Personalize Communication with Frozen Gym Members Using GymSales
With gyms opening back up under COVID restrictions, there are as many as 5 to 6 times more memberships on freeze as compared to pre-pandemic levels. Engaging and communicating with frozen members is the biggest opportunity club owners and operators have to proactively and successfully unfreeze memberships and reinstate payments. This blog is for gym owners and operators that are looking for best practices on how to personalize the communication with “frozen” members, while still maintaining revenue projections and satisfied members.
If you’re managing a large number of frozen accounts, there are a number of possible scenarios you may be dealing with as your members begin coming back. For example, some members:
- May want to be activate from account freeze immediately, as they didn’t realize the club has reopened
- Will ask to wait a little longer, until the COVID “curve” is flattened more
- May want to place an longer freeze on their account
- Will request that their membership be canceled
While 90-day freezes seem to be the common practice within the ABC portfolio, early data indicates that length of freeze duration does not impact the overall cancel rate. So while there’s potential concern about a communication triggering a cancellation, having a proactive plan can potentially positively impact your business earlier, rather than later.
With the different possible outcomes in mind, it is important to consider different call-to-actions in your marketing plan and prepare your sales team how to address the possible scenarios.
The secret sauce to having a personalized and effective communication with frozen members is being able to identify who in your portfolio is frozen. We will first walk you through how to easily identify these members in GymSales and share best practices for communicating with frozen members, before wrapping up with a proposed email automation flow.
Identifying and Communicating with Frozen Members in GymSales
GymSales offers powerful tools to filter and segment audiences so that you can personalize communication sequences to your members.
Expert tip: it’s a best practice to begin communicating with frozen members far in advance of bringing them off freeze. We recommend beginning personalized email communications three months in advance of the reinstatement date. Giving your members a fair warning about reinstating their membership will help you avoid dissatisfied customers.
In GymSales, there are ways to target communication based on specific filters.
When using ABC x GymSales, you are able to segment and filter members based on several ABC statuses. For the purpose of this article, you will want to choose either of the following:
- Active – Freeze
- Active – Pending Cancel
You can also add or filter by ABC Last Visit Date. This can help you prioritize whether or not the member has at least been somewhat active even prior to the pandemic.
Once you’ve created a segment, then you can create a list for outbound phone calls, email and/or text.
Next, you can view this list in the Task folder -> Sales tab so that you can see the assignment for each segment. Managers can view how many calls have been completed via the Sales Person Report.
How to Communicate with Frozen Gym Members
Here’s a sample of a 30-day sequence from frozen account to reinstatement might look like:
Message 1: Email
Message 2: Email
Let members know you’ll be unfreezing their membership in 15 days, then give them a chance to respond.
Message 3: Call
Let members know you’ll be unfreezing their membership in 10 days.
Message 4: SMS Text Message
Seven days until membership reinstatement.
Message 5: Final Reminder Email
Final reminder – five days until membership is reinstated.
Message 6: Call
Three days until membership is reinstated.
The final phone call is meant to determine whether your member wants to stay on the freeze or come off of it. If they want to extend their freeze, find out how long they want to extend it. Then, you can exclude them from the next sweep and add them to an extended freeze list.
Personalized Messaging Keeps Your Gym Members Happy, and Your Team Sane
Setting up personalized emails in GymSales allows you to trigger relevant communications and increases your chances of converting a frozen gym membership to an active one. Having a personal touchpoint helps you capture as many people in the sweep as possible.
The goal is to get your members to come off their freeze. But you’ll know that when members do opt to keep their memberships frozen, you have done everything you can to notify them and prevent them from becoming frustrated with your gym.
If you’re ready to streamline your gym’s member communication and sales processes, GymSales powered by ABC can help.
