5 Ways How Efficient Membership Management Can Supercharge Your Fitness Studio

What’s the biggest selling point a fitness studio has that distinguishes it from a gym? Why would anyone choose to go to a fitness studio and not a gym? The answer is simple. A fitness studio offers the kind of personalized attention that most gyms do not (and even if they do, in the form of a fitness trainer, then it usually comes at an added cost).

In this blog post, after understanding how the business model of a fitness studio works, we will then delve into the ways in which a fitness studio membership billing software can be used to boost memberships.

How Does a Fitness Studio Work?

A fitness studio is basically a facility that provides its members with a chance to engage in fitness-related classes. Members are typically enrolled in these classes by becoming members of the fitness studio and then signing up for the classes that they want (at an additional cost in some cases), as in a university or school. The classes at the fitness studios are normally more intimate and almost always have specialized instructors that teach classes on yoga, pilates, cycling, and dancing, among other activities.

One thing that becomes clear after reading this is that fitness studios, unlike gyms, operate almost exclusively on memberships. This is why any membership management software that a fitness studio will operate with, has to be chosen while keeping this reality in mind. A software can be great at reducing the churn rate that comes with billing customers on a regular basis, but it will be next to useless for a fitness studio that instead operates on a payment model of charging their customers a flat fee at the beginning of each billing cycle/start of a class, and then not billing the customers with any other charge.

In light of this information, and by heeding to the following tips on effective fitness studio billing management, studio owners can maximise their revenue while also keeping their customers happy. A business, after all, is only as happy as its customers.

Since fitness studios drive almost all their revenues from memberships, therefore the importance of this step, and of not scaring away your customer with a complicated membership process is absolutely essential. Fitness studios must strive to provide a simple membership process for their customers, which can be achieved in the following simple steps:

1. Offering the Option of Online Registration

The world is fully digital now. Fitness studios too, despite their overtly physical nature of activity, need to make sure that they offer their customers an online way of registering for classes rather than having to walk to the studio every time you wish to subscribe or modify your membership. This is especially applicable to fitness studios in large cities where their customers might have to commute long distance to attend the very specific pilates class that is being taught at your fitness.

2. Clearly Laying out Membership Offers and Perks

By clearly communicating to your customers exactly what perks and discounts you include in your membership package, you avoid any sourness down the road. This step is all about managing expectations, essentially. You reduce your churn rate by, say, clearly telling the customer upfront that if they are signing for a yoga class then they must bring their own yoga mat (if your studio does not provide its own) or, should you sell the mats, buy the mats from you at an added cost. Doing this ensure that the customer does not throw a fit in front of the other customers during your first class.

3. Provide a Self-service Membership Portal

This step achieves two objectives. Firstly, it ensures that the customer does not encounter any technical hiccups during their time at your studio. Secondly, however, and more importantly, it absorbs the customer deeper into the ecosystem of your fitness studio where, in a way, they become actively invested in the studio and are thus more likely to not only not drop out of classes, but to also sign up for more classes.

You can achieve this step by firstly providing your customers with their own login details that gives them access to their own account on the membership management software that you will be using. Doing this will allow customers to check their class timings on their own, be vary of any changes in class timings, instructor, or venue, and, more importantly, have a direct channel of communication with you that you can use to advertise any classes that you be having in the future and which you think may attract a particular customer.

4. Incorporate Easy Integrations with Other Third-party Applications

A fitness studio can be just a room where people show up with their yoga mats, do some stretches, and then pack their things and leave without giving the place a second thought. Or, it can be better than that and offer its costumers a wide variety of features. Some of these features can be offered via easy integrations with third-party health applications that boost your customer’s tracking of their health.

You need not look further than Apple and its introduction of the Apple Watch’s easy integration into the Apple ecosystem to see how seriously people take even a device on their wrist that does little more for their health besides calculate their pulse and automatically send its data to their phones for their fitness app to receive and analyze. If Apple can health into its ecosystem to sell its watches, then so can you with your fitness studio via mobile app integrations, dietary management apps, among other options.

5. Make the Membership More Personalized

The biggest selling point of fitness studios in a market saturated with gyms is their promise of personalization. So, rather than trying to be something that you’re not (which is a gym), make use of your strength of offering personalization and incorporate it into every aspect of your studio.

Most fitness studios merely restrict their personalization to an instructor giving one-on-one attention to the customers, and while that is great, you can go a step further and, while incorporating even some of the points mentioned above, develop a new membership management strategy with your software that allows you in-depth personalization. Do you have someone in your yoga class who’s doing it only to lose weight? Well, you can integrate with a nutrition app to keep track of how much calories they eat in a day, and then provide them the service of personalized modifications to their regular yoga practice with the rest of the class to make sure that they achieve their target of losing X number of pounds.

Conclusion

Fitness studios distinguish themselves from typical gyms by providing personalised attention. Therefore, they should prioritise good billing management to increase memberships and income, which can be achieve by simplifying the membership process. Online registration, clear communication of membership benefits, and a self-service portal improve user ease and happiness. Integrating with third-party health applications improves the overall fitness experience. Personalization may help to differentiate and attract clients throughout the studio. And this is how fitness studios can prosper and create great relationships with their members by embracing fitness studio membership management software and concentrating on client demands.