When it comes to maximising member retention, we all know communication is vital. Face-to-face contact is paramount, which is fine for the members who are in your club. But what do you do about the members who are not present, or who haven’t visited for a few weeks, or perhaps longer?

Re-motivating absent members
Visiting their home or office could be very effective, but economies of scale make this impractical for most clubs. Alternatively you can phone the member, which is often the first choice in retention policies. Although 55% of communication is visual, the tone of voice and words still come across on the phone. If you actually get through to the member there’s a good chance they’ll come back in, but often there’s a voicemail or no answer, which reduces the probability of success in bringing the member back. If this is the first phone call you’ve made to this member, this will also reduce the effectiveness of the communication.

The most difficult part of calling members is ensuring the calls get made. Even the most motivated member of your team will struggle with making calls, and will welcome the voicemail as it allows them to tick the box without actually talking to the member. Logging calls comes down to staff honesty, and call reports are often taken with a pinch of salt.

Many clubs choose e-mail as an option, and it is already proven to improve member retention when done properly. Like any contact it is best if the first communication does not say “Where have you been? We miss you.” Here’s a starter for ten; why not send a welcome e-mail to each and every member when they join, and then send another mail after 30 days or 12 workouts (depending how sophisticated your systems are). This way, if a member gets the “Where have you been?” mail, it feels more sincere.

Preparation
Emails, because of their effectiveness and efficiencies, are an integral component of your regular communications programme. Send them only as frequently as you promise, and be diligent and compliant of permissions, spam filters and unsubscribe requests. If you’re sending a monthly or fortnightly newsletter, include some hooks every time that will attract each member to make them look forward to it, and read it. It needs to be relevant, interesting, and engaging. Even better, include something that will make people want to forward the mail to their friends. The “Content” factor is critical if you want members to regularly open your mails.

Remember that your members want to hear from you, especially when the communication is relevant and consistent.

Adaptation
Likewise, adaptation is needed for the “Where have you been?” mail. This is typically based on time, i.e. number of days absent from the club. The same members are perhaps going to receive this message more than once, so it needs to change, and if possible be personalised and include an offer.

21 days absent: “Hi Guy, You were visiting regularly back in January, but we’ve not seen you since Friday 30th April. Make a visit in the next week and receive a free programme review/PT session/drink at the bar to get you back in the mood. Cheers, trainer’s name”

Next time around:

35 days absent: “Guy, we’ve not seen you for some time now, we understand that at times it is hard to stay on top of your fitness goals. Come back soon, and let’s have a chat about how we can get back on track with your goals. Regards, trainer’s name”
This is proven to work better than the same “Where have you been, we miss you” message over and over again. Systems exist to automate but personalise these messages, which means you know they’ll be sent, and if you’ve played the newsletter game right, the member will be reading the e-mails that the club sends.

When it comes down to it, something is better than nothing. So if you have a fixed merge template for these messages, change the wording frequently. Another way to mix it up is to use different channels for the automated communications, such as text message and letters as well as e-mails. E-mail is favoured because it is cost effective, fast and gives control over the presentation of your brand. SMS or direct mail can have a good impact too, as long as you keep an eye on costs and return on investment.

Looking forward, it may become important to ask for member’s twitter IDs as well as e-mail and phone numbers when they join. A direct message on twitter is free and effectively works as both e-mail and text, or an @reply will show up on a member’s feed for all their followers to see, which should help motivation!

Education
The final piece of the communication puzzle is staff education. All staff must receive, read and digest a preview of each newsletter so that they’re ready for members’ questions or comments. Staff also need to know how the automated retention mails work, so that when a member says “Thanks for the mail, I’m back”, the instructor welcomes and takes care of them, rather than reacting with a “What’s going on here?” look on their face. Post a weekly list of absent members that have been sent a message, so that if they visit but don’t present themselves, there’s a chance that an instructor will catch them and give them some attention.

