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.
Train your staff on how your gym loyalty program works
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:
- Explain how the program works
- Answer questions that members have
- Tell members about related promotions or challenges that are happening at the gym
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.
How to train your staff members
Create a Webinar
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.
Do a contest
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.
Marketing to enroll new members in your gym loyalty 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:
- Engage gym members with your rewards program early
- Enroll more people in your program
- Get more referrals early in their membership
How to market your gym loyalty program to new customers
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…
- Creating a landing page about your loyalty program on your website
- Including a program sign-up link in new member welcome emails
- Promoting the loyalty program in your social media posts
Feel free to use these templates as starting points when you are ready:
- Spread the Word About Your Rewards Program with These Social Posts
- Two Weeks of Social Posts for Launching (or Relaunching) Your Rewards Program
Challenges and promotions to keep new and existing members engaged with your gym loyalty program
Finally, you need to keep members engaged with your loyalty program. This can be done by running promotions and challenges. Promotions and challenges…
- Gamify the customer experience while helping you achieve your business goals
- Give gym members something exciting to look forward to
- Can be easily implemented with loyalty program software
Challenge ideas
New Member Challenge
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.
Seasonal challenge
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.
Challenges for different types of members
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.
Promotion ideas
Promotion bonus
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.
Frequency bonus
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.”
Time bonus
Reward members that come in during specific times of the day to shift traffic from busy times to slower times.
Create an effective rewards program
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:
- Top 7 Reasons Customer Loyalty Programs Fail (and how to avoid them)
- How to Increase Membership with a Gym Referral Program
- How to Get More Customers to Join Your Loyalty Program
About Perkville
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.