How to Simplify Member Onboarding With ABC Glofox

Member onboarding is one of the most vital tactics you can employ as a fitness business owner.

Many fitness entrepreneurs think the moment they sign a new client is the moment that they’ve ‘won’ that customer forever.

But the reality is, in a world where up to 50% of all new gym members quit within the first six months, that just isn’t true.

Savvy gym owners understand sign-ups are great, but it’s what happens after that really counts. Because that’s the golden opportunity to transform hesitant newcomers into raving regulars.

This is what is known as member onboarding.

Member onboarding matters because it’s got the power to boost your retention rate, increase your customer lifetime value, and stick smiles on your customer’s faces.

If you’ve been meaning to implement a customer onboarding program but don’t know where to start, this article is for you.

But if you want the real guide, then you need to download our free ebook on member onboarding, which will give you everything you need to keep your members happy, motivated, and signing your praises.

Skip ahead to:

• What is Customer Onboarding?
• How to Develop a Successful Customer Onboarding Process
• Sample Customer Onboarding Checklist

What is Customer Onboarding?

According to HubSpot, customer onboarding is:

An exceptional customer onboarding program involves step-by-step tutorials, unlimited guidance and support, and milestone celebrations when a customer achieves success through your solution.”

Put simply, onboarding is what you do between a sign-up and a customer success story. 

You might be thinking, that sounds well and good, but why should I bother putting time and effort into developing an onboarding program?

Well, here’s why:

Onboarding Boosts Customer Retention

It’s hard work to get customers in the door and it is far harder than keeping them there.

According to a Club Industry Report on member engagement and retention, it costs nine times as much to acquire a new member as it does to retain an existing one. 

So, while chasing down new customers is important, the real profit is in hanging onto your current ones. In fact, studies show that increasing your retention rate by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%.

Great onboarding reduces the number of canceled memberships by guiding your new-sign ups over the initial hump that they may face when joining your gym.

Furthermore, by increasing the odds your customers will stick around, you’ll boost your customer lifetime value too, which means you can start spending more to acquire customers.

And when you start spending more to acquire customers, your competition will start quaking in their boots.

Onboarding Creates Advocates for Your Gym

Great onboarding increases the chances that more of your members will reach their goals and be delighted with their results.

And when your customers are happy, they’re much more likely to become advocates for your gym.  This is huge because, in an increasingly competitive market, word-of-mouth marketing is more powerful than ever.

In fact, according to Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other type of advertising. What’s more, 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions.

So in a nutshell, properly onboarded customers make happier customers, happier customers make better advocates, and better advocates make bigger profits.

Onboarding Boosts Your Gym’s Revenue 

Onboarding is a relatively low-cost process to implement. Especially when you consider the returns.

By increasing your retention rate, growing your customer lifetime value, and creating passionate advocates, onboarding will help your revenue and profits grow steadily over time.

Greater revenue will allow you to reinvest money into your gym, which helps build your business up over the long term and presents a more attractive offer to potential customers coming down the pipeline.

How to Develop a Successful Customer Onboarding Process

The aim of onboarding is to help new members get acquainted with all that your gym has to offer. Building a successful onboarding process will depend on the specific needs of your sign-ups and the unique culture of your gym.

But while individual onboarding approaches may differ, your objective is always the same: to empower your clients by providing them with the right resources that set them up for success.

To that end, here are the six building blocks that form the basis of a great onboarding experience:

1. Understand Your Customers

Before you do anything, it’s best to have a solid knowledge of your customers. Understanding what obstacles, challenges, and pain points they face is the first step towards creating tailored solutions that’ll make up your onboarding program.

Use a tool like Survey Monkey to ask your members about what they found most challenging when joining your gym. Then use the data to determine what issues your onboarding strategy needs to address.

How ABC Glofox Can Help You

The ABC Glofox platform can give you a full, 360-degree view on your member behavior and the overall performance of your business. Along with key insights into your sales revenue and the performance of all of your staff, you can also get key insights into your most popular classes, the most popular times for particular members, and even what messaging methods are working best with your new members and potential leads.

Want to learn more about how the ABC Glofox platform is here for you?

2. Develop Your Communication Strategy

It’s amazing the difference that a little communication can make.  Did you know that just two monthly interactions between staff and clients have been shown to cut the risk of membership cancellations by 33%?

So first, decide on a communication channel – ideally, it’ll be one that your customers use regularly. It could be e-mail, mobile text, or messenger.

Then, choose what kind of content you’ll be sharing with your new members. Use the responses from your survey to provide the most relevant and helpful information. 

It might be information about booking classes, workout tips for getting started, or introducing the members of your staff. Your content should delight and impress your customers and remind them why they signed up for your great gym in the first place.

How ABC Glofox Can Help You

Whatever you choose, make sure that you automate this process. It might be easy to keep the cadence going for a few members, but a messaging automation tool can make your life so much easier. This is where ABC Glofox comes in.

With the Amplify tool, you can set up an automated messaging process that keeps your members engaged, motivated, and informed on all your business news.
Want to learn more about how Amplify can double your leads and reduce your admin time by 20%?

