Creating a loyalty program for your gym members doesn't have to be hard. Here are three key things you can do to run your program smoothly.
Customers will naturally have questions about your loyalty program and look to employees for guidance. This is where training your staff members comes into play. The front desk, managers, and sales team alike should know how to:
This will help your team talk about the loyalty program in a consistent way. And each staff member will be equipped to provide good customer service when members need help.
Many people are visual learners, so something as simple as a webinar can be helpful in training staff members. You can host a webinar and have a recorded version available for those who can’t attend. With a recording your staff can review the training as often as necessary. And you can reuse it when onboarding new employees in the future.
If you want to go the extra mile, you can hold a staff contest with prizes. This option works best at multi-location fitness clubs. For example, the location with the most registered members gets a pizza party. Contests are effective because they're fun for staff members, but more importantly, they motivate them to promote your program.
The second must-have for a successful gym loyalty program is marketing. Members need to know about the program and how it works. The best way to do this is to talk about the loyalty program during your new member onboarding process. By doing so, you can:
You can include information about the loyalty program in your new member welcome package. For example, a flyer that explains the benefits of joining, and a sign-up link or form. Other marketing ideas to consider are…
Feel free to use these templates as starting points when you are ready:
Finally, you need to keep members engaged with your loyalty program. This can be done by running promotions and challenges. Promotions and challenges…
A challenge based on activities a customer completes in their first 30 days of membership. Encourage them to do things in this time period that will result in improving their membership tenure. We recommend making the challenge very achievable for a large percent of your new members, but enough to get them engaged.
Many challenges are seasonal and take advantage of holiday themes such as a “Thanksgiving challenge” to encourage exercise to work off Thanksgiving dinner or or a “Summer challenge” to encourage attendance when people are typically outside.
Target challenges at different segments of your membership. For example, a winback challenge to re-engage members who are at risk of canceling their membership. Or a challenge targeted at insurance members to boost their attendance and resultant insurance revenue. Health clubs can use loyalty program software like Perkville to create challenges that target different segments of members.
You choose a date range where specific activities are worth more loyalty points. For example, if you want more referrals during January, you can attach a promotion bonus to your referral earning activity so that customers earn 2x or 3x the number of points that month for referring friends that join.
Reward regular attendance to help keep members consistently visiting your gym by offering a “Frequency bonus” if they work out a certain number of times per week or month. For example, “Check in five times in a month”s and earn an extra 50 points.”
Reward members that come in during specific times of the day to shift traffic from busy times to slower times.
By following these three steps, health club owners can set their loyalty programs up for success. For more tips on how to increase retention in the fitness industry, check out these blog posts:
Perkville offers a way to create and manage your customer loyalty program. We automate the experience by integrating to point-of-sale, scheduling, and membership systems. Schedule a demo to learn how Perkville can help your business - we’d love to chat.
