The Analysis: Understanding Why People Give Up Gym Memberships Is Key To Understanding How To Get Them Back
Teresa Hurley, TU Dublin
Are you losing your health club membership or were you previously a member of multiple health clubs? Fewer than 52% of health club providers bother to find out why they actually left. Did you know? The authors of this study examined factors that influence re-engagement intentions and re-engagement behaviors of lapsed fitness club members.
A mail survey of 100 health and fitness providers in Ireland and a mail survey of 100 recently retired members of health clubs in medium-sized suburbs in Ireland were completed. We then used an experimental field study to measure real-world, true re-engagement behavior and re-engage 300 of her lapsed members of the same health club.
Attrition rates in fitness clubs are generally high, indicating that there is a large and profitable untapped market of lapsed members who can quickly rejoin. But if health clubs don’t really know why members are leaving, how can they fix the problem?
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A recent survey by Jennifer Zamparelli of RTÉ 2fm found that young people value going to the gym more than saving for the future
It is important for health club providers to determine why members are leaving by completing an exit analysis for all members who leave. This is because reinstating a previous member can cost him seven times to one tenth of what it would cost to sign up for a new member. Marketing, recruitment, training new members on machines, club operational issues, etc.
The findings show that 45% of those surveyed would rejoin if invited, and 95% said price incentives were the best. Some operators ignore this lapsed membership market and focus instead on targeting new members. has been highlighted in many previous studies over the years (Thomas et al., 2000, Reinartz et al., 2004; Homburg et al., 2007; Mandina & Kalisambuj, 2016).
So while this is not a new phenomenon, it does not appear to have been addressed in the Irish health and fitness industry yet. We need to consider shifting the focus of our strategy towards exploitation. In fact, in this study, offering some sort of incentive to reactivate a lapsed member seemed better than offering no incentive at all.
Interestingly, 85% of the abandoned member market surveyed did not rejoin their club after leaving, and 54% indicated they would consider rejoining the same club, suggesting that health club providers would encourage retired members to rejoin. There is a growing need to provide good incentives to join.
The survey found that 21% of terminated members cite “club related” as the primary reason for termination, including cleanliness, hours of operation, access and operational issues. These issues can be addressed more broadly by clubs regularly soliciting customer feedback throughout the customer/membership experience, offering and rewarding excellent customer service suggestions, and informing members that they have acted. It is an issue that can be managed and acted upon as part of our customer service policy.
As part of this research, we found that satisfied customers were more likely to have stronger re-engagement intentions, so striving to improve customer satisfaction forms a major part of our customer service policy. need to do it. Those who joined more frequently were also more likely to rejoin, and those who had recently lost their jobs showed stronger rejoining behaviors. This supports the idea that the sooner a reactivation program is started, the more likely it is that lapsed members will rejoin. Ideally, members should be offered promotional her incentives or customer loyalty her rewards before the membership expires.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, UL’s Leanne Quinn explains 10 reasons more women should keep their lifeweights
Using an initiation fee proved effective in enhancing customer retention, but only for up to six months, with 29% of expired members saying it helped them extend their club membership. I’m here. Membership additions should be considered as a strategy to extend the length of membership while also improving the club’s bottom line during the generally low-income summer season. Knowing market segmentation is the most responsive to incentivized customer reactivation policies, as lapsed members in the €21,000 to €40,000 income bracket were found to be more willing to re-engage than other income brackets It can help you learn which customer segments are more likely to .
Clearly, there are many strategic ways fitness club providers can reduce member turnover and improve customer retention, customer service and frequency. These strategies have proven to help improve club profitability and beyond.
Note: This study is based on medium-sized health clubs in rural Ireland, so please compare the results of this study with those of larger health clubs, chains, urban clubs or clubs outside Ireland. cannot be compared.
Dr. Teresa Hurley is a Lecturer at TU Dublin and currently seconded to Campus Planning from the Dean of Business Administration at the University of Business.
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
