21 Powerful Gym Member Retention Strategies That Really Work

Are you using proven gym membership retention strategies to keep your health club clients loyal?

Retaining your existing customers is much more cost-effective than trying to attract new ones, so it pays to keep them engaged.

In this article, we share 21 powerful gym retention strategies that’ll keep your customers loyal for the long term.

We’re a specialist fitness marketing agency with 15+ years of industry experience, so we know first-hand what works (and what doesn’t!). We’ve helped gyms, fitness studios, and health clubs to keep members and clients loyal, so our strategies are tried and tested.

The average gym membership retention rate is 72.4% which means over a quarter of customers leave…

According to IHRSA Trend Reports, fitness club retention is most heavily influenced by price. It’s the #1 reason why members leave clubs. But dropping prices means devaluing your services and reducing profit margins.

So, what are the other options? How can you provide extra value without eating into your bottom line? If you’re already delivering great customer service and top-notch facilities, what else can you do to boost gym retention?

Let’s start by looking at some tried and tested gym retention ideas that’ll increase member loyalty…

Improve Your Group Exercise Offering
Provide Extra Value To Gym Members
Position Health As An Investment
Interact With Your Gym Members
Use Email To Keep In Touch
And Other Digital Tools
Offer Post-Workout Social Events
Stay On Top Of Maintenance
Survey Existing Members
Solve Their Problems
Run Seminars
Give Birthday Gifts
Encourage Members To Try New Activities
Promote Investments That You Make
Follow The 80:20 Sales Rule
Show Your Brand Personality
Re-Target Previous Members
Re-engage Cold Members
Encourage Online Interaction
Offer Gold Cards
Create a Private Facebook Group

Loyalty is a sign that you’re running a successful fitness business that’s delivering real value to its members. It’s a more profitable way to operate a gym too, since it’s much cheaper to retain existing club members than attract new ones. So let’s explore each of these strategies in more detail…

#1 – Improve Your Group Exercise Class Offering

People often stay members at a gym because of the community. When they consider leaving, they worry they’ll lose their network of like-minded friends. Improving your group-ex class offering encourages interaction and helps to build those friendships so that people are less likely to leave.

You might also like… Creative names for workout classes that’ll attract more participants.

#2 – Provide Extra Value To Members

Think about ways you can make your gym membership more valuable to customers. Try using your blog, social channels, or mobile app to provide even more value for money. Give members lots of juicy goodies, like recipes, exercise guidance, and training tips.

Tangible items in the form of downloadable resources are usually valued the most. So, offering free fitness ebooks, shopping lists, and cheat sheets can be really effective gym membership retention strategies. Consider putting them behind a sign-in page to make this content exclusive to paying gym members only.

#3 – Position Health As An Investment

Your blog, social channels, and app are also great platforms to educate members, so use their full potential. Help them see that investing in their health will pay off immediately, as well as in the future.

Try summarising scientific studies about the short-term health benefits of exercise or its impact on life expectancy. We often create this type of educational content for our marketing agency clients since it’s so effective at demonstrating value.

However, you can’t get away with vague statements about generic health benefits. People have heard them too many times and just tune out. Instead, use specific data that quantifies the benefits such as…

#4 – Interact With Your Gym Members

No one likes to be ignored after the sale and your gym members are no different. So make sure your team is trained to interact with ALL your members (not just the chatterboxes that are easy to approach). It’s one of the simplest yet most underused gym membership retention strategies there is.

Fitness Marketing Strategies Ebook Hero LR

#5 – Use Email Marketing To Keep In Touch

Use fitness email strategies to communicate with your members regularly about stuff they care about (not just self-promotional content). Create a welcome sequence that helps them get started and then send weekly wellness newsletters with valuable tips. It’s one of many gym marketing ideas that can boost retention as well as sales.

For bonus points, segment your database so you can send truly personalized emails. US giant Life Time Fitness made an extra $600,000 using this health club email marketing strategy. But you can easily do it on a much smaller scale with a ConvertKit, Flodesk, or Mailchimp account.

Email Marketing & Lead Generation Kit

You might also like… How We Grew Our Email List Beyond 15,000 Subscribers (And You Can Too).

