Your club member reactivation programme should be one of the most important systems you run.
Without exception, people who leave you as members will at some point prior to cancellation have become inactive.
When you calculate the financial cost of inactivity on attrition, then how effectively you drop into a pre-designed reactivation routine is vital on economic grounds alone. It should almost be your No. 1 business strategy ahead of anything else.
Member inactivity comes about from 5 common conditions:
- Personal injury or sickness
- Enforced break in exercise usage patterns
- Holiday commitments leading to usage pattern change
- Falling out of love for the club due to customer service issues
- Seasonal breaks like Christmas leading to usage pattern disruption
Obviously, clubs can’t be expected to know the lifestyle changes of every member 24/7 but some things are predictable, and there are measures that can be taken to reduce incidents and to provide appropriate recovery processes that re-engage the inactive member.
How To Reduce Member Inactivity To A Minimum
Sequential Interventions
All high performing clubs provide sequential interventions as a feature of memberships. These normally take the face of Reprogramme sessions offered every 30 days or 42 days of membership. This should be reinforced at the point of sale and actively promoted to the member by text, email and or phone call.
If it is infeasible for clubs to proactively operate this service, then members should have a web-based facility or offline equivalent which is child simple to use to request an intervention.
Where budget is tight, this type of service can also be used as an added value service SOLD as an add on to the base member benefits.
Alternatively, clubs can use a 14 session Programme Card system to manage the interaction process where completion of the 14th session triggers a reprogramme session.
Supervised Reactivation Experiences
The quality and structure of the reactivation measures play an important part in efficacy. The golden rule is that they must be more than just a single unsupported member session. There needs to be a degree of personal responsibility built in to incentivise the member attending the reactivation session and that means it’s a commitment with other members or with a supervising fitness leader.
Ideally it should be a multiple session to establish the usage pattern ritual.
Examples Of Effective Reactivation Strategies:
- PT supervised programme sessions
- Tribe small group gym training course
- Personal evaluation and programme set up session – know your numbers
- 14 session gym challenge such as “Wear the Shirt”
These can be offered at any price range to suit club budgets from free upwards. Charting the results of the session will give the best steer on how to price.
Pre Brokered Services
Clubs “Pre agree” the intervention process with the member BEFORE Inactivity kicks in.
This can involve a membership enhancement or as a secondary product that the member can buy into.
There are various times in the calendar or the members life when a period of inactivity is more likely.
After the summer holiday or around the Festive season when activity patterns are compromised and lifestyle changes around overeating and heavier drinking can mitigate against the prospect of exercising.
Because this is predictable behaviour Clubs can seek to reduce the impact by arranging special offers and programmes BEFORE the member encounters these periods. There is certainly evidence to suggest that pre booking the solution before the problem reduces absenteeism and cancellation.
Finally, Clubs could also consider “Inactivity Insurance”. This is an agreement between the club and the member to carry out an agreed recovery programme in the event that the member goes inactive for a certain amount of time.
The costs of the reactivation scheme to be covered by the revenue from the Insurance premium paid at that front of the membership administration process.
This allows clubs to act in a “Remarkable” way without suffering from the financial weight of rising overheads.
