Summer is coming, and that means one thing: membership pauses… Or does it? From 12 years in the industry I’ve seen gyms and studios manage summer retention well… and I’ve seen some that don’t manage it at all. Wherever possible, you need to improve your service, and educate your members what’s available so that pause requests are minimized, or ideally stopped completely.
Looking at the numbers it’s quite shocking. If all your members pause for 1 month a year, that’s an 8% dip in revenue, crazy right! And that’s if you manage to keep the pauses to 1 month only, because typically these pauses can stretch to 5, 6, 7 weeks or longer (as I’m sure you’re aware).
Anyway, I’ve compiled the best retention practices I’ve seen in the industry for minimizing or stopping summer membership pauses completely.
Start Retention Early
You can’t start thinking about summer retention when summer is already here. You need to formulate a plan and implement some retention strategies in spring at the latest. You wouldn’t talk about memberships to a trialist after their trial is finished, you have to plant the seed and do the work throughout the trial. The same comes to summer retention.
Member Challenges
Keeping members engaged is a year round task, but keeping them engaged in the summer is even more crucial. Offering mini challenges that can be followed both inside and outside the gym are great for keeping members engaged, even if they are on holiday. These can be workout frequency, step count, food diaries etc, simple works best. If you can offer some kind of small gift or prize at the end, that can encourage more participation.
Identify Potential Pausers
Check which members paused the year before, check which have kids that are out of school, find out who are teachers who might be away for a long period of time. Identify them early and offer an alternative. If you as a business owner are busy, have your head coach or dedicated retention staff member carry out this research. If you’re using a robust membership software like GymOS, this is a pain-free process.
Offer Alternative Services
You can still help members if they can’t visit the gym at their regular frequency. You could have pre set workout programmes for members to use on holiday: run programme, bodyweight workouts, holiday gym sessions etc. If you offer 1 on 1 programming, research their hotel gym (or whatever they have access too) and write something appropriate. When I ran an online coaching programme this is what we did, this resulted in 0 pause requests every summer.
Hybrid Training
A popular choice some of my clients offer is a Hybrid Option. Let’s say a group training membership is £150 per month for 12 sessions a month, nutrition accountability, and a weekly coach check in. If you offer a hybrid option to the at-risk members with 2-4 sessions a month in the gym, but the same nutrition support and check ins, you can easily charge 50% of the regular membership, perhaps more. If you don’t have a Hybrid Option I suggest you plan it out and use it as a retention tool.
Child Friendly Services
Most of the pausing comes from parents being busy/exhausted with the kids (something I’m newly experiencing myself!). If you make it clear that there’s a child friendly, SAFE area for kids to come, that should reduce the pause requests. Get a bunch of bean bags, give them some activities to do while mum or dad can keep training. You can offer child friendly programming BUT that decision lies with the owner: insurance, liability etc.
Or Simply… Don’t Offer Pauses!
I understand that the market can expect pauses to be allowed in their membership, but it doesn’t mean you have to follow suit! A handful of my gyms simply don’t offer membership pauses. Nobody bats an eye. If you mention pauses when members sign up, it’s already planting the seed that they can stop whenever they want: summer, December, when they can’t be bothered etc… Even if you have strict rules for the pauses, members will always try to barter a better deal, which could be the beginning of a conflict where the pause requests turns into a cancellation. It can be a hard shift, but simply not offering pauses is the safest bet for your business, and for member results.
Try out these summer retention tactics and let us know how many members you keep. If you know any more strategies, we’re open to hear about it!
Regan Phillips – Gym Marketing Consultant
The Fitness Marketspace