Feeding back results to staff; a simple report of absent members who were contacted and then returned, will close the loop and reinforce why the policy is in place, and how effective it is. It might even help with logging the phone calls too.

It is also a great opportunity to educate members by inserting wellness advice that promotes and reinforces their decision to use your club regularly.

In summary, whatever methods you employ, reaching out beyond the walls of your club to absent members provides results. However, with e-mail there are strategies you can use to reach more members, more easily, more quickly and more often. Prepare your members for consistent, personalised attendance based communications from the start of their memberships. Adapt all these messages based on feedback and reporting. And finally, educate your members and staff as to how and why it works.

Guy Griffiths is a fitness industry revolution consultant and coach working for GG Fit Ltd. For more information see www.ggfit.com contact info@ggfit.com, or twitter @ggfit

Jon Nasta, UK Managing Director of Retention Management, can be reached at +44 1527 870875 or Jon.Nasta@retentionmanagement.com. Comments and questions are welcome and appreciated. Retention Management is a privately held company that manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive retention improvement service for health clubs. It focuses on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defence systems. Retention Management’s mission is to create a positive impact on a club’s bottom line through improved member retention

Retention Management to Attend Multiple Events throughout May 2010

Thursday, April 15, 2010, 10:05 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 15th 2010 – Retention Management is attending several fitness events during the month of May.

- JCCA Biennial: Atlanta, GA, May 2 – 5th

- Southeastern Health & Fitness Association 14th Annual Conference: Chapel Hill, NC, May 12 - 14

At these show, prospective clients will be able to learn more about the company’s services, including the several new and enhanced product features. Representatives of the company will be in the booth to provide product presentations and answer any questions people might have.

Retention Management will also be presenting seminars at the following two events this May.

- Club Industry East, New York, NY Thursday May 6th, 2:00 – 3:15pm

“Retention Improvement Action Points”
Presented by Rich Ekstrom, President

- NEHRSA: The Foxwoods, CT Thursday May 20th, 4:00 – 5:15pm

“Improving Member Health & Fitness Using Web Marketing & Social Media”
Presented by Chris Werte, Director of Marketing

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members on a health/fitness club’s behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defense systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication programme for health/fitness clubs.
.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte
Director of Marketing
Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4
ChrisW@RetentionManagement.com
Skype: chris.werte

Written by Jon Nasta, UK MD, Retention Management

At the recent SIBEC EU networking event in Croatia, associates for Wahanda (www.wahanda.com) delivered a key note speech that made such an impact on the majority of delegates attending that it dominated discussions for the duration of the event.

Wahanda highlighted many ways of using social media and e-comms that have helped to make businesses in many sectors masters of their own destiny in controlling their interaction with customers and furthering sales across their portfolios by using the web.

With 54% of businesses saying they believe the web is the best way to retain customers and the Return On Investment (ROI) on e-marketing crushing the ROI from other forms of marketing why is it that so many Health Clubs are not capitalising on this easy to access and relatively low cost medium?

Medium used for Marketing Communication ROI per £
Email £45.06
Non Email Internet Mktg £19.94
Catalogues / Brochures £7.28
Telephone £15.55
Source: Direct Marketing Association

Since SIBEC, we have spoken with many Chief Executives, Operations Directors and Marketing Directors from each of the respective sectors of our industry about their experiences with implementing the use of these mediums for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – The e-can’ts, e-can’s and e-comm’s.

e-can’t:

The “e-can’ts” (those that are not capitalising on these technological mediums) point to a fundamental lack of expertise in understanding how to manage such projects from initially defining the operators own policy on communication and retention through to a history of poorly implemented software packages that have failed to deliver time and cost savings let alone consistent and reliable CRM.

