Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2017 | Page 30
CONSUMER MARKETING
CMOroundtable
“WHAT TECHNOLOGIES ARE YOU USING TO
UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS, IMPROVE THEIR
EXPERIENCE, AND KEEP THEM COMING BACK?”
Meredith Jurek
Chief Marketing Officer
Anytime Fitness and Waxing the City
The two main ways we use technology to
help us understand and retain customers are
through our retention and PLEASE scores.
Historically, gyms have
measured retention risk by
tracking visits, but we want
to measure retention risk by
overall engagement with
the formula: Frequency x
(Usage + Value + Digital)
= Retention. For this, we
look at group classes, email
interactions, gym usage, and
other activities. We bring
all the research together
by integrating technology
tools like gym operating
software and mobile applications.
What this technology has shown us is
that the industry is plagued with two key
issues: member retention and personal
training income. Anytime Fitness has always
been a team that can score (acquire new
members), so now the focus is on playing
solid defense (retention). Communication
from fitness and reception staff is so highly
valued that nearly nine in 10 members say
they value fitness staff communication. We
now know that if both reception and fit-
ness staff always speak to all members, it’s
estimated that 44 percent of cancellations
would be avoided. Additionally, if the fitness
staff never speaks to them, the likelihood
of a member canceling in a given month
is around 3 percent. We’ve diagnosed the
problem and have dug deeper into our
research to find a solution.
In addition to our retention score, Any-
time Fitness and Waxing the City leverage
the Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodol-
ogy to track the loyalty and satisfaction of
active members and clients. The program
started in 2013 for U.S.-based gyms and is
currently rolled out to international gyms
in various languages, making it a global pro-
gram that hears from more than 250,000
members per year. When members/cli-
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ents provide feedback, gyms and studios
are alerted so they can follow up to thank
them for their feedback and take any ac-
tion on improving their experience. With
more than two-thirds of Anytime Fitness
and Waxing the City respondents being
promoters, the brand takes
advantage of activating their
feedback on social media
and review sites.
Drivers of high scores
in our business stem from
the quality of our people.
The biggest drivers of high
PLEASE scores/NPS in-
clude engagement of staff,
communication with the
gym or studio, and results
provided to clients. While
technology engagement con-
tinues to grow, our people will always play
a leading role in the retention and repeat
business of our members/clients.
Sarah Broadwater
Director of Marketing
Winmark Corp.
In marketing, you can’t depend on one
vehicle alone to ensure your message is
being seen and heard by your customer
base; you’re always implementing a multi-
channel approach. The same can be said
with technology. You can’t
rely on a single piece of
technology to give you the
data you need to move the
business forward.
At each of our resale
brands (Plato’s Closet, Once
Upon A Child, Style En-
core, Play It Again Sports,
and Music Go Round), the
key piece of technology that
helps us understand our cus-
tomers and improve their
experience is our proprietary
POS system. It’s integrated with third-party
software that tracks key information with
each sale, so it tells us a lot about customer
trends as well as other data that’s important
when determining customers’ needs and
what we need to do to meet those needs.
The email marketing and loyalty pro-
grams we have in place allow us to segment
our customer base better for personalized
messaging. Outside of competitors, there is
still a lot of noise you need to cut through,
so it’s important that the messages you do
send are relevant to the people receiving
them. When it’s not particular to them,
the messages often get ignored, and you’ve
missed out on an opportunity to engage
your audience. Using these technologies
and segmentation ensures the messages be-
ing sent are not only relevant, but timely
to the person receiving them, which in-
creases the likelihood they’ll engage with
you, respond positively, and return to one
of our stores.
Further, digital marketing and web-
site analytics help us to better understand
our web and social media traffic and con-
sumer inte