Customer retention is always on your mind as a gym owner. Our gym management software is built around the idea of easy customer lead generation and onboarding - but it also puts much thought into how we can help you retain your gym clients longer and manage your gym or fitness studio more efficiently.
BONUS: Get the Customer Retention Hack
Read to the bottom for a free hack on how to use this report to implement a process that will SURPRISE & DELIGHT your members, earn you a ton of goodwill, extend the average life of most clients, and get your some great social media exposure.
Why Did We Make This Check-In Report?
Do you know which of your classes are most impacted? Which might need more coaching help and which are losing you money?
Our newly revamped Check-In Metrics report is designed to give you the data you need to run your business smarter.
It will allow you and your staff to easily see which classes are trending up and which ones are trending down.
It also tells you which times and class types are the most popular among members so that you can make better decisions about scheduling future sessions with fewer wasted spots.
This information allows them to cap their most impacted classes and reallocate staff where needed based on demand patterns... all in real time!
Before we get to the good stuff and give you a easy process to follow that will help you lower any customer retention issues you have - let’s break down the entire report in this post.
Filters
Three simple filters allow you to dig into your Check-In metrics across two major pivot points:
- Timeframe
- Class Type
This allows you to slice and dice this report along any time frame (capped at one year) and you can optionally choose to see only Check-Ins to certain class types.
Check-Ins by Class Type and Time
Questions Answered:
- What class type and time is most used?
- Which classes are most successful on any given day of the week?
- How does a certain class type/time do over the days of week?
Some of the hardest questions to visualize are around your class types and the times you offer them, broken out over the day of the week.
Considering the table above, if you simply looked at the weekly Check-In values, both classes would appear equally successful.
However, breaking this down further into Class day and time buckets, we can easily see that the Weightlifting Saturday morning class is wildly successful, but there’s very little customer demand for the other times it’s offered.
We can also see the Saturday AM HIIT class is abysmal - but the other offerings are doing solid.
Having this data will allow you to ask key questions which can help you better run yoru business:
- Does the Saturday AM Weightlifting class need another coach to make sure the clients are well trained?
- Should we cancel the other Weightlifting classes?
- Can we run a marketing campaign to attract more people to the Saturday AM HIIT Class?
Class Type Check-Ins By Day
Questions Answered:
- How do different class types relatively stack up, daily?
- How do overall Check-In rates trend or look across class types?
- What days are anomalies in terms of Check-In volume?
The Class Type Check-Ins by Day report is designed to give you a quick read of how your days look in terms of attendance - and what percentages of the day each class type is used.
In the chart above, we can quickly see that a newly created EPOC class makes up roughly 40% of our attendance for the 1st half of January.
We can match that against our initiatives to launch a new class type and get it filled up fast - and decide we’ve done a great job!
Class Type Check-Ins By Class Time
Questions Answered:
- When is the studio busy/empty by time of day
- How do overlapping classes of different class types affect studio usage
This chart gives you a glimpse into how the gym is being utilized across the hours of the day.
While this is very similar to the first graph, it aggregates all Check-Ins into class time buckets, removing the day component.
This makes it a more concise view for seeing how impacted (or empty) you are at any given time of the day, across your timeframe.
Check-Ins by Class Type
Questions Answered:
- What are my most popular class types?
This report is a simple donut graph showing you the breakdown of your Check-Ins by Class type. (cause who doesn’t love donuts?)
Bonus: Create a Committed Member Club To Solve Customer Retention Issues
This section talks about a portion of the report that will be released around Feb 15th, 2021.
OK - It’s time for the hack for you to obliterate your customer retention problems at your gym.
We’ve modeled this off of something Kansas Athletic Club has been doing to great success for years. They have been focused on customer retention and quality of class - and their results speak for themselves!
If you scroll down the report you will find a section called “All Time Top Member Check-Ins”. This section is a table showing you every active member you have right now and how many check-ins they’ve made.
One super popular use for this data is to create a “Dedicated Member Club”. You can brand and structure this however you see fit, but here’s an example Dedicated Member Club:
Bronze Level
Achieved at 100 Check-Ins.
Reward: Free “Dedicated Member” T-Shirt you cannot buy & Announcement in newsletter
Silver Level
Achieved at 250 Check-Ins.
Reward: Free logo patch and hat you cannot buy & Announcement in newsletter
Gold Level
Achieved at 500 Check-Ins.
Reward: $100 Lululemon or Nike store gift card & Announcement in newsletter
Platinum Level
Achieved at 1000 Check-Ins.
Reward: Access to platinum member parking spots + limited edition embroidered Lululemon logo pants + Access to platinum member events & Announcement in newsletter
These kind of loyalty programs are huge for retention. Not only do they give you a moment to thank you customers for being part of your business for such a long period of time, but you create an environment where people are working towards new goals.
Goals are what keep us all motivated - and this system will layer yet another goal and reward system on top fitness.
Implementing this process takes one person about 4 hours a month, depending on what you give as level rewards - and is streamlined by our Check-In report.
Simply track members on a Google Sheet as they hit each level of award. Use one tab per level. Record their name and the date they hit the reward, as well as the prizes they got and when they received them.
This will make tracking, recording and fulfillment of rewards a snap!
Then, as you award these dedicated members with their prizes, amke srue to give them (and your gym) a chance to shine across the socials! Ask the members to share as well for additional exposure.
This simple and effective tactic will help bust churn at your gym, retain gym memberships longer, and give you some big “feel good” social juice all year long!