They recognise the benefits but do not feel they have access to the skills to manage such strategies themselves in a manner that will deliver a substantial ROI. One Operations Director pointed to the fact that it had taken almost two years to rollout the last major IT based project within their group, leaving them terrified of changing or adding any other IT-based projects to an already busy schedule. Others had similar experiences with IT, citing several problems:

• Over promised and under delivered solutions with some suppliers in this area.
• Jumping on the band wagon with companies reporting evidence of success in other industry sectors without showing an understanding the leisure industry.
• Working with companies that fail to provide testimonials and support services tailored by experiences in the leisure environment.

The other main area of feedback from the “e-can’ts” speaks of too many demands on staff time to make full use of such strategies. Providing informative, targeted e-communications and developing programmes tailored to making new and existing member experiences more cohesive using the latest technology is like adding at least one more full time job. “We end up with many great tools to help us, but fail to use 90% of them due to lack of support, training and additional demands relating to the management of these initiatives . This is made worse by the transient nature of gym instructors in our industry,” said one marketing manager from the trust sector. “In such a tough economy it has been hard to justify such expenditure”, added another.

e-can’s:

So what of the “e-can’s”? We are seeing some very successful use of mediums such as Twitter and Facebook with a client having over 30,000 fans on Facebook alone. Does having fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter improve retention? Undoubtedly it improves communication with members. However, these social medias must be managed and updated consistently to avoid becoming another initiative that started strong but lacked sufficient long-term momentum to have a sustainable impact.

Certainly Twitter and Facebook can help deliver fantastic referral and special promotion campaigns to a group of customers that have, after all, classed themselves as fans of your service. They can clearly show which customers you owe a pat on the back and a large thank you to for their support – a message that in our experience many operators have forgotten the importance of. Remember, happy customers will always willingly recommend you. Consumers see testimonials from their peer group as extremely influential in purchasing decisions.

Just take a look at sites such as www.tripadvisor.com. How many of us truly seek and openly discuss the experiences of our members? Is it time we got together to create a www.gymadvisor.com?

Digging a bit deeper with the “e-can’s” began to reveal much more candid feedback. All wanted to make it easy in terms of cost and speed for members to communicate with their clubs. Ultimately this made it easier for them to communicate with, market to and retain customers at a cost that was far lower than in the past. Again it was apparent that it was a sensible business decision to create revenue at lower costs that was driving policy in this area.

One of our clients has broken their previously bulky and expensive-to-produce welcome pack into seven emails delivered week-by-week through the new member integration programme we deliver on their behalf, saving over one thousand pounds each month across three sites purely in print and postage. Others are using e-surveys to elicit feedback on a regular basis – far quicker, less intrusive and more efficient than mail and phone surveys and, of course, much cheaper.

These are just a couple of examples of how the “e-cans” are making a good and sustainable ROI by embracing technology for communication, marketing and retention. Without fail, those that have embraced e-comms have said to us they will continue to use the medium. So if you want to get out of the “can’t do” frame of mind and into the “can do” camp what advice can you take from those that have gone before you?

e-comms:

Here are five golden rules that our clients have helped us to create that we think will help make your efforts a success:

1. Define a communications policy. Ask yourself what you want to achieve, who you want to communicate with and what will be the KPI’s for the process.
2. See it through. Many new communications initiatives open with an element of negative feedback from members. It is usually the case that those with gripes will be the first to speak up. View this as an opportunity to get things right for these people or at least show you understand their views. The good feedback will soon takeover.
3. Get your staff on board early. With many of these programmes needing a healthy penetration of your members email addresses, your staff needs to commit to helping in this process and be given an understanding of how this can help them with their working day (see previous article “just five minutes”).
4. Be consistent. If you say you will be communicating no more than twice a month with members do not bombard them with messages every day. Make yourself aware of spam regulations and any restrictions your ISP may have on use of mass mailings to avoid getting yourself into trouble. (see “push the button”)
5. Monitor and respond. You need to measure results yourself in a “like for like” manner. All service providers will tell you they are doing a great job for you but only you know your own business. Make sure you respond to all communications from members.

