Understanding Why Members Disengage

It’s something that all gym and fitness center owners experience—the at-risk member. These are people who you sense are disengaging from their fitness journey, from the gym community, and the gym itself. Why does it happen?

When evaluating the reasons, it’s important to understand the difference between genuine disengagement and excuses. The best way to crack that mystery is by gaining a better understanding of why a particular person joined your gym in the first place. The most common reasons are:

• Lose weight
• Get in shape
• Maintain weight
• The social aspects – they hope to make new friends

Whatever the reason, members will have expectations that your gym will help them realize their goals. When they were deciding which gym to join, they were also considering factors such as:

• Equipment
• Fees
• Location
• The classes offered
• Cleanliness
• Customer service

As time passes, they’ll be re-evaluating their choice. They’ll ask themselves if your gym is helping them to meet their goals and if they’re getting the most bang for their buck. If they’re not getting the ROI they hoped for, they’ll start to disengage. Let’s look at some of the most common reasons why.

 

Member Disengagement – Do Any of These Sound Familiar?

If you’re concerned about member engagement for any particular person, remember why they joined your gym in the first place. If you sense them disengaging, see how many of these boxes you can tick:

• Lack of motivation—this is undoubtedly the most common cause. When people start a new exercise routine, they are usually motivated and excited. However, this motivation can quickly fade away, especially if they’re not getting the results they were hoping for. If you sense demotivation in any of your members, you need to find ways to reinvigorate their fitness journey.
• Boredom—doing the same exercises over and over again can get tedious. When members feel like they are doing the same thing every time they go to the gym, they might lose interest.
• Time constraints—people have busy lives and struggle to find time to fit in their workouts. It’s up to you to follow up with these time-stretched members and help them with their schedule.
• Injuries or illness—when people get sick or injured, they may need to take time off from exercising to recover. If the injury or illness is severe, they may stop attending the gym altogether.
• Cost—gym memberships can be expensive, and some members may not be able to afford it long-term. When members feel like they are paying too much for their membership, they may decide to cancel it.
• Lack of support—starting a new exercise routine can be challenging, and having support can make all the difference. If members feel like they are not getting the support they need from their gym, they may drift away.
• Unease in the gym—some members may feel intimidated or self-conscious bythe environment, especially if they are new to exercising. If members aren’t comfortable in the space, that can be very demotivational. That’s why it’s so important to develop a sense of community within your gym.

As a gym owner, it’s essential to provide a welcoming and supportive environment, helping your members to remain engaged and motivated to achieve their fitness goals. Let’s look at how.

 

Improving Member Engagement for Your Gym or Studio

To help you improve member Length of Engagement (LEG), we’ve put together a guide with practical tips and actionable advice to help you keep your members motivated, active, and loyal to your fitness center. It’s The Ultimate LEG Workout, and it covers:

• Why member engagement is important
• From communication to community—building stronger relationships with your members
• How engagement is measured
• The 5 key elements of an effective engagement strategy
• Overcoming barriers to member engagement—how automation can help drive growth
• BONUS: Email and text templates to help you reconnect with at-risk members

Even the best gyms can always improve their member engagement strategies. If you’re looking for new ways to build relationships, help members achieve fitness goals, and reduce member churn, then this is the guide for you.

DOWNLOAD THE ULTIMATE LEG WORKOUT

At NCFIT, we understand what it takes to build a financially successful gym business. For a decade-plus, we have owned and operated multiple locations and learned every lesson a gym owner can learn along the way. We have also worked with hundreds of gyms and learned precisely what it takes to run a successful gym.

Successful gyms have three things in common:
1. Fun programming that members love
2. Professional and engaging world-class coaches
3. Leaders that spend their time where it matters most.

As a gym owner, it’s crucial to understand that spending time writing workouts is inefficient. Time is our most valuable asset, and we need to use it wisely. Gym owners should spend their time building their gym’s culture, developing systems to streamline operations, and taking care of sales and marketing to grow the business.

Outsourcing workout programming is a great way to free up time and focus on the big picture. It allows gym owners to concentrate on creating a unique gym culture and growing the business while leaving the programming to experts. This approach also ensures that gym members get high-quality programming that is both challenging and fun without taking up the gym owner’s time.

At NCFIT, we understand the importance of providing gym owners with the tools they need to succeed. The NCFIT Collective has an entire team dedicated to solving the problem of workout programming for gym owners. We take care of all the programming, so gym owners can focus on the business aspects of running a gym.

