How to leave long-lasting impressions of your health club. 7 tips to guarantee your ex-members come back

For the last seven months, I have been travelling around Asia, mainly residing in Vietnam. Through living the expatriate life, I have seen a number of fitness facilities on the continent. I’d like to share with an experience I had with one particular club. 

I attended Saigon Sports Club in December when I first arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. 

I had carried out all my research beforehand and everything online looked amazing. 

The pool, the restaurant and the smoothie lounge all seemed to complement the boxing, CrossFit and 9 Round classes that were advertised. 

It looked like the perfect place for me to train to achieve my goals.  

When I arrived I was NOT disappointed. I remember thinking ‘this could possibly be one of the best places to train in the world, let alone Ho Chi Minh City.’ I loved it. 

As a fan of Group Exercise, I attended two classes on average per day. It was heaven, from ‘Primal’ to ‘Hatha Yoga’, and ‘Inferno’ to ‘Muay Thai’, I tried it all. 

For those rare few readers out there who know Saigon, it is a remarkably big city. Each District is like a small town and there are 24 of them! After one month of training, I secured a job and living accommodation 40 minutes away from Saigon Sports Club which meant, unfortunately, I had to cancel my membership. 

As I finished my last workout, I remember saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I’ve got a job in Phu Nhuan district so I’m going to live there, but after I’ve checked out all the other gyms in Saigon, I’ll come back here anyway, as I doubt any of them will touch this.” 

I was right. 

In the following 7 month period, I attended a budget gym, many mid-market gyms, a UFC Franchise, a great little boutique kickboxing facility, a very odd MMA 1-2-1 PT gym, a luxury health club and a mini CrossFit complex. 

To train in, all were good, but none could hold a candle to Saigon Sports Club. 

I had made a pledge and as a man of my word, in June, when it came to securing accommodation, my main criteria was that it was within spitting distance of the facility I had enjoyed the most – the SSC. 

When I came back to re-sign, the receptionist said with a lovely smile on her face ‘Hey Joe, nice to see you again.’ While telling her about my experiences over the last 7 months, another Boxing Instructor appeared around the corner and yelled ‘Joe Hall! How are you doing?’ 

I asked about the price of membership with all classes included. The answer was 5.5 million Vietnamese Dong, which equates to around £190 GBP. 

Without hesitation, I handed over the same membership card that had been sitting in my wallet for the last 200+ days and rejoined. 

Now that’s quite a lot of money in Vietnam, it’s more than my accommodation and I haven’t exactly got money to burn either. Yet, because of the experience I had previously, I knew it was worth it. The price never really entered my head. 

Before taking that first session back, I booked the classes on the same app I had used before with the same login. 

When the time finally came to blast out that first boxing session, I noticed that all the staff members who had been working there in December were still there. From the polite man selling coconuts behind the juice bar to the Head Chef slicing up the Salmon, nothing had changed. 

Every instructor was still delivering the same breath-taking classes and more importantly, the same members were still attending them. 

It was great to be back and after slogging out 3 classes on my second day, it felt like I never left! 

The RE-MEMBER experience 

We often talk about the member experience, but the re-member experience if something I would like to introduce to you. 

The re-member experience can be taken from the point a member wishes to leave their Health Club to the point of that first ‘comeback’ workout upon returning. 

I’ve labelled it the ‘re-member experience’ for three reasons.

Firstly, when a member leaves a health club, they will ‘remember’ this experience significantly. The likelihood of them ever returning will be determined by how smooth that leaving process was. 

Secondly, if the member re-joins, it’s then important the Health Club shows that they remember that person. 

Finally, should it ever get to the point where the member has that elusive ‘comeback workout’ it is important that the Health Club remains the same, or even better than ‘remembered’.

As an operator, if you can safely say that your Re-member experience is on Saigon Sports Club’s level, then you are already killing it in the game of leaving long-lasting impressions. You keep doing your thing, and you’ll continue to win ex-members back. 

If on the other hand, you feel you may have holes in your Re-member experience, take note of the tips below. 