#6 – And Other Digital Tools

This totally works with SMS text messages too. Do you have a gym app? Then use push notifications as well. Keeping your facility top of mind is a key component of high gym membership retention.

#7 – Offer Post-Workout Social Events

Run regular social events to keep gym members engaged and build a real club community. Keep it fun and informal. The boutique spinning studio BeCycle holds their ‘BeSocial’ class on Friday evenings, after which they all get ready together and go out for dinner or drinks.

You might also like… Gym Event Ideas For Engaging Members & Launching New Services.

#8 – Stay On Top Of Equipment Maintenance

Out-of-order gym machines or broken showers really annoy members. So keep everything in tip-top order, and be sure to get repairs done lightning-quick. If you don’t get the fundamentals like these right, then no amount of fitness member retention programs will help.

#9 – Survey Existing Gym Members

Survey your existing gym members who’ve stayed loyal for a while. What’s their favourite thing about your facility? What keeps them coming back?

Then use these insights in your marketing and promo activities going forward. Highlight the most popular features to other members to encourage them to stay loyal too. Running member surveys is the most common way to do this but just chatting with them face-to-face works well too!

Fitness Marketing & Lead Generation Roadmap

Your All-in-One Toolkit to Attract, Engage & Convert More Clients

#10 – Solve Their Fitness Problems

People will remain loyal to your gym if you can solve their fitness problems. Addressing common challenges or FAQs is a great basis for helpful services (and marketing content too!).

So make a list of barriers to a healthy lifestyle, and then create blog posts with ideas for overcoming them. For example, lack of time is a huge barrier to exercise for most people. So create articles that include time-saving tips, short and sweet HIIT workouts, or quick weeknight meals.

If you can help remove their barriers to exercise, they’ll visit more often, and see more value in their membership. These can be really simple yet effective gym member retention strategies for health clubs and fitness studios.

#11 – Run Fitness Seminars

As gym membership retention ideas go, this is super simple yet highly effective. Giving people additional value is a sure way to keep them loyal. So, why not run a 45-minute seminar on pre-triathlon nutrition, cycling techniques, or meditation for stress?

Oh, and make sure you encourage people to invite a friend for free, then collect all their details during registration. It’d be rude to miss the referral opportunity for a few new leads…

#12 – Give Birthday Gifts To Members

We’re talking about an actual free gift on a member’s birthday, not some crappy 10% discount coupon that requires them to spend money first. A free massage, birthday smoothie, or nutrition kit, that’ll surprise and delight them. These kinds of genuine acts of kindness are what people talk about, and help generate positive word of mouth.

You might also like… Genius Gift Ideas For Fans of Health & Fitness.

#13 – Encourage Gym Members To Try New Activities

This is a great way to get gym members to use their membership more often. In their subconscious, their ‘cost per visit’ is reduced as they attend more frequently. This, in turn, makes their membership seem better value (or less expensive) than it would do otherwise.

So, be sure to promote new classes, workouts, or services via your blog and social channels. Describe the who, why, what, where, when, and how, so that members know everything they need to get started…

Who it’s ideal for
Why it’s beneficial for their health
What’s involved
Where it’s located
When it takes place or is available
How they can take part

You can also run regular fitness challenges that encourage people to explore new classes or types of training. A new activity might be just what it takes for someone to come back in and give the gym another try…

#14 – Promote Investments That You Make In Your Club

If you spend money on new gym equipment or club renovations, then use your marketing channels to let EVERYONE know. Call out exactly what the benefits to your members are, such as…

“Our brand new luxury changing rooms will have you refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to face whatever work or family throw at you”.

Help them to see that they’re getting more for their money. It might be obvious to you, but sometimes we need to spell out the link to make people truly appreciate the benefits. And not everyone will be aware that you’ve invested or upgraded, so tell as many people as possible.

#15 – Follow The 80:20 Sales Rule

Follow the 80:20 rule here, so that 80% of your marketing content is helpful, valuable, or entertaining. Limit sales promotions to a maximum of 20% (i.e. one in five social media posts or a fifth of your email newsletter content).

If your goal is to increase gym member retention, then you’ll need to resist the temptation to upsell. There’s nothing wrong with mentioning your products or services, but they need to be positioned as beneficial (rather than a sales pitch).