We have also integrated with Xplor Triib to make things even easier for gym owners. This integration means that programming from the NCFIT Collective can be seamlessly delivered to gym members through their Xplor Triib software. This allows gym owners to automate the workout delivery process, saving even more time and resources.

Outsourcing workout programming is a smart move for gym owners who want to win. It allows them to focus on building a unique gym culture, developing systems to streamline operations, and growing the business.

At NCFIT, we are committed to providing gym owners with the tools they need to be successful, and our integration with Xplor Triib is just one example of that commitment.

 

Ready to try out NCFIT programming?

Connecting with gym members authentically is essential for growth. To separate yourself from the other gyms, your style and the results you can deliver need to be front and center. But it’s hard to put all your effort into this when you’re bogged down by tedious—but necessary—admin work.  

As a business owner, you know the admin work will never go away entirely, no matter how much you wish it would! If you can’t eliminate it entirely, you can still automate a good chunk of those tedious processes. 

Not sure what can be automated? Here are some automations we’ve found to be very helpful for small gym owners just like you.  

Why automate your gym processes?  

Well-executed automation can free up a lot of time for you, or your team members, to work on tasks that need human input and can’t be automated. Small business owners often avoid automation because they are concerned it will be time intensive or confusing to set up, but don’t let that concern steer you away from putting valuable time back in your schedule! 

Choose a software provider with easy-to-use automation, industry-leading customer service to guide and support you, and a robust help center to resolve any unexpected issues that you may have while laying the foundation for your automations. 

Automation is here to stay, and it’s easier than ever to set it up, get it going, and reap the rewards. Time for gym owners to take back their precious time, and let workflows handle your repetitive tasks from now on. Here, we show you how automation can help you and your team, by exploring three automated workflows that you can use at your gym.  

1. Send personal emails for special occasions 

Manually emailing every member for each special occasion would be a tedious and gargantuan time commitment. But you can automate this little task so that it’s done without any labor input, after the initial setup. Many gym owners get their first taste of automation with marketing, specifically, email marketing. 

With email broadcasts, you can automate confirmation emails, birthday wishes, anniversary celebrations, milestone achievements, and so many of those small moments that matter. Email has a great track record for impressive ROIs, but you can also automate SMS broadcasts if you need to send out a message for members to see right away. Did you know that 98 percent of SMS messages are opened? It might seem strange to send a mass text, or like people won’t read them, but you would be surprised how effective this method is to get emergency messages out.  

Get started: Create an email workflow for whatever the prompt is. You can set up workflows to email on someone’s birthday, after they complete several sessions, or on the anniversary of them signing up. The email can contain dynamic content fields, such as first name, for the personalized touch. If you want to get fancy, you can even create different email templates for different classes or instructors. 

2. Send an invoice email before payments are due 

As a small business owner, you can’t afford missed or overdue payments from clients; you need cash to keep the lights on and pay your team for their hard work. Mistakes happen, but you can’t afford to wait, or to deal with flaky clients. 

That’s where this automation comes in. This simple, but essential workflow will save your team from having to remember when to invoice members. It will alleviate the frustrations of delinquent payments, make for more efficient invoices overall, and put members on a regular schedule where they always know when to expect a bill to come in.  

Get started: Create an email workflow to check when a recurring payment is due and send an email with the invoice as an attachment. Your members will always receive the payment reminder on time and your team can spend time building their relationships with members. No matter how they want to pay, you’ll never have to wait and hold your breath for a late payment.  

3. Build workout programs automatically 

Your clients visit you and your trainers because of their fitness expertise. Programming is how you sell yourself as a unique option against the competition but building out workout programs and fitness regimens for clients will eat up hours of your day if you let it. 

Lucky for you, no longer do you have to let it. Our Program Builder allows you to draft killer workouts in advance and get ahead of the game. Save time with our library of the 26 most popular movements trainers use for clients.  

Get started: Create workouts in advance, drag-and-drop popular movements into the program, and have them ready to go for the next client. It takes just minutes to use Xplor Triib’s Program Builder and prep for your next client, so your coaches know what they’re training, and your clients can do workouts on their own if they like.  

Grow your fitness community—and save time while you do it 

Why waste time when you don’t have to? Xplor Triib has everything you need to attract your prospects, engage your members, optimize your operations, and grow your business. We harness the power of automation to set-it-and-forget-it, so you can focus on the important stuff. 

