For Large Gyms: How to Build an Effective Loyalty & Rewards Programme

With some great ideas thrown in

Introduction

One effective method to keep your gym members loyal to your gym and motivated to keep coming back is to build a targeted, effective loyalty rewards programme.

There are many benefits, but importantly, these types of programme’s spark interest in non-members, and people considering joining a large gym chain usually find this an attractive proposition.

Programmes such as these also retain and incentivise members and build community. More than 90% of companies run loyalty programmes successfully – gyms are another industry sector that can enjoy tremendous advantages from reward schemes.

In this piece, Endurance Zone looks at the best way to implement a gym loyalty programme, the significant benefits of having one and how to make it as enticing as possible. Let’s start by looking at why a gym or health club loyalty programme is important.

The Importance of Loyalty Programmes for Gyms

Nowadays, there is a lot of competition in the gym sector, especially for large gyms and gym chains. There’s the allure of pay-as-you-go gyms and health clubs, there are also plenty of small, niche gyms and independent exercise classes and with the cost-of-living crisis, people are watching their spending more than ever before.

For many large gym chains, just reducing membership prices isn’t profitable. It’s expensive to run a quality gym, there’s the cost of equipment, which must be kept up-to-date and needs regular servicing. There’s staffing, running costs, keeping the premises spic and span and marketing, just to mention some of the expenses.

Utilities are becoming more costly and staff retention difficult in such a poor economic climate – so cutting costs is likely off the table!

Large gyms can’t afford a high churn – so a really sharp loyalty programme is the perfect solution – but it needs to be extremely appealing and if you want to create one, there’s quite a lot of work involved. This means you need to dedicate resource or use an outside resource to help.

Deepening Customer Relationships

A good quality loyalty programme builds deeper customer relationships. It makes customers feel wanted, appreciated and also gives them motivational goals! When a loyalty programme is well-executed, it helps members feel great about coming back to the gym and silently supporting your business.

A loyalty programme also encourages lifetime value – the more discounts, offers, special events, leader boards etc., you offer, the more involved your member feels in your gym, it becomes a part of their routine, a place they belong and enjoy visiting, it builds community (more on this later).

Improves Retention

Gyms face losing 50% of members every year. Crucially, an effective loyalty programme keeps your gym members right where you want them – at your gym! There’s no need for them to look elsewhere if your loyalty programme fits their needs.

However, you do need to think about what your members want from a loyalty programme. Do they want access to special classes? Do they like to attend special events, such as talks on health and fitness, perhaps fashion shows, shopping events, family days, competitions, leadership boards, or maybe they prefer special offers on equipment, gym clothing, other merchandise, to bring a guest etc.?

By understanding and implementing the right loyalty programme for your large gym, you’ll incentivise and nurture stronger relationships with your members, it’s those relationships that improve your retention.

Drive Additional Revenue

It makes sense that loyal members who know they’re going to gain rewards at your gym will more likely stay with you – and visit consistently. This gives you the potential to drive more revenue and increase your profit.

The more often loyal members come to your gym, the more likely they are to spend more, whether it’s on food and beverage, bolting on additional classes, spending their loyalty discount on more products and attending special events, where you may offer a paid bar, or a food service, for example.

Another great example is rewards for referrals – that’s another revenue stream, new member sign-ups = a reward for the member who made the introduction. You can also grow your revenue by offering a free personal training session as a loyalty reward, with a discount for booking a block of 5.

Enhances Engagement

We’ve already touched on this – but that loyalty programme brings your members back again and again, especially if you keep expanding your offering and changing it up, so it doesn’t become stale.

Plus, there’s engagement on social media too, marketing your loyalty programme on your social media channels and website, encourages engagement, with your current members while attracting new members.

You can also send out regular surveys to check-in with your members and confirm you are offering the right loyalty provision or run focus groups with highly engaged members vs those that aren’t taking up the opportunities, find out why and use that information to further enhance future engagement.

Differentiates Your Gym at Sign-Up

A loyalty programme is also a brilliant marketing tool! When new members approach your gym to sign-up, it’s an attractive benefit.

Members like to feel they’re getting more bang for their buck and a loyalty programme does exactly that, it gives them incentives, goals to work toward, extra discounts, special offers, events and for many, that sense of belonging which leads us onto our next point…

Fosters a Sense of Community

A gym is essentially a club, and a club always has its own community. People use gyms to work out, but they also like to go somewhere to relax, unwind, meet up with friends and meet new people.

Loyalty programmes do just that, with the opportunity of attending special fitness classes, going to organised events, joining leadership boards, entering gym competitions and having somewhere to go where they feel a part of something.

That’s a community and it’s essential for a successful large gym chain. People feel proud to be a part of somewhere they love to go.

Creating a Successful Gym Loyalty Programme

No doubt, you’re already aware the impact that a loyalty programme can have – so the next step is understanding how to create a successful mechanic! There are a few things to bear in mind.

Your Loyalty Programme Must Suit Your Gym’s Needs and Goals

What do you want to achieve? More sign-ups and referrals? Or member retention? Do you want to offer more value because you’re concerned about other, lower-cost gyms and health clubs perhaps? Maybe you want to make your gym unique, different from others?

Get a list together, organise a staff brainstorming session and if you want to, speak to your members to find out what they’d like to see from your gym.

You could also speak to an expert at Endurance Zone who can do all of this for you and design a bespoke loyalty programme that perfectly fits your gym, your membership profile and your goals.

Rewards Should be Hyper-Relevant to Your Customer

Don’t be tempted to offer something other than what your customer wants, you want to retain your members and gain new members, so be relevant. Your offering should be easy to understand too, and if in doubt, again, ask your members what they’d like to see.