Finally, if you really want to become an e-can but just cannot find the time or resources to break into this exciting arena, remember there are methods, systems and companies that can be adopted, implemented or contracted to help you focus where your e-comms successes are most likely to come from.

Jon Nasta, UK Managing Director of Retention Management, can be reached at +44 1527 870875 or Jon.Nasta@retentionmanagement.com. Comments and questions are welcome and appreciated. Retention Management is a privately held company that manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive retention improvement service for health clubs. It focuses on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defence systems. Retention Management’s mission is to create a positive impact on a club’s bottom line through improved member retention.

Retention Management to be at Booth 3934 at IHRSA 10, March 11 - 13
Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 10:05 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., February 9th 2010 – Retention Management announced that they will attend the IHRSA 10 Convention and Tradeshow in San Diego, CA March 11 – 13. The company will be located at Booth 3934 on the Tradeshow floor.

During the show, prospective clients will be able to learn more about the company’s services, including the several new and enhanced product features. Representatives of the company will be in the booth to provide product presentations and answer any questions people might have.

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members on a health/fitness club’s behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defense systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication programme for health/fitness clubs.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte
Director of Marketing
Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4
ChrisW@RetentionManagement.com
Skype: chris.werte

Retention Management Introduces Expanded Marketing Blast Email Program for Customers

Wednesday January 6th, 2010, 10:05 am ET
CHARLOTTE, N.C., January 6th, 2010 – Retention Management has launched an extensive enhancement of their Marketing Blast email program for customers. This new blast component, part of Retention Management’s industry leading automated member communication program, provides clients with a large new library of marketing templates and additional creative tools that make it easy for them to produce customized professional looking HTML marketing emails. This latest enhancement follows closely behind Retention Management’s offering of their Prospect / Sales Email program launched in 2009.

With the enhanced program, clients can create attractive and engaging emails that will help them communicate and excite their members and prospects when announcing upcoming events, schedule changes or promotions designed to drive ancillary revenues, promote referrals and boost sales. The enhancements include:

• Complete editor tools to easily customize email text formatting

• Access to an extensive image library that is continuously updated

• Options to upload your own images

• The capabilities to send a sample to any email address before delivering it to members or prospects

• Full customer service support from Retention Management’s Client Service Specialists ensure clients feel confident that their marketing programs are executed efficiently and effectively

“Retention Management is committed to continually providing our clients with the best email communication technology available,” says Richard Ekstrom, President of Retention Management. “As the market and our clients continue to become more sophisticated and comfortable with their use of email marketing, it is critical for us to provide them with all the tools – and customer support - they need to deliver eye-catching communications to their members and prospects, all at no additional cost to them.”

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members and prospective members on a health/fitness centers behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education, new member sales and the automation of attrition defense systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication program for health/fitness clubs.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte, Director of Marketing, Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4; ChrisW@RetentionManagement.com; Skype: chris.werte

Written by Jon Nasta UK MD, Retention Management

Last time, we talked about why email is so important to running a successful health club. With a recent independent study showing that email communication has a significant positive effect on a person’s health and fitness and the cost benefits of an email programme over other communication methods, email is now taking centre stage for health clubs.

In Part 2 of our article, we look at how clubs can take advantage of email and what issues to look out for that could hinder your success.

How Can Health Centres Take Advantage of Email?

Collecting Email Addresses:

A vital part of a successful email campaign starts with collecting email addresses! While people are not keen to give their email address to everyone, it’s not usually too difficult to gather a reasonable list in a fairly short space of time.

Collecting the addresses of customers is likely to be far easier than prospects, particularly as you already have a relationship with them. Evidence shows that in most clubs, over 70% of members will attend at least once in a four week period, giving a club ample opportunity for collecting a healthy number of email addresses.