With seamless onboarding, free training, same-day support, and account management, we’ll make sure you’re never on your own. We’re here to help you soar, as your partner, not just a provider.  

Book a time now for a chat so you can see how Xplor Triib will help you reach your goals.  

As a gym owner, you’ve likely felt like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it all at some point. Or, if you do finish everything on the to-do list, something gets rushed and done poorly.  

Hustling is part of the game, and you may think the more hours you work, the more money you make, but Two Brain Business’s State of the Industry 2021 report says otherwise. They found only 59% of business owners who worked over 50 hours per week were profitable, compared to 78% of business owners who worked between 21 – 40 hours. 

It’s all well and good most of the time to multitask into infinity—but something will inevitably get left behind. It’s not just about having enough time to do it all; it’s about having enough time to give each task enough care and attention to do it right. 

But with the right business management tool, you can say goodbye to these time-wasting tasks.  

What are the biggest timewasters affecting gym owners right now? 

1. Switching between multiple platforms 

In this rich technology landscape, gym owners have so many options at their fingertips of what platforms to use, and how to use them. But making sure several platforms talk to one another ends up in wasted hours each week. For instance, just think of how much time you spend logging off of one platform and onto another. When you’re dealing with one member, it’s manageable. But when you’re busy? It ends with members turning around and leaving. 

A platform that is built to integrate with and accommodate other software integrations will take care of that problem entirely. Choosing one platform that does all the core functions you need will benefit you in the long run. It will save you time and allow you to focus on the tasks that help you grow.  

Plus, it will consolidate the costs to just one subscription. Now that time you used to spend on keyboard typing and mouse clicking can be spent nurturing relationships with clients. 

2. Relying on pen and paper 

Forget the manual, written work. You need a platform known for its accuracy, security, and easy-to-use automated workflows so you never have to check that your tech is working correctly. We know automation works: 88% of SMBs say they can compete with bigger companies out there because of it; they close deals quicker, offer better customer service and spend less time on make-work tasks. 

You know you can develop great programming and get your clients results, but it takes a long time to build custom tailored programming manually. Xplor Triib’s Popular Movement Library allows you to save time by drag-and-dropping in popular movements.  

3. Start-from-scratch marketing 

Email is such an effective way to communicate; 53% of marketers say it’s the most effective way to engage early-stage leads. But if your communication strategy is more reactive rather than proactive, that’s a problem.  

Xplor Triib’s growth-focused marketing automation brings in new customers and reduces the churn of existing ones. Spend way less time on the tedious and low-value marketing campaigns, and instead create unique member experiences that encourage member loyalty as well as word of mouth. 

Want to get even deeper into time-saving techniques? Download your copy of our e-book, Xplor Triib’s Guide to Increasing Sales by Improving Time Management, to get the full scope of how Xplor Triib’s features saves you hours each week! 

Get your time back and fuel your gym’s growth 

Now that you’ve cleared these tedious tasks out of your schedule, you have more free time for so many growth-fueling activities that you can focus on. 

First, use your newly freed-up time to personalize your gym’s experience for members. Everyone appreciates being noticed, remembered, and praised; in fact, data from IHRSA shows that your members are willing to pay more for a ‘personalized high-value experience.’  

Gym owners can quite easily remember their customers day to day, but it gets more difficult once you scale and have more to manage.

Here are some ways to personalize their experience: 

• Add custom videos for a personalized touch 
• Help members reach their goals through member profiles 
• Create events that drive member acquisition and build your brand 

Automate, automate, automate!  

Next, your schedule will thank you for the self-serve, automated workflows that save minutes that add up to hours. Ask yourself: is this mindless, repetitive, and does it make me want to pull my hair out? If yes, send it to a workflow. 

Here are some ideas to get you started: 

• Self-service for members to help themselves 
• Set-it-and-forget-it marketing 
• Custom ahead-of-time scheduling 

Meet Xplor Triib, your all-inclusive solution for gym operators like you.  

Xplor Triib offer seamless end-to-end experiences to fit your gym’s needs. Save time that you’d otherwise waste by using multiple software platforms, by working the old-fashioned way (pen and paper) and more. 

Want to learn more? Drop us a line. 

Don’t forget to download your copy of our e-book, Xplor Triib’s Guide to Increasing Sales by Improving Time Management!