Making the Most of Your Data: Using the Keepme Score to Retain Your Members

Updated: June 2026

When thinking about any membership-based business, they share a common pain point in member retention. Most fitness businesses predominantly run on memberships and are therefore acutely aware of this pain point.

Retention matters. There is no question that retaining your members has a positive effect on the business’ bottom line, especially when we consider that client acquisition can cost between 5 to 7 times more than retaining existing clients, depending on the sector.

So, with this said, why is it so difficult for fitness businesses globally to retain their members?

There is some difficulty inherent in the sheer number of different factors that can feed into why someone might leave as a member. Some can be controlled by the fitness business, such as price point, facilities, classes, additional benefits, service quality and communications. Then there are other external factors that cannot be controlled, such as a change in a member’s circumstance, injury, financial pressure or moving away from your location.

However, when it comes to those factors that can be influenced by the fitness business, it is imperative that the right strategy is implemented to ensure the best results.

In this blog, we illustrate how using the right combination of data, much of which already exists in your member management systems, and the Keepme Score can support a membership retention strategy like no other.

Membership Retention Strategies are Key

The most important thing is that you have a membership retention strategy in place. Most fitness businesses will have them in some format. Some will be formalised and others less formal.

Aside from a good product, including facilities, classes, equipment and support, at a good price point, you want to build a sense of community.

There is plenty of data stating that having regular contact with your members will support retention. An interesting statistic is that “Two interactions a month between staff at a health club and their members can reduce membership cancellations by up to 33%” (RunRepeat.com).

This illustrates that you need to have a robust engagement strategy as part of your membership retention strategy.

Most fitness businesses know what they want to say to their members, but it is hard to know who to talk to and when.

For example, you can send a milestone email, but what about those in-between moments, like when a member finishes their 20th class but might not come back after the 30th? What about the member whose attendance has started to dip, but who has not yet reached the point of cancellation? What about the member who is still active, but whose behaviour suggests they may be drifting?

This is where the Keepme Score comes in.

The Keepme Score helps Antares agents understand where a member sits in their lifecycle and what level of intervention may be needed. It is powered by Pulse, Keepme’s conversational intelligence engine, and used by agents such as Ember, the retention agent from Antares, to support better-timed and more relevant member engagement.

Rather than relying only on broad segments or last-minute cancellation-save activity, the Keepme Score gives operators a clearer signal of member health, member drift and potential retention risk.

Let’s look more closely at how the Keepme Score works today.

👉 If you have not already, we recommend you read our related article: Why Are Members Cancelling My Gym? The Real Reasons and What to Do About Them

Understanding the Keepme Score

The Keepme Score is a 0 to 100 score that helps Antares understand the relative health, engagement and risk status of a member.

It does this by bringing together member data, behavioural signals and conversational intelligence to help identify where attention may be needed.

In the past, member retention strategies often relied heavily on fixed segments. For example, members who had not visited in 30 days, members whose membership was due to renew, or members who had already submitted a cancellation request.

Those segments are useful, but they are blunt.

Two members can have the same attendance drop and very different levels of risk. One may have temporarily changed routine but still be highly engaged. Another may have emotionally checked out. One may respond well to a class recommendation. Another may need a human conversation. One may simply need a nudge. Another may need a more structured save pathway.

The Keepme Score helps interpret member signals in context.

It gives Antares agents a clearer understanding of where a member sits in their journey so the operator can take action before the member reaches the point of cancellation.

How the Keepme Score is Powered by Pulse

Pulse is the conversational intelligence engine underneath Antares.

It analyses conversations, behaviours, outcomes and patterns across the member journey. This means the Keepme Score is not just based on one isolated data point. It is informed by a wider view of what a member is doing, what they are saying, how they are engaging and what is happening across the relationship.

This matters because some of the strongest retention signals do not appear as obvious cancellation intent.

A member might ask about freezing their membership. They might ask about downgrading. They might ask about opening hours, class availability, payment issues, contract terms, injury support or how cancellation works. They may attend less frequently, stop booking classes, disengage from communications or fail to return after a missed session.

Individually, these moments can be easy to miss.

Together, they can tell you something important.

Pulse helps Antares interpret those signals and turn them into intelligence that agents can act on. The Keepme Score is one of the clearest ways that intelligence becomes visible and usable.

What the Keepme Score Helps Operators Understand

The Keepme Score helps operators understand whether a member appears healthy, beginning to drift or moving into a higher-risk state.

The higher the score, the healthier the member relationship appears to be. A lower or falling score can indicate that the member may need attention.

However, the value of the Keepme Score is not simply in labelling members as high or low risk. Its value is in helping operators understand where action is needed and what kind of action may be most appropriate.

For example:

Healthy members may not need intervention. In fact, over-communicating with these members can create unnecessary noise. They may simply need their positive behaviour reinforced through recognition, progress messaging or relevant recommendations.

