What is Member Management?
Whether you’re running a gym, wellness centre or a sports club – member management is an essential part of everyday life. So, what is member management and what do successful member management strategies look like?
Put simply, member management is the process of using key business information to best manage how members are onboarded, retained and interacted with. Such information used within successful management strategies will typically include elements like:
- Memberships
- Payments
- Appointments
- Member information
- Communication
- Reporting
While using the right information to manage your members effectively is important, knowing where to access this information is critical. One of the best ways to gain access to essential structured data is through a member management system.
These systems will typically act as the heart of any customer-driven organisation, with the ability to maximise operational efficiency and reduce unnecessary costs to your fitness business.
So, what are the benefits of an effective system?
Benefits of effective member management processes
Most organisations that operate within the fitness industry today, will share a common problem. As the membership base grows, so will the workload required to manage them.
Have you ever been in the situation where you had member paperwork and spreadsheets with critical information all over the place?
When you have hundreds of clients, is this how you want to be managing your business?
Well, maybe it’s time to take a different approach.
Based on research into leading fitness businesses around the world, we have put together a list of 4 key benefits associated with effective member management processes.
Track and Analyse Member Data
While having all of your data in one place is great, it’s the ability to analyse and understand consumer behaviour that can drive huge results for your business. As such, making data-driven decisions is essential when trying to maximise operational outcomes.
Historically, the best way to gain such business insights has been to invest time generating reports, reading over spreadsheets, and digging through loads of member data.
While this has proven to be effective over time, it is far from effective. This is why leading gyms in the industry today are growing more reliant on management software as a key solution to productivity and data accuracy.
Why? Well, depending on the software you choose, it can equip you with the right tools to perform a complex business analysis, instantly run dynamic reports, and monitor business metrics/ trends.
This is important to know when looking into the effect that such information can have when looking to build a fitter business. In fact, research shows that data-focused organisations are up to 3x more likely to report significant improvements across a range of daily operations.
It’s part of the reason that data is heavily relied upon by leading gyms to to view accurate trajectories of your business in many critical areas such as revenue, attendance and acquisition.
Streamline Business Processes
Within such a competitive market, gym managers might feel as though there is not enough time in their day to manage business operations. Seeing the daily to-do list get bigger and bigger with repetitive tasks can be frustrating for even the most experienced managers.
This is why there is such a big need to streamline businesses processes as a means to limit labour intensive activities, simplify access to valuable information and maximise decisional outcomes.
What does this look like when implemented into a successful business model?
Well, you gain the ability to move the member sign-on process online, not only improving onboarding efficiency, but also the whole customer experience. Imagine, no more paperwork and the ability to collect member information from anywhere in the world!
This does two things. It can help increase cash flow and it can make it easier for your customers to purchase memberships from you.
So, what is the best way to streamline business processes and gain access to all the benefits listed above?
Again, the simple answer is a member management system. They can automate, centralise and restructure tasks. Afford your team more time across a range of day-to-day jobs. Plus, leading systems can even assist with member-based communications.
Basically, it allows you to scale consistently without the worry of juggling growth related tasks on a daily basis.
Personalised Communication
Generic mass marketing techniques are just not creating the same results like they used to, research shows gym members are expecting more personalised experiences than ever before. In fact, data suggests 63% of consumers “expect personalisation” as a standard of service.
These statistics really emphasise just how essential tailored services are for your fitness business. The problem is, such offerings are often thought of as being extremely time consuming.
Email communications are a great example when looking to put things into perspective. Memberships are expiring soon and you know the best chance you have to maximise retention rates is through a personal email. Problem is, there are hundreds of members that need to be contacted.
This is where features found within member management software should be heavily relied upon, with the ability to send out thousands of automated emails, all personalised to each individual member. It is part of the reason that 57% of the top gyms state that such software has made a significant impact on their membership’s satisfaction and engagement rates.
So does the quality of your software matter? Well, yes.
Leading systems allow you to tailor communication based on customer profile information and behaviour. Customers will perceive the information to be relevant and are less likely to become uninterested and opt-out of your club communication. As such, research found a wide range of positive effects, improving click-through-rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10% on average. This, as you can imagine, can be very valuable to your business by raising the customer engagement rates, increasing ROI and improving the overall customer journey.
Save Time and Focus on Creating Value
One of the biggest problems experienced within fitness clubs today, is the issue of time management. See, you want your gym to be able to focus on creating value for members instead of just trying to maintain what is already there.
Now you have heard it mentioned numerous times throughout the article already, but the truth is, member management software is the answer once again.
Studies have revealed that a member management system can save almost two hours a day in administration time, paving the way to a long list of benefits that can support you on your journey to building a fitness empire!
So, why not leverage the power of technology to maximise productivity within your gym? It is what the leading fitness centres around the world are doing, and perhaps it is something you should be doing too.
Conclusion
We’ve discussed a few common member management issues faced in the industry today. Whether it be time spent digging through spreadsheets, ticking off long to-do lists or manually managing data – there is a distinct need to innovate old processes.
So, long story, short. What is the best way to do this? Well, get technology to do it for you.
Investing in leading software can help mitigate many of the challenges you’ll face on a daily basis, assisting with productivity, data accuracy, and most importantly task efficiency – affording you more time to get back to what’s most important.
What are just a few more benefits of having effective member management processes in place? Simple. The ability to analyse consumer behaviour, maximise decisional outcomes and create value for your members with ease.
The best member management system you can start using today
You might have stumbled across this article by searching how to best streamline member management processes or how to reduce unnecessary costs to your fitness business. Well, as mentioned, implementing a member management software could be the answer to all of your questions and bring significant benefits when looking to build your fitness empire.
While this is the part where we would typically recommend the best resource for you to use. It just so happens that VIGYR provides the best member management system on the market.
Think the article is over? Not just yet! We are so certain that VIGYR can help you build a fitter business that we want to give you 30 days free.
Click here and let’s talk!
