RETENTION
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What is Retention?
Retention measures the performance of the club by retaining members for 12 months or more. Showing current members who have stayed over 12 months as a percentage (%) of the membership base measured over a year.
What is Attrition?
What is Attrition?
What is Attrition?
This is the cancellation average of your entire membership base. This ratio is then represented as a percentage.
For example, a club with 1000 members that had 30 cancellations over the last month has an attrition of 3%. (Average of the cancellations over 1 month/1000 members*)
Why should we care?
In order to best serve our members, we should be actively emphasising the importance of their memberships, because we understand they need our help in order to attain their fitness goals. This is central to our creed of Care, Coach & Connect.
From a business perspective, we also understand that acquiring a new member is roughly five times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
Either way you look at it, attrition is a key metric for building a successful, long-standing gym.
The impact of attrition:
Average club member number = 1000 members
x4% attrition = 40 leavers
x3% attrition = 30 leavers
Positive impact by reducing attrition from 4% to 3%
Improved yearly leavers = 120 yearly leavers
Positive financial impact by reducing attrition from 4% to 3%
Improved yearly leavers x $80 (av. monthly dues)
X12 (months) = 115,200 yearly income
Additionally, you can add to these the average amount of money spent per member on retail, personal training and other club services to see the full financial impact of each leaving member in the club.
Our current state of play
According to the Australian Fitness Industry’s first ever retention report, ‘48% of club members give up their membership within 12 months’. While the average attrition for AF Australia sits at 3.8%, at time of publication.
Our clubs lose an average of 39 members each month. Keeping in mind that it is 5 times more expensive to replace these members than retain them, that’s the equivalent cost of acquiring 195 new members!
This further highlights the power of member retention and the importance of a strong attrition management process.
All Things Members
With out our members we wouldn't have a club. They are the heart of the gym and it is our responsibility to keep them happy and feeling like they belong. Below are some tools to keep your members visiting the club as well as ways to retain them as a member.
Engagement Process
What is member engagement?
Member engagement is what we do to keep our members feeling like they belong in our club community, with things like member nights, open days, follow ups/ check-ins and group class chats. All these things keep us connected with our members improving visitation and eventually attrition.
Why is it important?
It is important because if we do not engage with our member’s they are more likely to fall off track and stop visiting the club. This normally results in them terminating their membership at the end of their minimum term. We are all human and sometimes we fall off track. It is our job as staff to reboot motivation and get them back into club achieving their goals again.
Non-attendance
Normally we pick up on non-attendance from our 30- or 10-day non-attendance calls created by clubwise. However, there are other ways to monitor low attendance such as clubwise usage reports.
When we get in contact with the low usage member’s we want to welcome them back into the club and follow them on both FB + IG. We then kindly ask them to follow us back as that is how we will communicate with them for the remainder of the engagement process.
Retention Engagement
Below are some tool that you can use to keep your members engaged and to help prevent them from cancelling at the end of their 12 months.
Layering
The approach technique layering is all about slowly layering your approach with a member that may seem a little standoffish. Or, is a technique for staff who themselves are a little shy.
Day 1 - "Hi"
Day 2 - "Hi, how's it going"
Day 3 - "Hi, your doing a great job, can i ask what you a training towards"
And so on, this will break down barriers with even the toughest of unapproachable people. To be fair we are pretty lucky and you probably won't find many people you need to use this technique on.
NAP
We use Name, Aim, Progress (NAP) to communicate with our members much like layering but on a deeper level. NAP is a great way to build bigger connections with your members. Asking these questions shows that we care about them and their goals, making them feel a sense of BELONG.
Name - My name is _____, what's your name?
Aim - So, what goal are you working toward?
Progress - And how are you tracking toward reaching your goal?
This can then lead into further conversations continuing to build rapport with your member. Remember their name and use it in the future to build better connections.
Perceived value
What is perceived value?
Perceived value is a customer’s perception of a product or service.
If we sell a membership at $20-$25 a week, it might not seem like a lot if you are using your membership consistently, therefore, its perceived value is very good. If I visit the club 4 times a week, that's around $5 a visit, not much, right?
On the other hand, if I visit the club once a year and have a membership for 2 years then that means each visit has cost me upwards of $1000 a visit!!! CRAZY. You can start to see why perceived value is so important and why we need to encourage and help our members create a habit to visit and train.
Net Member Movement also known as NMM
Net Member Movement is how you measure the growth of your member base. It is an important number to understand due to the impact it has on your business as a whole.
Example: If you lose 45 members in October and join 50 members in November, you have a NMM of +5 members, meaning your membership has grown by 5 extra members for that month. It’s important to note the different growth clubs will go through depending on their age.
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