Top 7 Customer Retention And Engagement Strategies For Your Fitness Studio

According to a survey conducted by Invesp (Invesp is one of the very first companies to focus on conversion optimization in North America.)

• Acquiring a new customer is five times as expensive as retaining an existing customer.
• The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.

According to a Harvard study (The Economics of E-Loyalty) posted on 7/10/2000, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95%).

These are some compelling numbers, what do you think?

Greetings, fitness studio owners!

In this blog, we’ll help you understand what customer retention is and how is it one of the most important metrics to measure.

We’ll further take you through some of the top customer retention and engagement strategies for your fitness studio.

Without any further delay, grab your pre-workouts and put on your uniforms and let’s work this out for you.

What is customer retention?

Customer retention is a metric that assesses a company's ability to retain customers over time. Customer retention can reflect or predict repurchase behavior, customer engagement, and emotional ties to a brand, in addition to identifying the number of loyal customers.

In simpler terms, customer retention means keeping your customers. For example, if you started a year with 10 customers and 3 of them left, your retention rate is 70%, does that make sense?

For your fitness studio, it means more. It also speaks a great deal about your relationship with your customers and how successful your company is in tending to their needs.

It is a process of building trust, starting from the first time a customer purchases your service.

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Why should you measure customer retention?

Let’s go through some facts and numbers before we answer this question.

• US companies lose $136.8 billion per year because of avoidable customer loss. [Source]
• Nearly 50.5% of Millennials are loyal to their favorite brands, customer retention statistics show.
• 91% of consumers are keener on shopping for products from a brand they recognize.  [Source]
• Consumers spend 67% more if they are part of the company’s loyalty program. [Source]
• About 82% of companies see retention as cheaper than acquisition. [Source]

The facts and numbers mentioned above make it clear that getting new customers is something that all businesses invest in, but retaining customers is also a prime aspect of your business. You have to make your customer feel valued.

You know now how important it is to retain customers and why it is a powerful metric that you should measure, right?

How to measure customer retention?

Our advice is to not invest time in calculating this, rather invest in a management software that gives you this data.

You can invest in studio management software like Bookee. It can provide you with these analytical reports and so many more benefits.

This is what the report provided by your studio management software should look like.

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Here is a link to Bookee’s blog explaining in detail how to measure customer retention correctly using analytics from this report.

Top 7 customer retention and engagement strategies:

What are the top 7 customer retention and engagement strategies for your yoga studio?

These strategies have been put together for you carefully after thorough research. There are no trade-offs between ‘thinking of it as purely business’ and ‘thinking more like a yoga practitioner or a teacher’

These 7 customer retention strategies will shrug off these trade-offs and yield only the best results for your fitness studio.

1. Tell your success stories at times of sales
2. Stay connected using good technology
3. Reward your brand advocates
4. Upselling and cross-selling
5. Community events
6. Loyalty programs
7. Excellent customer service

1. Tell your success stories at times of sales:

Share previous case studies that explain how you work and communicate. Put forward the results that you have achieved with your past customers. You should also make memories around your shared success. (Click and post pictures to honor your success together.)

For example, let us say a customer of yours was struggling to attain the proper form of a certain Asana, and they finally nailed it. You might take a picture and share their story, with their consent. Your customers constitute an important part of your business, make them feel valued.

While buying something over the Internet. We all check reviews and make our buying decisions based on that. That’s what case studies are, these are reviews and success stories. You should tell your stories more often.

2. Stay connected using good technology

Investing in a studio management and growth software can help in staying in touch with your customers, contacting them regularly, and henceforth creating good relations. Taking continuous feedback, and getting back to their queries is also essential.

Study their patterns and analyze their behavior, offer bundle services accordingly, tailor-made for them. When you keep in touch with their needs, this keeps them engaged and also creates a comfortable environment for them which also increases customer retention.

Bookee makes all of it easier for you and more

• Bookee creates reports and analytics to study customer behavior.
• You can keep in touch with your clients with announcements/in-app notifications that are easy to set up with Bookee.
• SMS and Email campaigns, so that none of your customers miss anything new and relevant
• Setting up Branded forms is a unique feature that Bookee offers

You can have all these features at your fingertips and so much more, specifically catering to your fitness studio.

Book a demo with us by clicking here.

3. Reward your brand advocates:

Who are Brand advocates?

These are your customers who also happen to like your brand a lot. They are like super fans. (You don’t pay them for it. They genuinely love your services)

If you are paying someone to become a brand advocate, that might have a hurt effect on customer retention.

Here are some ways Advocates can help you according to Zuberence:

• Increase awareness, word of mouth, & user-generated content
• By producing and/or posting hundreds of thousands of encouraging stories, videos, photos, testimonials, and other content, brand advocates can help you raise awareness. UGC is extremely valuable because it's the most dependable type of content and has a track record of influencing purchases.
• Increase Sales
• Brand advocates can assist you in increasing sales by referring friends and family to your products or services. They can also help you increase sales by sharing your promotional offers on social media, which increases reach, traffic, and conversions.
• Increase social media engagement
• Most brands' social media posts receive less than 1% engagement, brand Advocates can help you get more likes, comments, and shares.

Since they already love you, you only have to love them back.

How can you love them back?

By providing special offers, specifically tailor-made for them. Listen to their opinions and feedback, and also gift referral bonuses.

4. Upselling and cross-selling

Both upselling and cross-selling constitute an important part of any business. You should create packs, classes, and bundles that upsell your services. Offering complementary services to the ones your customer has already purchased with a discount is a great way to cross-sell.

As a fitness business owner, you should create funnels to include both Upsell and cross-sell and encourage your customers to try different services.

This will provide value to your customers and options, to keep them more involved and engaged.

You can read more about Upselling and Cross-Selling in the article here

5. Community Events

You can organize events such as fitness challenges, and open houses. This will not only be an engaging activity but can increase customer satisfaction and hence retention.

This is also a great way of getting potential customers to visit you and converting them into your customers.

6. Loyalty Programs

Members who have purchased your services repeatedly should be rewarded. This makes them feel valuable and satisfied.

These rewards are termed loyalty programs. This could include discounted classes or memberships, free extra classes or merchandise, inviting them for a free trial to a new service you are offering, providing exclusive access to events, etc.

All these offers can increase customer retention and also engagement.

7. Responsive and helpful Customer Service

Customer service is where you can retain or lose a customer. You have to be very careful with it.

According to “Customer experience report North America”, over 82% of customers have churned because they experienced bad customer service.

Customer service should be excellent.

What do we mean by excellent?

Excellent customer service means that you are responsive, listen to your customers, and solve their problems. When you listen to them, they feel valued and happy.

There will always be problems to solve, so you must relish the opportunity to do so and make it a key component of your support role.

These simple strategies will help your fitness studio in customer retention and engagement.

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