4 Points of Interaction to Build Into Your Operations

When it comes to client retention, many fitness facility owners recognize that this metric is critical to sustainable growth; however, some may need help understanding where to begin. When discussing growing a fitness business, marketing and advertising are typically the primary topics of discussion. Unfortunately, when focusing too heavily on the client acquisition side of the company, some studio owners may overlook an aspect that is undoing all their hard work - decreasing client retention rates.

While there are many ways to help work on increasing a gym’s membership retention rates, interaction points are one high-quality place to start. Regularly interacting with your customer base can positively influence your business's health, from helping clients feel more connected with your business to the ability to cross-sell, up-sell, or even get referrals. Therefore, we will cover four focus topics to help enable interaction points within your fitness facility’s operations.

1. Email 

The first category of focus when implementing structured contact points with your training studio members is to utilize email. While the landscape of email marketing has significantly shifted over the years (and continues to do so with more privacy and user-experience-focused updates), email is still a viable and valuable channel for relationship cultivation. When looking at your email strategy, it’s wise to divide it into two categories.

The first category would be a tool for your sales funnel to help cultivate incoming leads from your various marketing campaign efforts. The second category, which we will focus on here, is to help internally promote your facility, brand, and services and build your community stronger through interaction and engagement.

In a recent blog post titled 3 Emails You Should Be Sending Your Clients, we cover three emails owners can implement into most fitness business structures to help you here. The main categories include welcome emails when new clients sign up for your facility, update and praise emails sent at crucial check-in times, and group-focused emails that go out more generically to everyone on your list (like newsletters, updates, etc.)

However, if the thought of rolling out these emails seems overwhelming due to having to just accomplish another task in your endless list of to-do’s as an owner or operator, fear not. Many times (and in most cases mentioned), you can implement automation into your email strategy, especially when pairing it with your gym management software. Spending time upfront to establish your messaging, timing, and designs can help save you time in the long term, not having to send these individually but predictably and consistently getting the emails to the right people at the ideal times.

2. Text

In modern communication, SMS messaging is becoming increasingly standard for purchase confirmations, appointment reminders, and direct messaging (or marketing). Utilizing this feature to develop client interaction opportunities further can be game-changing.

While the opportunities for solution types are profound, many facilities tend to enter the text message automation arena with the basics mentioned above (purchase/billing confirmation and appointment/class reminders). However, that does not mean mission accomplished; these are commonplace in most B2C businesses in general, so you need to break through the noise and leverage it in a way that helps your members feel more connected or in direct contact with you.

Text messages can help members feel like they have a direct line of contact with your business, even at scale. Consider allowing your clients to text you questions or send you notes. Does this thought make you concerned about the responding, management, or follow-up that would be required of you or your staff? Well, fret not; again, automation is our friend. Many facilities have adopted AI into their processes. Using software platforms, integrations, and the latest artificial intelligence software, they can reliably answer basic questions, log notes, or send automated responses while notifying internal staff to complete necessary actions.

Like the email topic, text messages can include user-specific information like birthdays, milestones, goal achievements, or even a drop in attendance (to help combat attrition). When you proactively reach out and acknowledge your customers, these personalized messages can help distinguish your business in their minds.

3. In-Person

Regular interactions with clients or members of your facility are typically significantly more manageable when the business is young and the membership rates are low. This ease is because you, the owner, are typically heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of your business and have time to chat with almost every person coming in through the door.

But a few things typically happen as your fitness business becomes more successful. First, you begin to take on new responsibilities and delegate others to other staff members (or hire new employees to help take on those commitments). Second, the quantity of people coming in rises disproportionally to your (and your staff’s) ability to keep up regular organic conversations with each individual.

If not handled properly, this growth point can hurt your membership retention rates. You could make clients feel like numbers, and your facility could lose some of the charm they held for it. So, how do we fix it?

Building customer interactions into your business operations processes is critical for scalable growth. Constructing a system involves establishing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your staff to follow, including dedicated client-focused conversation points. Some of these areas can include greeting people by name when they check in at the front desk, having trainer chats with each person before classes, post-session reviews of what they did well, and finally, a last chat before they leave that is positive and asks them a business-focused question such as “Great seeing you today! How was your workout?” or “Awesome work today! When can we expect to see you back?”

These additions to your facility’s procedures can help ensure that clients feel recognized and appreciated while reducing staff role confusion about who, what, when, where, and how to approach these proactive measures.

4. Social Media

The final channel of interaction is social media. In general, it’s wise to invest your time and energy into and champion the channels your facility’s target audience uses rather than trying to be just ‘alright’ on all of them.

Once you establish the social platforms, making posts that regularly capture your audience’s attention is the base goal. However, to leverage this channel further to drive brand loyalty, implementing posts, reels, and stories that interact with your audience can help drive engagement. Things like polls, question prompts, or even promoting them to leave comments can help boost your profile’s performance as well as the feeling (and visibility) of a strong community surrounding your studio.

Further, utilizing testimonials, before-and-after photos, event pictures, and images of actual members or workouts can also help people feel more attached to your gym. Tagging them, giving shout-outs, and even highlighting them can also help show your appreciation to your members and the care you put into cultivating your community.

Wrap Up

Customer retention is vital for long-term growth and sustainability in a gym or fitness-based business. Interaction points with your customer base are one prominent factor that can lead to positive experiences and longer lifecycles for your clients within your company. Therefore, enabling these exchange points at various intersections within your business can benefit your overall organizational health while reducing the amount of front-end sales and marketing by improving your average client’s business longevity.