1. Provide amazing experiences at all times

First and foremostly, it always starts with you. I’ve made it clear on other posts that ‘marketing’ is about providing winning brand experiences.

If your Health Club makes every effort to connect personally with members then well done, you are already doing Point 1. 

If your Health Club inspires members to achieve results and encourages them every step of the way through the right support, education and reward systems then again, well done, you are also doing Point 1. 

However, if your Health Club’s retention strategy is in any way misaligned then you need to focus on Point 1.

If you are irrelevant in your marketing and are over-zealous at pushing product sales to your members then you need to revisit Point 1. 

If you are non-responsive to customer feedback and don’t learn from your unhappy customers you need to revisit Point 1.

If you get Point 1 right, your members won’t want to leave. If they do wish to leave, they’ll have a strong enough reason for it. Which brings me on to Point 2.

2. Find out why your members wish to leave

First of all, your members should only be able to cancel online. It is 2019 and using paper in this process is not only environmentally unfriendly but it’s also extremely inconvenient for you as an Operator and your members. 

I’m not insinuating that you should make your process one whereby members have to cancel by themselves. 

If you are a fully staffed service, your facility should allow members to cancel over the desk at reception through the same online link they would access by themselves.  

The reason why having the process online is so important is that it gives you the option to collect data pertaining to ‘Why the member is wishing to leave’. 

If you have a multitude of ‘drop-down’ options for the member to choose from, as an Operator, you will be able to quantify that data and do some thorough analysis on the reasons your members are heading for the exit door.

If you then support this with an option to leave an NPS score plus extra comments, you can use this data wisely to measure the satisfaction levels among leavers and delve deeper into the reasons why your members are going their separate ways.

This will not only give you the insight you need, but it will be your final chance to show the parting member that you care about their reasons for leaving. 

3. Make sure your cancellation process is easy to follow. 

By making your cancellation process online, naturally, it will be easier for your members to follow. 

However, if you start adding in terms and conditions in the small print related to the cancelling of a Direct Debit, with an abundance of ‘tick boxes’, then this is going to cause maximum confusion and unrest among leaving members. 

Make it openly clear how a member cancels their membership. It should be as easy for a member to cancel a gym membership as it is to join, so one click of a button that says ‘cancel membership’ should be the way forward. 

Have a chatbot on your cancellation page for extra reassurance that everything has been done correctly and notify the member via email and SMS text. The idea here is the member should feel at ease.

4. Don’t add extra charges to your members upon their departure

Whatever you do, don’t set your business up to fail with convoluted, unethical terms and conditions that charge your members if they don’t cancel correctly. 

I’ve seen many examples in which members appeared to have cancelled their membership successfully, but their Direct Debit was still live. Problems arose when they went on to cancel their Direct Debit with the bank, 20 days after their membership was deemed to have been made inactive. Much to their frustration, they were still charged with an additional £25 admin fee, because well – you know, in the terms and conditions it stated that you should not cancel your Direct Debit with your bank. 

To make matters worse because they didn’t pay the £25 admin fee for three months, so they were then hit with extortionate £300 charges. 

If that’s how you are running your gym, then you may as well forget about ever winning any departing members back. 

All the hard work you may have done in Point 1 will be undone as your ‘Re-Member experience’ is nothing short of disastrous. 

First impressions count, but the last impression will leave the customer with the most lasting impression.

What sort of a lasting impression is one that is filled with fines and fees? 

5. Don’t bombard your members with irrelevant ‘WE MISS YOU’ marketing

So if you’ve nailed Points 1, 2, 3 and 4, then the chances are if any member wants to come back, they will. 

You as an Operator will also be blessed with having the wealth of quantifiable information pertaining to why each member left and how happy they were upon bidding their last farewell. 

Use this data wisely. 

If you can see a member left because they were extremely unhappy and had also relocated to another town or city, then why on earth would you waste any time, money, effort or energy in reaching out to them with an irrelevant ‘We Miss You’ message?

Even if you gave them the chance to join for free forever, they probably wouldn’t. 

You need to be much savvier. 

