RETENTION SERIES
KEEP IT UP
The member journey should last the full length of the membership – and, if possible, beyond. In the second of his three-part series on retention and the member journey, Guy Griffiths looks at the ongoing member
Y
ou’ve managed to lead as many members as possible through the new member journey, and they’ve
hopefully developed the habit of coming to the club regularly. However, they haven’t completed the full member journey – far from it. In fact, your job is to try and prevent them from completing the journey, keeping them on the path to lifetime membership. Some members will inevitably drop
through the net, and we’ll look at absent and ex-members next time around. But at the heart of the problem for many clubs is the fact that the member journey or service plan is often so focused on new members that it falls apart a couple of months after they join: a member only has to turn down a review appointment and they can drop off the radar, never to be spoken to again. Many incidents will get in the
member’s way on their journey, but if you can identify these, you have the opportunity to take action and measure the overall effect of those actions. So how can you reduce the number of members falling through the net?
Identifying members at risk There are many methods and systems that help identify members at risk of leaving. Rather than tell you which one to buy, let’s keep things simple and consider how you could recognise members in your club who need attention. First up, visit frequency is the key factor in any drop-out-risk calculation.
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Smart systems base this on historical data, so for example a member who always visits three times a week, then drops to twice or once, will be fl agged up. Conversely, someone who typically visits once a week and then makes four visits could be over-exercising and so also high risk. But beware the
‘recommendation’ of three visits a week. While people should take frequent exercise, at GG Fit we see no consistent pattern, in terms of differing retention levels, between gym members who visit once a week and those who visit three or more times a week once the new member phase is over. Of course there are differences in
Booking a client review is a classic retention method
Then if you can, fi nd out how often each member intends to visit, and check
retention rates between clubs due to other variables, but we actually see some clubs’ low frequency members sticking around longer; in other clubs, it will be the higher frequency members who have longer average memberships. Indeed, the average member visit frequency for most clubs is around once a week. Well-staffed private clubs have higher average visit frequencies – some as high as two visits a week – whereas budget clubs often average well under one visit a week per member. Knowing the trends and averages at your club is the best place to start.
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
how often they actually do visit. If this is drastically different, take action. Trying to persuade a member who comes once a week to visit more often can even have a negative effect on retention. A second identifi er is whether a
review is due. Members may have been promised, or signed up to, having a review within a few months. We’ll return to what constitutes a review in a moment, but suffi ce to say it’s a classic retention mechanism. However, so many members fall through this gap that it becomes ineffective. Clubs struggle to monitor it and it gets dropped. The process is simple: ask your
members when they next want a review, June 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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