There’s a fine line and getting it wrong can backfire – instead of building loyalty, you’ll have undermined your authenticity and credibility. We recommend creating a content calendar ahead of time, to ensure you strike a balance between valuable and promotional blog posts.

#16 – Show Your Brand’s Personality

Gym websites tend to be quite formal, with well-crafted content and considered calls to action. However, emails, social media posts, and blogs are an opportunity to showcase more of your brand’s personality.

Ensure they’re written from a human perspective (instead of a boring business!). This personal touch is something that can keep members loyal because it creates a human connection.

Personality is something that millennial gym members in particular look for…

According to Moosylvania, the business characteristics that matter to Millennials are…

High-quality products (75%)

Fits their personality (53%)

Social Responsibility (40%)

Shares similar interests (39%)

Says important things (31%)

So, use your marketing channels to talk about your gym’s values, what motivates you as a business, and what you struggle with as a trainer or exerciser. Get excited about new trends or be skeptical of fad diets, just as you would be in real life. Use the same kind of language that you would if talking to members in real life so that they form a genuine connection with you.

#17 – Re-Target Previous Gym Members

This is such an easy way to reduce gym member churn but it’s something most clubs don’t do…

The majority of ex-members already know, like, and trust your gym business. The hard part is done! So just remind them of how much they used to love visiting and all the associated benefits. You’ll be surprised how many old members will return to your club if you just call, email, or SMS them to ask…

#18 – Re-engage Cold Gym Members

Whilst you’re at it, contact all those people who came in once but haven’t really used the gym since. You know, the people who came in for their free initial consultation and got a custom workout programme but haven’t returned since. These people are the most likely to leave so take action now to retain them (before it’s too late).

These members took the first step to becoming part of your gym community and experienced what it was like for a day or two. So nudge them into the fold and give them a great gym experience so that they return more regularly. Help them make workouts a habit so that they can’t imagine not having a gym membership.

Run a report that segments all of your members who haven’t visited your gym in the last four weeks. using this time period will mean you don’t contact people who simply went on holiday or have been unwell. Then send them a series of re-engagement emails that get them excited about using your club.

#19 – Encourage Online Interaction

Invite comments so that your blog and social media become two-way conversations. Regular communication and interaction will develop your client relationships. You’ll build bonds with members, develop an online community, and give people even more reason to stay loyal.

The more social bonds that a member has within a club, the less likely they are to leave. So, use your digital marketing to encourage conversations between your staff and members, as well as between members themselves. End your blog articles and social posts with a question or request member opinions in the comments section.

#20 – Offer Gold Cards

Give your existing gym members gold cards that allow them to bring a friend once or twice a month. Enabling them to workout with someone they know will make them much more likely to build a workout habit. Which in turn helps them stay loyal for longer. You’ll likely get some referrals this way too!

#21 – Create a Private Facebook Group

Inviting existing members to be part of a private Facebook group. This will create a feeling of exclusivity and show that you’re providing additional value for free.

The main purpose of this type of group should be to create a community by encouraging interaction. So post open-ended questions that invite contributions from members.

But you should also apply the 80:20 rule to promotional content here. Upsell services like personal training or nutritional counseling to generate more revenue for your gym or health club. But don’t lose sight of the primary goal of keeping your members loyal through community and value.

So, there you have a comprehensive list of 21 gym member retention ideas that are proven to work. Implementing these will help your business to boost loyalty and reduce churn, resulting in greater profitability.

Gym Membership Retention Strategies That Leverage Marketing

You may have noticed that many of these gym retention ideas involve digital marketing… This is because online channels like email, social media, and blogs are a cost-effective way to provide additional value to gym members.

Gyms that don’t have a loyalty marketing strategy are missing a huge member retention opportunity.

“62% of Millennials feel that online content drives their loyalty to a brand…

Yet the content they’re receiving is turning them off by not helping them navigate their everyday problems, being too long, sales-driven, and not tailoring messaging to individual cultural interests.“

If you’d like help putting together a loyalty marketing strategy for your gym, then get in touch.

Or check out this video which outlines how health clubs and studios can use blogging and social media in their gym membership retention strategies…