When starting a campaign to collect email addresses it is a good idea to create some posters and place them around the club explaining what you are doing, why and what your members can expect from giving their details. In our experience, clubs running an email collection campaign that offer a weekly prize draw, offering for example a PT session or day passes, return a much better result. Combine this technique with some of the methods we will discuss and it is not unusual to collect over 50% of your member addresses in a six week period, often over 70% in a twelve week period.

The most common way is to ask customers to leave their email address when they make a visit; you will need to give them some idea of how their address will be used. For example, “we will occasionally contact you with programme options, special offers, schedule changes or tips designed
to assist you in leading a healthy lifestyle”.

The information you give regarding the content and (approximate) frequency of your emails must be accurate, otherwise you could be putting you and your club at legal risk. Further information is in the Legal Issues section of this article.

One of the most effective ways to collect emails is to create a pop-up window on your website. This can be a pop-up on entry or exit. Incorporating an email subscriber box on each of your site’s web pages will significantly increase your sign-ups. Contests are a great way to capture opt-in email address.

Any time a customer or prospect phones you, walks in or does business with you, is an opportunity to capture their email address.

There are three main ways of signing up for an email list, they are as follows:
• You manually add an email address that has been written down for you.
• The person adds their email address by sending you an email request to join. (this can be automatic, or you take the address and add it to the list manually)
• The person adds their email address by filling in a form online.

People are much more likely to join your email list if they can do it quickly and easily, if you add their address manually then they can sign up quickly. If they can fill in a brief form online they can sign up quickly whilst they are already on your site. Many clubs utilise simple tear off strips placed in changing rooms or in the lounge that a member can quickly fill in and hand over to reception.

If someone has to email you, it is less quick, and therefore less likely to get the email added to your list. Although opening an email programme, entering your email address and typing “Please add me to this list” is not a huge task; it is still reliant on the person making some effort, when you should be making it as simple as possible for them.

You can add questions to online forms; this allows you to gather basic data on your customers such as age and gender. This data can help you to target your emails and other promotions, and can teach you more about your customer profiles. However, the more questions, and the more intrusive the questions, the less likely it is that your customers will want to answer them.
What issues should you look out for that could hinder your success?

Legal Issues

Is Email Marketing Spamming?

Spamming is a huge problem with email marketing; a ‘spam’ email is an unsolicited commercial email that is sent without the person giving permission. So is email marketing to your membership address list spamming? The simple answer is no; if someone has agreed to receive emails from you then, providing you follow legal guidelines, it is not spamming and you have the legal right to email them.

Unsolicited Messages
If someone has not given you their email address directly, and you have not received it from a verified list; it is against the law to send them commercial messages. Un-requested (Unsolicited) messages are spam, and you must not send them; even if you think the person would be interested in the contents.

The only possible exception is if you have a long standing business relationship; if for example, the customer purchases from you every month for a year, Health clubs fall into this category, however this does not mean you can disregard other rules about spam mail.
 

Opting-out
Even though someone has given you their email address, they still have the right to opt-out and prevent any further emails. You must make it easy for people to remove their name from your list, and you need to include easy instructions on how to do so. If they choose to remove themselves you must remove their address and not send any further mails.

Frequency
If you sign people to your email list, you must give them an accurate idea of how many emails they will get. You don’t have to say “one email every 18 days”, but you should differentiate between regular (Approx daily to weekly), occasional (Approx fortnightly to monthly), and rare (Approx less than once a month) communication to prevent irritating recipients.

If you say ‘occasional emails’ and then send 3 a day, people will get fed up and remove their addresses very quickly, but if you say one a day then send one a month people may forget about you; so be realistic with what you plan to send.

Sending
When you send your emails you MUST make sure that each person only sees their email address. This may mean sending each email separately, or using the ‘BCC’ function in your email programme/facility. BCC hides the email addresses that each email is being sent to, this way people cannot steal other peoples addresses by reading it.

Do not use the CC function, otherwise everyone will see all the email addresses.