For example, if a member was happy when they left but they then joined a competitor, they are much better placed to be hit with your exclusive ‘ex-member’ offer. 

If a member who was taking Small Group PT was happy when they left but became demotivated and couldn’t afford to continue, they can be hit with your ‘irresistible offer on Personal Training’.

If a member was just downright unhappy with your facility upon leaving then, unfortunately, the damage may have already been done, you might not have got Point 1 right. The price point of your gym to this leaver is immaterial. You can only now inform these members that you’ve listened to their feedback and made some key changes if you stand any hope of winning these members back. 

If a member has left for personal reasons or relocation, they are probably better to be left alone. They will decide whether they wish to follow you on social media and can stay in touch that way to determine their future relationship with you. 

For further tips on personalised marketing, read my previous article on irrelevant marketing and you will get the gist of how to use data effectively to market to the right people.   

6.Recognise your returning member

If a member makes that all-important leap of faith and decides to rekindle their love and journey with your facility then it’s really important that they are welcomed back with open arms.

In my experience with Saigon Sports Club, I felt very touched when the staff remembered my name and seemed as upbeat with my return as I was. 

If you are a multi-chain site with over 5,000 members per gym, I appreciate it’s not always possible to remember every single person, but if you are a boutique or an independent gym with less than 300 members, I believe it is.

One thing that makes it easier for your staff to recognise each member is if the staff turnover of your Health Club facility is low. If your Health Club constantly undergoes new changes in personnel, you’ll not even know old faces, let alone remember them.  

I paid homage to the Boxing Instructor who remembered me on my return to Saigon Sports Club, if he or she had been new, they would have been none the wiser. 

Familiar staff play a key part in the ‘Remember experience’, so look after your staff in the same way you look after your members.

It is not JUST about your staff recognising your returning members, your systems should too. 

Everything should fall smoothly back into place so that when a member returns, your artificial intelligence is capable of acknowledging them as the same person they were before.

This will mean your marketing communications and your customer experience stay relevant. This will provide much less friction for the member when logging into any apps they previously used or accessing the gym. 

You’ll note I said I used the exact same membership card I used before at Saigon Sports Club – that is how it should be done! 

From an Operator’s perspective, this will also mean your data is more accurate and you will have a stronger, more streamlined, single customer view of each member without the issues of having multiple accounts for one person. 

7. Welcome back with a personal discount.

Now, this was something Saigon Sports Club did not do, but if they had said ‘Joe, we can see you’ve been away for 7 months, here’s a voucher for 70,000 Vietnamese Dong on our Merchandise or Food Menu as a way of saying thanks for coming back’, that would have been the proverbial icing on the cake for me. 

I am passionate about rewarding loyalty, and while I believe existing members should always be at the forefront of member reward programs, I do believe that ex-members returning could be given a nice ‘welcome back’ gift.

It is this type of experience that would make members feel super connected to their Health Club and delighted by your re-member experience

So try it out, you could run a scheme that works on the basis of the number of months a member has been away, equals the amount of £’s off a supplement or a nutrition program. 

You decide what will work for you, but don’t underestimate the power of this welcome back gift. 

Lasting words on lasting impressions

There you have it. A full experience of my own which I hope as a Health Club Operator you can learn from, complemented by an introduction to the ‘Re-member experience’, followed by 7 tried and tested tips on how to win back your ex-members.

If you can put Points 1 – 7 perfectly into place within your facility, then the cycle must start again with Point 1 – ‘Provide amazing experiences at all times’. 

To summarise just how your members should feel about leaving your Health Club, I’ll conclude with a song lyric from the Eagles – Hotel California. 

‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’   

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Written by
Joe Hall
Joe is a content creator for eFitness Club Management Software. He holds a degree in Physical Education and Sport and Exercise Psychology, alongside an MA in Sport Business. He is a qualified Level 2 Fitness Instructor and Level 3 Personal Trainer and was the previously Head of Customer Engagement for a leading UK gym brand for 6 years. Nominated as an IHRSA rising star in 2018, Joe has got a lot to say on all things FITNESS!
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