Of course, keeping your current club members is much easier than getting brand new ones? It’s true. Your members are already invested; now all you have to do is to continue to show and add value to keep them! Our Professional Services Team offers club marketing tools that do just that.

• Email Blasts (automated or adhoc)
• Promotional Materials (banners, posters & more)
• Custom Print Retention Programs

It’s easy to get started too. Click HERE and let us know what you are interested in or give us a call at 1-866-992-8960. One of our Professional Service team members will walk you through our programs and work to get you setup on programs that are tailored just for you.

Watch out for Club Marketing’s eblasts! We often bundle programs for even more savings.

Go with a company you trust. Let Professional Services help you Get Members, Keep Members and Notify Members.

Click HERE to get started today or call 1-866-992-8960.

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As a club owner, of all your important assets of a sound management team, flourishing community relationship, buzzing online and off-line marketing strategy, effective equipment, and vital location, your trainers have the potential to be the most valuable and effective. They are the personal connection between you and the members and the personable touch for the members. Your trainers bring your mission to the gym floor.
Promoting a healthy environment for you, the trainers, and the members in the gym includes exercising your relationship with and strengthening up your trainers.  Jen Bacon, M.S. has 15 years of experience in the health and fitness industry in the commercial, corporate, and community settings, and in ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal she shared a few tips about this aspect of fitness club health.

Training for the Trainer
It is important to hire trainers who are well-educated and experienced. It is also important that they continue to keep up in the continually evolving field of fitness. As a club owner, you can create opportunities for this with in-house training or seminars and availability of memberships to online resources and of an in-house library. Look for opportunities in the industry for them to interact with other professionals and to build their own experience.

A Social Workout
A nationally recognized key to business management is the importance of social interaction among coworkers. It is just as key in the business of your gym. Bacon reminds us that “trainers are highly sociable people.” Their job requires it. Looking for and encouraging opportunities for the trainers, and the rest of your staff for that matter, to engage one another will promote the health of your entire club. Friendly professional interactions make for friendly client interactions.

Join the Club
Your mission, values, and goals are important to you. Develop their importance for your trainers as well. Involve them in the promotion of these ideas by demonstrating them and showing them in fun and creative ways how they apply to them and their clients. Keep your mission, values, and goals at the forefront of their minds by including them in bite-size reminders in meetings and team-building events.

Coming Alongside
Your trainers are on the ground running. They have a wealth of day in and day out experience in your gym with your clients. Give them the opportunity to provide input and to have their questions as to “why” answered. It will help bridge the gap from a “them” to “us” attitude.

The Rewards
Recognize their professional achievements and what they accomplish for your club. Stimulating an encouraging environment produces happy trainers who, in turn, have happy members who are glad to workout in your gym.

Happy members are after all what you need to have a successful business. Follow these tips and create some more of your own to interact successfully with the trainers who will motivate your members to keep coming to your gym.

Works Cited
Bacon, Jen. “Building the Trainer-Club Connection to Boost Service.” ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal 17.3 (2013):33-34. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

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The Member Sets feature gives your club the ability to gather similar members together and perform functions such as adding a note, sending an email, or giving away services to multiple members at one time.

The Member Sets feature can be created by clicking the Manage tab under the Members column.  By using the search fields, you can filter the criteria you wish to use to create the Member Set. Once you have found your members, use the Include All button from the top to select all of the members currently displayed on the page.  If your search returns multiple pages of members, you can use the All Pages link to select all members on all pages as shown in the picture below.

From the upper right navigation links, click Selected Members and then choose Add To Member Set.  You will be given the opportunity to add the selected members to an existing Member Set or you can create a new one.

To use a Member Set you’ve created, navigate to Menu and choose the Manage link under the Members section. Next, select the Member Sets tab from the Search menu and click on the link for the Member Set you wish to display. Then, you can choose to include all members on the page shown or you can include all members on all pages.

Finally, Click Selected Members in the upper right navigation links to perform the action of adding a note, giving away a service or sending an email to all selected members.

ABC Financial knows your time is valuable and we have provided this feature for your convenience. If you still have questions regarding Member Sets, please contact our Technical Support department at 1-877-222-5767 and we would be happy to assist you!

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Bar bells are staples in the fitness industry. Used as a tool to improve, bar bells are accessible and effective. From a business standpoint, the same can be said for bar codes.

