1. sms 2. email
1. email 2. sms
phone & sms?
sms, email, post?
phone, email, post leave
Still absent 6 weeks
We want you back!
Still absent 7+ weeks
Call again/ message/ news only
date to cancellation date – this gives you an idea of how long you have to try to re-engage a dormant member.
Who’s going to call? When deciding how to contact absent members, you need to know what’s most effective, but also take into account what’s practical or possible with the resources you have at your club. Phone conversations are most
effective at getting members back, but you will often have to make a lot of phone calls to have a few conversations, and timing is key to success. Some clubs use customer service staff or even a call centre to make these calls, but
42 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital July 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
©
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/WAVEBREAKMEDIA
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