February 20, 2020 Danni Poulton

Why your data makes you different

There is tons of data available about how to retain gym members. Data tells us facts such as:

• Women are slightly more at risk of quitting than men.

• Younger people tend to pose greater retention risks.

• Staff interactions make it more likely members will attend your gym.

Whilst these kinds of generalised insights are really important, the truth is that no two gyms are the same when it comes to member retention risks, just as no two people are truly the same.

Whilst it’s really useful to understand the causes of customer retention risks and how to create retention campaigns, at the end of the day you need to use your own gym data to gain specific insights that can help improve retention for your gym.

KeepMe

What KeepMe essentially does is use your gym data to create a model of the retention health of your gym. It does this by analyzing your data and providing insights that only apply to your gym.

Your gym data is unique, and so are your member retention challenges. This is precisely what KeepMe zooms in on.

Here’s why it’s important to use this kind of unique look at your data:

Research has shown that if you want to improve customer engagement and loyalty you need to understand their experience. If you want to understand your members’ experiences you need to look at the specific data you hold about them. 

Evidence shows that members are more likely to continue giving you their business if they have a positive customer experience with you. One way to monitor the kind of experience your members are having is with Net Promoter Surveys that work out if your members are likely to promote your brand (promoters) or are likely to talk it down (detractors).

The only way to work out the NPS scores of your members is to ask them using surveys. The data that you collect on this can be very powerful. It means you can reach out to individuals with messages that resonate with the specific kind of relationship they have with your gym.

So this is another way your data makes you different. And, of course, if you run multiple facilities you will find that the retention levels of each site is different. 

For example, one gym may be easily accessible by public transport, be in a highly populated area, and have a well established reputation. But perhaps you’ve recently opened another venue and you’re struggling to keep members coming back. Using AI membership retention software like KeepMe you might discover that your members are travelling a long way to your gym. If this is the case, you can do two things.

One, target your ads within a 5km radius of your gym. The distance people travel makes an impact on gym retention so it makes sense to generate customers from your local area. 

Two, you can make a bigger focus on improving the retention of those who have to travel a little further. This insight might not apply to any other gym, but it’s exactly these unique insights that can be make or break when it comes to improving gym retention.

Another way that your data makes you different is that retention is not just about taking a snap shot of retention health at a single point in time. Using KeepMe you can track retention levels over time. This can tell you if the last month was an improvement on the previous, and whether your future months are predicted to see overall member retention rise or fall.

These kind of time based insights also mean you can relate to your members in real time.

With KeepMe, you can see exactly who’s working out in your gym right now.

The right interaction at the right time can increase the likelihood of a member sticking around by 50%. If an individual is at risk of attrition the truth is they may not even realise this themselves. But you can use KeepMe to trigger staff interactions when at-risk members come in to your gym.

This can be organised using KeepMe’s On-Site mobile app, meaning your staff have never been more informed and empowered to help improve member retention than they are now with this kind of data-based technology.

This is really helpful because it’s not always possible, or even desirable, to interact with every member that comes to your gym. Instead you can use the unique data Keepme captures about your members to make sure the right people get the attention they need to keep them coming back for more.

If you want to know how Keepme can be tailored to solve your unique member retention challenges you can book a free demo of our software that will walk you through it.

Your data makes you different, so make sure you are making the most of it using KeepMe’s AI retention software.

May 23, 2019 Dr Helen Watts

From The Experts Series: Dr. Helen Watts – Overcoming anxiety and increasing fitness membership retention

In Dr Helen Watts’s first essay for our series, she discusses how gyms can create a stressful environment for members, triggering anxiety and affecting membership retention.

We are pleased to introduce the team of experts who sit on the Keepme Advisory Board, ensuring all our systems are reinforced by cutting edge knowledge of the fitness retention industry. We will feature their insights as part of our “From the Experts” series. Kicking off the series is Dr Helen Watts, a Registered Psychologist, Senior Lecturer in Marketing (Worcester Business School) and holds a PhD in Customer Retention. Helen has provided research and consultancy services to various, high profile membership organisations to help understand the drivers and barriers of membership, and how to provide value to members.

In particular, Helen’s research has been focused on the roles of emotion, anxiety and perceptions of quality and how they affect likelihood of retaining or cancelling membership. Further to this, Helen has explored the differences between high and low contact membership organisations, and the role of interaction and rapport in different types of membership organisations (personal and professional services).

For many gym members, the aim of joining a gym is to increase health, well-being and positive mood, and gyms should provide a service which helps members achieve these things. But, do they? Gyms can, unfortunately, often be a hotbed of stress, discomfort and anxiety, affecting membership retention. Why? Because any physical activity setting presents the threat of public scrutiny and evaluation (Martin Ginis, Lindwall and Prapavessis, 2007). Gyms provide a ‘high interpersonal’ service; reliant on, and at the mercy of, people (staff and other members) to shape the experience of its members. Where there are people there is ‘evaluative threat’; the risk of being judged. In my own research, anxiety was found to be a significant predictor of attrition of fitness club members; the higher the anxiety, the lower the likelihood of member retention (Watts, 2012). In particular, two types of anxiety are often experienced by gym members and can lead members to question their gym membership retention; state anxiety and social physique anxiety.