Bar code technology has proven to be a fundamental means in helping businesses improve their processes. In the fitness industry, bar codes can help in the following areas of your business:

• Membership Registration
• Facility Access
• Point-of-Sale (POS)
• Inventory
• Loyalty Programs
• Fixed Asset Tracking

There are a lot of things you can spend your money on to potentially improve your business. A bar code system is one of the hidden gems that deliver an immediate payback in terms of:

• Improving your customer’s experience
• Making your operation more efficient
• Helping you make better decisions because information is more accurate

Let’s talk about how bar codes can improve your customer’s experience – an initiative that all business must covet if they want to sustain success.

How many of you currently register a new member by quizzing them on their name, address, city, state, etc. as they sign-up? Not a big deal if you don’t mind your employees making mistakes as they manually key in the data. It’s not a big deal if you don’t mind having your new customer state their personal information out loud for others to hear. Worse yet, your new customer has to re-state the information or spell out the information as your employee tries their best to get the info correctly into your system. (Cue the trumpets). Bar Codes to the rescue!

Utilizing bar codes as part of your new member sign-up will change the above scenario in two simple steps:

1. Ask your new customer for their Driver’s License to assist in the registration process.
2. Scan the 2D bar code on the back of their license with a programmed reader to automatically populate the fields in your membership info screen.

That’s it. Pretty cool huh! Your membership sign-up process improves because it takes less time, it is more accurate, and it doesn’t require your customer to verbalize personal information – smiles all around! Are you familiar with the phrase “building your brand”? Well, positive customer experiences are an important part of brand building in addition to being known as a club that is innovative and in tune with improving all facets of the business.

The great news is that implementing a bar code system is easy and very cost effective. Typical components of a bar code system are:

• Bar code reader
• Media (a card, label, or phone screen with bar code on it)
• A program or application that accepts bar code data

The news gets even better! The bar code reader can be used for multiple purposes. Multiple use is always a good thing for improving your return on investment whether you are buying a technology related item or a piece of fitness equipment.

The same bar code reader can be used to:

• Automatically populate fields on the Membership sign-up screen(s)
• Allow entrance into the facility by scanning a bar code on a membership card or a Smartphone
• Scan the UPC bar code during a point-of-sale transaction with your customer
• Scan the bar code on inventory item and automatically enter data into a field in Excel or other program as the keyboard data entry
• Scan the bar code on a membership card or Smartphone to collect data, time and date stamp as part of Loyalty program
• Scan the bar code on a fixed asset and automatically enter data into field in Excel or other program as the keyboard data entry as part of inspection or inventory program

Bar Bells and Bar Codes. One makes you stronger; the other makes your business stronger.

For more information on introducing bar codes into your business, contact Huzzard Systems today at Huzzard.com or 800-321-9094.

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If you’re unsure what to do to boost the happy-factor at your club, try these sure-fire fitness center management tips to get your members smiling:

1. Solve Membership Problems: There’s no quicker way to turn members off than to have them speak with sales staff who are unwilling or unable to help. It bears repeating that the fitness industry is a service-based industry and the time and attention you pay to your sales team will directly affect referrals and member retention.

Give your sales people the power to provide a variety of offers that work for varying customer needs. Allow your reps to provide student discounts, one-month trial memberships, and extend discounts to customers who’ve contacted you with complaints.

Empowering your sales people can give you a bump in member satisfaction that lasts long after the phone call is over.

2. Get Friendlier: Sometimes the only difference between your health club and the one across town is the connection members feel to you.

Try reaching out to potential and current members through a variety of channels:

• Offer discounts and promotions on Facebook
• Provide value-added services through your email newsletters
• Promote new class offerings via text message to members’ mobile phones
• Use compelling signage at your locations to inform members of new events and promotions

3. Spread Some Fun: Health clubs have an added bonus when it comes to engaging with their audiences, a large part of club populations are naturally competitive. Consider this statistic – nearly half of Internet users expect incentives and rewards for engaging with a brand online and over 200 million played games on Facebook in September 2012 alone.

Put these together and you’re working with fertile ground for spreading fun and increasing connection with current and prospective members when you create games and contests to capture their interest. (For more information on social gaming for brands, check this resource from Oracle (PDF).)

The name of the marketing game for any health club is connection. Use these tips to connect more strongly with your membership and you’ll benefit from happier followers.

Learn more ways to improve your fitness club management. Learn about how ABC Financial’s health club software can benefit your business with a free demo.

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