Survival of the fittest

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Daryn Berriman of The Palace — The Old Town.

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Hayya! Clubs recreation manager Gerhard Pretorius.

One of the things that we implemented was a dedicated sales team specifically for membership subscription.

Pretorius: We had to do that too and a big turnaround for us was renewals. It's mostly renewals rather than new people that we have tapped into. We offer quite a large variety of memberships; it's not just annual subscription, there's six months, three months, and a monthly payment plan.

How do you retain members?

Brown: To be competitive now in this marketplace you have to have an exceptional product and we're in the experience business. When it comes down to engagement, particularly in the first six weeks of a person being a member, it's a given that if they don't come regularly within that first month then they wont renew.

This is especially true if you try and capture them on an annual membership subscription; if they don't come at least 12 times within the first month then they're going to drop off very quickly, which is fortunately one of the benefits of having a monthly membership payment - the money comes off your credit card and that's a constant reminder to use the fitness centre.

Boucher: You've got to find your niche in terms of which market you are going after and how you are going to keep these people entertained so that they will come back. That's definitely one of the big things. We use the term exer-tainment.

Graham: From my experience, one of the best ways to retain your members is to listen to them. Obviously they join your facility because they like it and there's something that you've got that they want, so you've got to talk to them, you've got to appeal to their unique needs and not lose sight of that.

I've developed a member/guest preference questionnaire, where I get some really private information about our members when they join, like their favourite song or dog's name - things unique to them.

They've forgotten that I asked them these, so I can create mysterious moments throughout the entire year. Little things like this will make this person feel ‘this is where I need to belong, this is where I need to stay, and this is where I need to come every day'.

How important is group exercise to increasing member retention?

Cottan: The market really needs to see that they should start looking at group exercise as a business in itself rather than just an added extra. Statistics from Les Mills show that members are more likely to stay three times longer if they do group exercise than if they're normal machine members, so already from there we can see that it's going to be much more profitable to the company if you can run your group exercise well.

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