Market it!

The most common reason a loyalty platform will fail is lack of awareness from members that it even exists. Members won’t stumble across it on their own, and they will need constant reminding of the value it can provide.

There are many angles to market such an offering, the key element is that it’s integrated into your overall marketing plan. Many solutions (such as ours) come with marketing support and resource, to ensure you implement best practice and it doesn’t overburden your team.

Track, Monitor and Refine

As with any marketing tool, you need to be able to track your results. Often, this involves software and spreadsheets (and you may prefer to use an outside resource to do all of this for you, including building an efficient, relevant and exciting loyalty programme for your large gym). Benchmarking means setting metrics for success, collecting the data and analysing each metric.

You’ll also want to cross-compare results and explore what your competition offers, to make sure you stand out from the crowd. It is a moving target – you can adjust your loyalty programme depending on the insights you gain from tracking it and by noting any trends.

9 Specific Ideas that Drive Loyalty

Here are a few ideas to help drive your gym’s membership loyalty:

1) Reward your members for valuable actions, such as attendance, referrals, app engagement and more! Give them an incentive for the things you want them to do most!

2) Don’t treat your members the same, segment and reward them based on their value to you. Offer better rewards for more expensive memberships that acknowledge the value of those members, and gives another reason to other members to upgrade.

3) Offer a variety of rewards, rather than a simplified list. Try and be diverse (but relevant) to cater to different members’ interests. So, you might offer free classes, personal training sessions, branded merchandise, membership fee discounts, those events we’ve mentioned – perhaps even retreats. You can find out what your members are interested in by asking, through surveys, social media and focus groups (as an example).

4) Reward members for their exercise, so perhaps every time they visit your gym, they get a small reward or build points. Perhaps they get some free brand merchandise (and this offers an opportunity to advertise your brand when they’re not at your gym!).

You can also reward their exercise outside of the gym to keep your brand top of mind. Integrating wearable tech into your eco-system may seem difficult, but there are many easy-to-integrate solutions out there (like ours).

5) Gamify your loyalty programme! This means incorporating fun and competitive gamification techniques. For example, gym challenges, leadership boards, achievement badges, competitions etc.

This makes your loyalty programme fun, engaging, motivational and builds that really important sense of community! Furthermore, it motivates your members to participate and stay committed.

6) Encourage social sharing on your channels, and you could offer even more incentives by adding this to your loyalty programme. You’ll also promote your programme and again, build that essential sense of community.

7) Celebrate member milestones by recognising and rewarding individuals for reaching significant goals in their fitness journey. You can also celebrate anniversaries, personal bests and consistent attendance. All of the above can motivate and keep up continued engagement.

8) Members-only events are another brilliant way to foster loyalty. Classes and events for loyalty programme members builds that feeling of being part of something exclusive, adding value.

9) Collaborate with local businesses by partnering and offering even greater rewards and discounts for members. This is a superb way of supporting your local community, while also enhancing your loyalty programmes’ value for members.

Effectively Promoting and Communicating Your Loyalty Programme

KPI’s and Marketing

Of course – apart from being an all-singing, all-dancing impressive loyalty programme, how will you get buy-in from members if they don’t know about it? You need to organise your marketing campaign and set clear key performance indicators so you can measure success (see above information on tracking, monitoring and refining).

Create an Identity

Do name your programme, so that it’s easily recognisable and you can personalise it for your members, so when they login to their membership rewards page on your website or app (for example), it’s easily recognisable with a title such as “My Gym Rewards”, for example.

Generate Engaging Content

Content is always important, and you can use this as part of your loyalty programme marketing campaign. Develop interesting, informative content surrounding your programme and what it offers. Remember to highlight the benefits and use storytelling to illustrate success stories. You can also use testimonials from satisfied members to further bolster your loyalty programme’s appeal. Don’t forget to share it!

Implement a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

There are lots of aspects to building a comprehensive marketing strategy – such as using a multi-channel approach both on and offline to reach current members, and potential new members.

Use your website, online and offline ads, social media, email marketing in-gym advertising and other mechanics such as leaflet drops, local newspapers, hoardings and local community events to promote your loyalty programme etc.

Not only can you use some or all of these mechanisms to tell people about your programme, but you can also use the same methods to keep people informed about the latest rewards, upcoming events and special promotions.

Partner With Influencers

Collaborate with fitness influencers who can advocate for your loyalty programme, providing authentic endorsements that will attract new members and further encourage retention of current members while also reminding them to keep participating.

Consider Time-Sensitive Promotions

One of the most attractive elements of a gym loyalty programme is exclusivity, so consider running limited-time offers and exclusive deals. This also creates a sense of urgency and excitement around your loyalty programme – and can even increase your members to join up, participate and gain rewards.

Train Staff to Promote Your Programme

One last, important thing to mention is staff training. You must ensure your gym staff members are all knowledgeable about your loyalty programme and can effectively communicate the benefits to members. They should be able to answer questions and encourage participation – and they should also be able to communicate back to you any comments and suggestions from members.

To Sum Up

Loyalty programmes for large gyms are extremely effective when implemented and executed properly, but they are large projects and require exceptional focus, meticulous attention to detail and, where possible, genuine expertise to ensure all the right ingredients are in place.

Furthermore, they must be bespoke to your gym, as every gym is different, has its own nuances and core membership.

To get your loyalty programme absolutely spot-on, you need quality promotions, state-of-the-art technology, strong analytics and outstanding marketing. This takes a lot of time and effort, as well as having the right team in place.

Why risk getting it wrong when it’s harder to pick up the pieces? Get it right first time and use the team at Endurance Zone, every single member has a deep knowledge of loyalty programmes, gym & fitness chains, with a proven track record.