Fitness clubs have many different types of members. While it’s important to value them all, understanding these types can help fitness business owners leverage awareness into actionable insights. One group of gym-goers worthy of increased attention, according to a new study from the Customer Engagement Academy (CEA)? It's the once-per-week group exercisers. Here’s a closer look at why they matter so much, along with other key takeaways for fitness businesses looking to boost member loyalty. 

Do You Know Your Net Promoters? 

Gyms often focus their attention on the members who show up every day. After all, they’re obviously committed to your business and therefore worthy of retention efforts. But they’re far from alone when it comes to having value. Enter once-per-week group exercisers.

The data indicates that people who attend just a single group class a week are 20 percent more likely to be “loyal club promoters” than their gym-only counterparts who visit multiple times a week. 

Specifically, once-a-week group exercisers are more likely to receive Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of 9 or 10. NPS measures customer experience and predicts business growth. This lands them in the coveted “Promoter” categorization, which means these loyal enthusiasts will not only fuel growth through their continued support of your products and services, but they’ll also refer your business to others. In other words, when it comes to retention and recruitment, Promoters are a gym’s best friend. 

Give Them More Reasons

In addition to attracting members to group classes, the CEA study indicates another way to increase the number of promoters in your gym community: Give them more reasons to participate. 

Why? Because the more reasons people have to visit the gym, the more likely they are to be a Promoter. In fact, members who listed four or more reasons for going to the gym were 2.4 more likely to be Promoters than one-reason members. 

The takeaway, according to the report? “Encourage members to take part in a range of activities in your club. With members attending gym and group exercise just once per week 20 percent are more likely to be Promoters than gym only members who attended at least 3 times per week, group exercise is an easy-win. Ensure you are doing everything possible to get members to take part here and look for other opportunities to increase their activity count too.”

Keeping Them Happy

One last thing to keep in mind? Just because your members are happy now doesn’t mean they’ll be happy in the future. In fact, the longer a member is associated with a gym, the less likely they are to be a Promoter.

But gyms can also take steps to reverse this phenomenon -- particularly by keeping things fresh. Advises CEA, “Continue to delight members throughout their relationship with your club by regularly engaging with them and bringing in new ideas when things are starting to look stale. This might be some new pieces of equipment, a refresh of the decor in the gym, a new class added to the timetable, menu revamp in the cafe, special offer or workout plan review to name a few.” 

Fitness center staff should also be trained to ensure that new and old members alike feel valued. 

Stevenson Fitness owner and founder Chris Stevenson told Club Industry, “At our facility, we coach all our staff that no one is a ‘regular’ because human nature tells us that we are always going to focus on the new starter is we think like that...Instead, we ask them to pretend it is everyone's first day and to treat them accordingly. This forces them to adopt the mindset that these longer-standing members are still important and therefore continuing to make them feel special is just as important as making the new people feel that way.”

Speaking of keeping things fresh, technology is one of the ways in which gyms can promote ongoing member engagement.  Download the Accuro catalog today to learn more about how Accuro's fitness monitoring technology can help cultivate more Promoters for your fitness business.