Privacy
You must protect and keep private each and every email address. Do not sell or give away anybody’s email addresses to other companies or people. You can ask for permission to pass on their details to other reputable companies (I.e.: Companies that you believe are trustworthy and of interest to the customer only), but most people will not want to do this. You should make sure that your customers are aware that you respect their privacy; you should state “We do not give your details to anybody else.” As long as you actually do this, it will help to build trust in your business by showing you are honest and respect their privacy.

Details
Every email that you send must clearly identify who you are and give a valid email address for the recipient to reply if they want. Make sure to monitor your email address regularly. New rules that came into effect from January 2009 mean company information must be included on all electronic communications. You must now include the full registered name and office address of your company, your company registration number as well as country of registration.
If you include details of a special offer, you must include details of any terms or conditions that apply. E.g.: If the offer is only valid on weekdays you must state this.
 
WHAT FOR?
Whilst a number of clubs have already unlocked the door to the ease of email communication with their members many clubs still believe collecting email addresses is just far too much work for too little reward. However more and more research evidence continues to endorse the impact of staying in regular contact with our members in a consistent and constructive manner, particularly when it comes to retaining members and improving revenue.

With a growing list of certified, accredited and reputable companies that can be contracted to deliver proven methods of effective communication services on behalf of clubs with greater efficiency and delivery rates than doing so in house, the only question we should be asking is “when do we start collecting our members emails?” and no longer “how?” or “why?”

Jon Nasta, UK Managing Director of Retention Management, can be reached at +44 1527 870875 or Jon.Nasta@retentionmanagement.com. Comments and questions are welcome and appreciated. Retention Management is a privately held company that manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive retention improvement service for health clubs. It focuses on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defence systems. Retention Management’s mission is to create a positive impact on a club’s bottom line through improved member retention.

Retention Management presents: “Maximizing Member & Staff Retention” at the 15th Annual MFA Medical Fitness & HealthCare Conference in Orlando FL, Wednesday 12/02/09

Monday November 23rd, 2009, 10:05 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., November 23rd 2009 – Richard Ekstrom, President of Retention Management, is presenting a new seminar at this year’s Annual MFA Medical Fitness & HealthCare Conference. “Maximizing Member & Staff Retention” on Wednesday, 12/02/09 1:30PM.

Mr. Ekstrom’s seminars have been well received at various conventions throughout the Fitness Industry, including Club Industry, Leisure Industry (UK) and the JCC National Convention.

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members and prospective members on a health/fitness center’s behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education, new member sales and the automation of attrition defense systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication program for health/fitness clubs.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte
Director of Marketing
Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4
chrisw@retentionmanagement.com
Skype: Chris.Werte

Retention Management to be at Booth 1130 at Club industry 2009, October 15 - 117

Thursday September 24th, 2008, 10:05 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., September 24, 2008 – Retention Management will attend the Club Industry 2008 Convention and Tradeshow in Chicago, IL October 15 - 17. The company will be located at Booth 1130 on the Tradeshow floor.

Richard Ekstrom, President of Retention Management, is presenting a new seminar at this years Convention. “Retention in a Recession: Every Member Matters!” will be given on Wednesday, 10/14/08 2:00PM.

Furthermore, during the show, prospective clients will be able to learn more about the company’s services, including its expanded Blast email. Representatives of the company will be in the booth to provide product presentations and answer any questions people might have.

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members and prospective members on a health/fitness center’s behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education, new member sales and the automation of attrition defense systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication program for health/fitness clubs.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte
Director of Marketing
Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4
chrisw@retentionmanagement.com
Skype: Chris.Werte

A recently published study has found that email communication has a significant positive effect on a person’s health and fitness. According to the study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM), using email to regularly prompt people to follow a healthier lifestyle resulted in measurable improvement in the person’s health and exercise regimen.

The study, conducted by Kaiser Permanente and NutritionQuest and funded in part by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, measured the impact of a programme devised by a public-health professor at the University of California, Berkeley that delivered brief, regular emails to a group of individuals. The emails consisted of simple suggestions for healthier eating or improving exercise habits. Compared to a control group, those in the email programme showed a significant increase in exercise adherence and healthier living.