3. Create Customer-Focused Goals

As a fitness professional, you’ve seen how little progress is made when people don’t use goal-setting. Program hopping, nutritional fads, and hours of aimlessly going in circles lead to little or no results. 

Goal-setting, on the other hand, allows people to see future possibilities, gives them a plan of action, and boosts their motivation, especially when challenges arise.

That’s why it’s essential to incorporate goal setting as part of your onboarding program. By pointing clients in the direction you’ll increase the chances that they’ll achieve success.

Schedule a one-to-one appointment with every new sign-up, but before you do that send them a questionnaire to determine their base level of fitness, current eating habits, workout preferences, and what they hope to achieve.

This saves time, increases engagement, and allows you to match them with the ideal trainer to help them reach their goals. Work through setting goals using the SMART system for the best results.

Usually creating goals for the six to eight-week mark works a treat. That’s long enough to allow change to happen but short enough to keep even the most apprehensive committed. Check-in and follow up regularly with customers to make sure they feel valued.

Where ABC Glofox Can Help You

If you’re struggling to measure member behavior and engagement, this is something that ABC Glofox can help with. Thanks to our intuitive reporting systems, you can get an in-depth insight into the views and actions of your members. From the average number of check-ins to the busiest times for your business, we can give you the reporting you need that will help you boost your business.

This can be a great indicator of the effectiveness of your business. If you’ve noticed a significant uptick (or downturn) in your member numbers or attendance through our reporting systems, then you can adjust or update your onboarding process accordingly.

4. Encourage New Member Engagement 

We’re all social creatures. When we feel like we’re part of the tribe, where people look out for us and are interested in us, we’re much more likely to derive a sense of belonging, importance, and satisfaction.

That’s why getting sign-ups engaged with your current members should be a top priority if you want them to stick around. 

Group workouts are a great way to introduce new and veteran members to each other.  And they’re effective too – one of the key findings of an IHRSA report was that class attendees are 56% less likely to cancel their membership than those who go it alone on free weights or other training equipment. So, hold spaces in your current sell-out classes for new members so they won’t be discouraged.

Where ABC Glofox Can Help You

With the ABC Glofox platform, your members can book individual spots in your most popular classes, ensuring that they get their favorite place at their favorite time. Additionally, thanks to your own branded app that we’ll provide you, all of your members will also have a seamless booking experience for all of your classes.

Finally, you’ll be able to send out automated messages after these classes to continue to encourage and engage your members. You can even set up automations for members that you think might be at risk of leaving your gym.

In all, the ABC Glofox platform adds a more personalized and professional touch to your business that your members are sure to enjoy.

5. Build a Knowledge Hub

Great onboarding is about empowering new members to have the courage to chase their goals. So often many people struggle with fitness because they don’t understand the basics.

And with access to the internet, there’s now an overwhelming amount of information that can leave newcomers in a state of paralysis by analysis. Keep in mind that working out for the first time can be seriously intimidating.

So, create your own verified source of reliable information for your members. It could be in the form of a blog, a video course, a printed manual, or any other medium. It doesn’t have to be in-depth – just answer the most basic questions that keep coming up (Tip: use the responses from your customer survey to design your knowledge hub)

How ABC Glofox Can Help You

Along with a custom-branded app that can provide all the information that your members will ever need, we can also help you set up automated messages that provide informative and engaging content for all of your members. From quick stats on the benefits of crossfit to tips on lifting or recovery, ABC Glofox can help you share your wealth of knowledge with your members.

6. Evaluate and Adjust

Just like measuring your strength on certain lifts and taking body part measurements can tell you if your training program is working, you need feedback to know how well your onboarding program is working too.

Identify key metrics such as customer churn rate, customer satisfaction, and member engagement. Take stock of what they currently look like before you implement your onboarding program. Then take measurements at regular intervals to see what kind of impact your onboarding efforts are having.

After a few months, follow up with a full audit of your onboarding program – you might find some things are working well and others are not producing the results you want. Taking time to review and reflect allows you to optimize your onboarding process over time.

How ABC Glofox Can Help You

Thanks to our insights and reporting features you can get all the information you need to understand your user behavior and what you need to do to boost engagement and get your members back and training with you.

Here’s Victoria Thomas, the founder of JourneyFit, describing how ABC Glofox has helped her business to thrive

Get Your Free Member Onboarding Guide

If you’re looking for a full, in-depth how-to guide on how to get your members to be motivated, informed, and stay with you for the long term, then you’re in the right place.

You can download our free Member Onboarding Guide ebook right here

ABC Glofox: Your Fitness Onboarding Partner

The importance of the interactions between your clients and your gym in the first few weeks of membership can’t be understated.

However, we know how hard it is for fitness business owners to keep tabs on everything. That’s why we’ve designed ABC Glofox to be the fitness business partner you need to help your business to grow and thrive.

ABC Glofox Can Help You With Your Member Onboarding Process By:

• Automating Your Messaging Processes
• Giving You a 360 Degree View of Member Behavior
• Streamlining Your Class Scheduling and Spot Booking
• Giving You a Custom App With Your Own Unique Branding

If you’re looking to take the next steps in boosting your member onboarding process, then speak to a member of our team today.