RETENTION
The future of retention will be less about reacting to a lost member, and more about creating a proactive circle of daily customer care. Dr Paul Bedford offers a glimpse of the future based on the expertise shared at this year’s inaugural Retention Convention
Retention 3.0 T
he fitness industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift. Low-cost has established itself as the major growth area,
boutiques and studios are emerging as an alternative to traditional clubs, and new technology platforms like ClassPass (see p62) are offering the public flexible ways to consume fitness services and products. Faced with this competition and increased consumer choice, retention needs to be as high a priority for operators as new member sales.
Digital age Retention strategies began around 20 years ago with human-driven, staff-to- member initiatives based on ‘we believe this is true’ thinking. In 2002, following
66 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital July 2015 ©
the release of Dr Melvyn Hillsdon’s Winning the Retention Battle research, we began to incorporate data analysis to identify where and why the problems existed. Now, third generation retention strategies will be built on a combination of staff, mobile apps, cloud services, Big Data analytics and social technologies. While operators would clearly like
to run one automated software system that does everything from membership management to marketing e-blasts, the evidence is that human interaction still has a far greater impact on retention than its technological counterpart; the most effective use of technology is to empower staff – using it to enhance their relationships with your members – rather than replace them.
Cybertrek 2015
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