Drifting members may need timely intervention. This could be a check-in, a class recommendation, a programme reset, a prompt to return after inactivity, or an invitation to re-engage with something they previously valued.

Higher-risk members may need more careful handling. In some cases, this might mean escalation to a human team member, a controlled save pathway, or a tailored conversation around their current situation.

This is important because not every member should be treated the same way.

A member whose score has dipped but who is still broadly engaged needs a very different interaction from a member who is already at the point of cancellation. A member who has stopped attending but continues to engage with communications may need a different approach from someone who has disengaged entirely.

The Keepme Score helps create that distinction.

How Ember Uses the Keepme Score

Ember is the retention agent within Antares.

Its role is to help operators identify members at risk of leaving, intervene at the right moment and support cancellation-save conversations when a member does choose to cancel.

The Keepme Score helps Ember understand where a member sits in their journey and whether action may be needed.

This is where the Score becomes more than a metric.

It becomes part of the decision-making layer behind the retention experience.

Ember can use the intelligence surfaced by Pulse and expressed through the Keepme Score to support more relevant retention action. That might mean recognising that a member is beginning to drift, identifying that a cancellation conversation needs careful handling, or helping the operator understand which members may need human attention.

This matters because retention is fundamentally a timing problem.

If the first serious intervention happens when the member reaches the cancellation form, the operator is already late. The better opportunity is often earlier, when the member’s behaviour is starting to change but they have not yet fully decided to leave.

The Keepme Score helps support that earlier action.

From Static Campaigns to Intelligent Retention Action

Utilising the Keepme Score means moving away from generic retention activity and toward more intelligent intervention.

Traditional retention campaigns often rely on broad rules. A member has not attended in 30 days, so they receive a win-back email. A member has requested cancellation, so they receive a save offer. A member reaches a milestone, so they receive a milestone message.

These campaigns can still have value.

But they do not always reflect the reality of the member relationship.

The Keepme Score helps create a more nuanced approach. Rather than only asking, “Which segment does this member belong to?”, operators can ask, “What is happening with this member, what does it suggest, and what action is most likely to protect the relationship?”

That is the difference between campaign-led retention and intelligence-led retention.

It means communication can become more timely, more relevant and more appropriate to the member’s actual situation.

Your communication to someone whose score has dropped but who is ultimately still engaged should be very different from your message to a member who is showing stronger indicators of cancellation risk.

Likewise, a member who is starting to drift may need a light-touch re-engagement prompt, while a member who is actively trying to cancel may need a structured save conversation or escalation.

Using the Keepme Score Across the Member Lifecycle

One of the most important changes in how the Keepme Score works today is that it now sits inside Antares.

Antares is Keepme’s AI agent platform for multisite fitness operators. It brings specialist agents together on one shared intelligence foundation.

This means the Keepme Score can travel with the member across different lifecycle moments and different agent interactions.

Retention does not happen in one place.

A member’s risk may appear in a service conversation. It may appear in a change in usage. It may appear in a cancellation journey. It may appear through a question asked to an agent. It may appear in patterns across attendance, engagement or behaviour.

Because Antares agents are powered by Pulse, the Keepme Score helps give those agents continuity.

The platform is not treating each interaction as isolated. It is building a more connected understanding of the member and using that understanding to support better action.

For operators, this is especially valuable at scale.

Manually monitoring every member’s behaviour, communication history and risk indicators is not realistic across a multisite estate. The Keepme Score helps prioritise attention and supports agents in taking action where it is likely to matter most.

Turning Data into Actionable Insight

The sheer volume of data available to fitness operators demonstrates why a metric like the Keepme Score is so valuable.

Most operators already have useful data inside their member management systems, CRM platforms, communication tools and service channels. What they often lack is the ability to interpret that data quickly enough and act on it consistently.

The Keepme Score helps turn that data into a usable retention signal.

It supports the operator in understanding who may need attention, where risk is emerging and how the retention strategy should adapt.

It also helps create a stronger feedback loop.

Every conversation, cancellation reason, save attempt, behaviour change and outcome gives the platform more information about why members stay, drift or leave. Pulse uses that intelligence to help Antares agents become more effective over time.

This is how retention moves from a reactive process to a continuous operating discipline.

Final Thought

Leveraging the power of data, AI and conversational intelligence through the Keepme Score provides fitness businesses with actionable insight to support member retention.

By understanding the factors influencing member engagement and using the Keepme Score inside Antares, operators can move beyond generic campaigns and toward better-timed, more relevant retention action.

Ember, the retention agent from Antares, uses this intelligence to help identify members at risk, support earlier intervention and improve cancellation-save conversations when a member chooses to leave.

The goal is not simply to save more members at the point of cancellation.

The goal is to understand member behaviour earlier, act before risk becomes irreversible and build a member experience fewer people want to leave.