The AJPM findings are consistent with a medical review published by the Centre for a Liveable Future at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Published in May 2009, the review (Periodic Prompts and Reminders in Health Promotion and Health Behaviour Interventions: Systematic Review), found 11 studies conducted since 2006 that showed that periodic communication with participants resulted in a positive impact on a person’s health and fitness.

With a report from the Direct Marketing Association (see table 1) showing that email has by far the greatest ROI for marketing spend, why is it that so many organisations still rank the medium as a bottom feeder in their budgets for marketing spend?

Medium used for Marketing Communication = ROI per £

Table 1: ROI of different mediums of marketing spend (DMA 2008)

When this evidence is combined with the recent reminder from IHRSA that it can be up to seven times more expensive to get a new member than keep an existing member, more and more Health Clubs are beginning to simply “push the button”, when it comes to member marketing, communication and retention. Over the next two articles, we will examine the basics of email marketing, including:

• Why email works so well
• How health club operators can make it work
• How to make sure your message gets delivered

Why Email Works So Well:

1. It’s personal

Email offers you the opportunity to personalise your message to your members. Send them emails addressing them by name and give them offers targeted to their preferences.

2. It’s quicker

Direct mail can be complex and time consuming. It can typically take more than a month to execute and then you’ve got to wait for the post to deliver it to your members. An email campaign takes far less time to plan and execute and you get your results back almost immediately. If you react quickly you’ll see the benefits to your club almost straight away!

3. It’s cheaper

Printing of a mailer as well as postage costs will make up a significant portion of the total costs associated with a direct mail campaign. You don’t have these costs with an email campaign and this makes it instantly much cheaper. With response rates often higher than direct mail, email will give you a better return on your investment.

4. It’s measurable

Email campaigns provide more immediate trackable results. Being able to see exactly how many emails were delivered, which bounced back due to bad addresses and member replies means you can test different campaigns and quickly update lists to get the best response rates.

5. It helps build customer relationships

Because email communications are cheaper and easier to send, health clubs can use email to keep in regular contact with existing members and this enables them to build stronger relationships with them. Email marketing is the ideal medium to update members with time sensitive offers and club news.

In our next article, we will discuss how you can easily collect your members’ email addresses and how to make sure your message gets delivered.

Jon Nasta, UK Managing Director of Retention Management, can be reached at +44 1527 870875 or Jon.Nasta@retentionmanagement.com. Comments and questions are welcome and appreciated. Retention Management is a privately held company that manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive retention improvement service for health clubs. It focuses on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education and the automation of attrition defence systems. Retention Management’s mission is to create a positive impact on a club’s bottom line through improved member retentionhttp://www.shawnhollenbach.com/mom/?p=1-7051 mhtsnnnlcHercaoitCoerA

Retention Management to be at Stand F 118, Leisure Industry Week, NEC Birmingham UK on 22 - 24 September 2009.

Thursday August 3rd, 2009, 10:05 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., August 3, 2009 – Retention Management will attend the Leisure Industry Week, NEC Birmingham UK on 22 - 24 September 2009. The company will be located at Stand F 118 on the Tradeshow floor.

During the show, prospective clients will be able to learn more about the company’s services, including its expanded Blast email. Representatives of the company will be available to provide product presentations and answer any questions people might have.

About Retention Management:
Retention Management, a privately held company, generates custom emails to members and prospective members on a health/fitness centre’s behalf, focusing on new member orientation, member attendance, health/fitness education, new member sales and the automation of attrition defence systems. Their company manages the complexities and time demands of running a comprehensive member communication programme for health/fitness centres.

Contact:
Christopher J. Werte
Director of Marketing
Retention Management
1-800-951-8048 Ext. 4
chrisw@retentionmanagement.com
Skype: Chris.Werte