State anxiety

State anxiety refers to a form of anxiety induced by a particular situation, or state. Some gym members are naturally more anxious than others due to their personality (trait anxiety), but state anxiety can be induced in all gym members if the interactions with staff, instructors, other members, or equipment are not managed effectively. A gym member could be perfectly relaxed most of the time, but situations in the gym environment which make them feel judged or incompetent can soon change a relaxed, happy, loyal member into a nervous, uncomfortable member questioning their gym retention. Which buttons do what? Am I sitting right? Am I doing it right? Am I lifting enough? All questions that may create anxiety for members.

State anxiety has been extensively researched in fitness settings, and has been found to lessen motivation to participate in exercise (Leary, 1992). In particular, group exercise settings can create anxiety in members, due to fear of embarrassment by both the class instructor and other class participants, relating to co-ordination, physique, and physical condition. Class participants can all be provided with the same experience; same instruction, same equipment, but their changes in self-efficacy (how capable and confident they feel) can be hugely different dependent of whether they feel ‘they passed the test’ (Lamarche, Gammage & Strong, 2007).

All that to say, there are ways of combating state anxiety. In group exercise classes, the class instructor can impact the anxiety levels experienced; providing encouragement, social interaction, and positive performance feedback can put participants at ease (Martin and Fox, 2001). How sociable and warm are your instructors?  Providing feedback of the member’s exercise performance relative to a ‘norm group’ (group of similar members) could help reduce the feeling of having done something wrong, or not having done enough (Marquez at al, 2002). Consumers are prone to ‘social comparison’, comparing themselves to others as a way of judging themselves, which can help gym members feel ‘normal’ or ‘better’ than others would be comforting and motivating. This is known as ‘positive framing’- presenting information in a positive way rather than a negative way, which can encourage consumers to perceive data in a more positive way, and feel more satisfied. What kind of feedback do your instructors, or machines, provide and how does this make participants feels? Making use of ‘green exercise’; connecting exercise with outdoor environments has also been found to lower state anxiety (Mackay and Neill, 2010) and represents a modern consumer trend to want to simple, connected, authentic, ‘mindful’ experiences. Consumer mindfulness is becoming increasingly associated with satisfaction and customer retention. Are you ‘keeping things real’ with your members?

Social physique anxiety

A specific type of state anxiety, in a fitness club setting, is social physique anxiety. Not only is there the risk of feeling judged, there is the added fear of being judged when partially dressed or in lycra! Whilst body image is a key motivator for joining, perceived body image can actually be worsened through negative gym membership experience. This pressure to ‘look good on the treadmill’ is demonstrated by the rising trend of ‘fitness beauty’; cosmetics being designed specifically to maximise physical appearance during a workout. Ironically, for some members, the gym is an environment that requires you to look good before you sign up, not as a result of joining.

Social physique anxiety (SPA) is, as the name suggests, anxiety related to the physique (Hart, Leary & Rejeski, 1989). SPA occurs when there is a fear that others perceive you physique in a negative way, and can result in low physical activity (Lantz et al, 1997), as well as excessive physical activity (Frederick & Morrison, 1996). Common features of fitness environments (i.e., mirrors and the presence of other exercisers) can increase the perceived risk of evaluative threat and psychological distress during exercise for those who suffer with SPA (Focht & Hausenblas 2004). Mirrors present a reminder of our actual self (where we are now), not our ideal self (where we want to be) …which we prefer to visualise!

Members who suffer from SPA are less likely to be ‘intrinsically motivated’; less likely to be motivated to go to the gym because they ‘want to’, and instead being motivated by feelings of ‘need to’ or ‘should do’ (Brunet and Sabiston, 2009). Similarly, those suffering with SPA are often prone to worrying about not exercising properly rather than focusing on doing as well as they can (Hagger, Hein & Chatzisarantis 2011). SPA can create profoundly negative experiences for members in a group exercise setting who are more likely to stand far away from the instructor and choose to wear concealing clothing (Brewer, Diehl, Cornelius, Joshua, & Van Raaltel, 2004).

So how do we help members who suffer with SPA? How can we become more ‘body-positive’? Some research indicated that SPA can be decreased by including a group cohesion element at the end of the class e.g. a 15 minute discussion on healthy lifestyle and physical activity has been associated with reducing social physique anxiety (Lindwall & Lindgren, 2005). Do your members just exercise and leave? Or is there time built in for conversation and reflection? It is argued that SPA is often higher just at the thought of exercising in a group setting, but it can be reduced after a class has been completed (Lamarche & Gammage, 2010). Perhaps promoting friendly, happy, welcoming footage of a class might help alleviate anxiety and encourage members to come along and join in?

The word ‘provide’ has been used a lot in this article, but in order to acquire and retain gym members, we need to remember that membership is not something that is ‘provided’, it is experienced. This experience, the subtleties of how it feels to be around unfamiliar people, equipment, rules and instructions can impact member retention. What are your members experiencing?

If you want to see how improving gym retention can supercharge your revenue book a Keepme demo today – it will be worth your while.