87% of people always have their smartphone at their side day and night, so sending a text message to your customers promoting events, giving them a special offer or simply updating them on what’s happening, is an almost guaranteed way that your message will be seen. And the more people who see it, the more people will take action from it.
Very few gyms or health clubs have any problems bringing in new members in January, with New Year resolutions most gyms could do no advertising and still drum up a load of new members. But what can be hard is keeping these members, keeping them using the gym on a regular basis and most importantly, enjoying the time they are there.
SMS can help in numerous ways and not just for sales and marketing. It can be used to inform members of opening times over the holiday periods, inform members of classes, or when a class is nearly full or cancelled. The key to creating any successful business is keeping your customers engaged with you and using/buying from you.
So here are 6 ways that SMS can help gyms and health clubs drum up more members, keep them happy, attending classes and overall engaged with your gym. There is also an infographic below for those who prefer an image – enjoy!
1. Renew memberships – Send a message a month or two before your customer’s membership is about to run out. Some members may just have forgotten they need to renew and some may be ready to sign for another gym, so by getting to them before they move, means you might be able to keep them.
2. Promote events and special offers – Send marketing messages to promote classes and events that aren’t full. You can also include a special offer for these classes to help fill them or send completely separate offers, like 20% off personal training sessions or 30% of tennis court hire to drum up business for other aspects of your gym.
3. Bring back members – Send a message to all those members who have left, include a special ’come back to us’ offer to try and entice them back. You could even get into an SMS conversation with them to find out why they left and try and win them back with a bespoke offer.
4. Send reminder texts – People are forgetful and by sending out little reminders of your classes, you can ensure that they are always full.
5. Keywords and automated texts – Allow consumers to text a keyword to enter competitions, gain new members or simply update people with the next event or class. You can also set up an automated text response to these keywords, so if a new customer wants to join, they text the keyword and receive an offer code and instructions on how to use it to sign up.
6. SMS Surveys – By sending an SMS survey to your members, which could be done 1 month after they have signed up, will give you great feedback on how you can improve the gym and ensure your members renew their gym membership.
If you think SMS can help your business, be it in the fitness sector or any other, you can set up an account with us completely free. We will also throw in 10 free credits to test the account, and with our amazing Double Credits offer, SMS has never been cheaper.
