Why Member Experience And Health Club Personalization Matter
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The days of thinking about your health club members as being one big group of customers and creating generic marketing campaigns and experiences for them are coming to an end. Mass marketing techniques are just not working like they used to and research shows your gym members are expecting more and more personalized experiences and services.
“More than half, 63 percent, of consumers expect personalization as a standard of service and believe they are recognized as an individual when sent special offers. Consumers also feel many brands are not keeping pace with the personalization expectation.”
Consumers in general along with gym and health club members expect personalized communications and services tailored to their individual preferences. Personalization in the fitness industry and for gym and health club members needs to go beyond basic tactics like addressing customers by their first name in emails or providing one size fits all workout or exercise programming. Salesforce research surveyed over 6,700 consumers and business buyers globally. These findings, published in the second edition of the “State of the Connected Customer” report, give an in-depth look at:
- The factors influencing customers’ expectations
- Which emerging technologies are influencing the future of customer experience
- Why brand trust is increasingly important and how companies can foster it
The research found that 76% of customers now report that it’s easier than ever to take their business elsewhere switching from brand to brand to find an experience that matches their expectations. My recent article 92% Of Your Members Would Quit If You Let Them Down Three Times Or Less. Here’s What You Can Do About It explores the notion that the consumer is really empowered now more than ever. When one of the ways you can attract more members while retaining the ones you have is to personalize, even hyper-personalize the experiences and services your health club or gym provides.
Hyper-Personalization in Health Club Marketing
Hyper-personalization is one way health club, fitness, and gym brands are connecting with members and are taking personalization to another level for marketing purposes.
Image from Capgemini report here
Hyper-personalization combines behavioral and real-time data a brand can extract from its membership data in many ways. For example: with Facebook marketing, you can extract existing member data to create specific audiences and then target “look-alike” audiences enabling your gym to customize a marketing message to a targeted prospective member group. This process is one that requires a brand to have a deep understanding of its own customers then devise a customized marketing strategy.
Brands also need to find the right technology and infrastructure to support those hyper-personalization techniques. Whichever approach is taken, implementing hyper-personalization techniques for health club marketing is the way of the future as more companies are opting out of traditional methods and into these hyper-personalized ones.
Hyper-Personalized Health Club And Fitness Services
Personalization of marketing is one thing but personalization of services in health clubs is another opportunity to attract and retain members. New fitness solutions are already beginning to find ways on how to make people healthy and fit through technology and are now personalizing fitness services using futuristic technologies like genomics, artificial intelligence (AI), and 3D scanning. Here are some examples:
Health Club And Fitness Personalization Using Genomics
FitnessGenes is considered a medical technology corporation based in Oxfordshire, England. The company does not just analyze DNA, it also personalizes nutrition strategies and fitness training and has done so since 2013.
Health Club And Fitness Personalization Using 3D Body Scanning
Styku is a 3D body scanner for the fitness, health, and wellness markets. The system and software gives professionals the ability to perform a full body scan, view 3D models, extract body circumference, track changes in body shape, calculate fitness and health metrics,
Health Club And Personalization Using Artificial Intelligence & Predictive Analytics
Noom is one of the biggest to turn to AI. An analysis of the results of 35,921 users from 2012 to 2014 found interesting results: 77.9% of participants reported a decrease in body weight; 25% lost more than 10% of their body weight, and nearly 80% reported they kept the weight off for more than nine months. The app uses AI to sift through a user’s exercise and food logs and suggest personalized diets and changes in fitness regimens to maximize a user’s weight loss.
Given the consumer research and trends regarding marketing and experience personalization for health club members outlined here, hopefully, you’ll agree that delivering personalized experiences for health club members is really important today.
Other helpful resources:
Check out The Ultimate Health Club Management Guide for more tips how to operate and manage your health club successfully!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject and the team at ABC would be delighted to help you with your plans and strategies around your fitness business in general. Just drop me a note here on Linkedin.
By the way, have you checked out the Fitness Industry Innovation Podcast? Trust me you will learn a lot about the latest innovations and trends in the health club industry with some of the leading experts in the fitness industry and more.
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Mike Escobedo serves as Chief Customer Officer for ABC Financial Services. He has over a decade of experience serving customers in the fitness studio, gym, and health club industry in a variety of roles. Mike is also a co-founder of Industry FIT, which offers health club operators insights and innovative ideas worth sharing. With a background in technology, service, and operations, Mike supports thousands of fitness facilities conducting millions of member touches each year. You can learn about becoming member-centric and more by following Mike on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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