How to Improve Member Relations with Technology

Bryan O'Rourke discusses how health clubs can use technology to enhance member relations in this week's Ask an Industry Leader.

Q: "How can a club make use of IT in order to deploy member loyalty programs and other ways to increase retention?"

A: There are many ways to apply technology to enhance member loyalty and to increase retention. You could start with using your club software to track member checkins, offering discounts or other incentives for members that reach certain thresholds of visits. A few new tools that offer a similar but more robust solutions using mobile technologies are emerging as well. Foursquare is a free mobile application that enables businesses to promote their offerings and members to “checkin” using their mobile smart phones. You can create reward scenarios, like the “mayor” of your health club gets a certain discount on smoothies. Check out the video demo here.

Another interesting mobile technology application that can reward frequency using mobile apps is SCVNGR. This solution enables you to create different games that engage your customer members. Check out the video demonstration here.

There are many new and emerging solutions like these. Facebook places is yet another example. What is great about these applications, is not only that are they free but they flow into the social media space creating buzz and offer a way to connect in the mobile space with people in your area using mobile technologies. Mobile search is huge. Therefore they can entice prospective members with offers. Since mobile smart phone utilization is expected to double in the U.S. alone in the next 15 months, expect more  health clubs like yours to take advantage of these and other engagement and promotional solutions. Follow my blog at www.bryankorourke.com to keep up with advancing technologies and business models in the fitness industry. Thanks Marc for checking with IHRSA to get help with your question.

Bryan O'Rourke, CSO & Principal
Fitmarc
bryan@fitmarc.com 
www.bryankorourke.org

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This post is a part of our weekly Ask an Industry Leader series. We post a new question and answer every Monday morning. If you have a question you'd like our Industry Leaders to answer, submit your question today.

Comments

[Darrell Amy]

This is a good article. In building the social media components for the CardioID Kiosk (www.KnowYourCardioID.com), we have been amazed at the amazing potential of social media to drive new traffic into clubs.

The key seems to be having something interesting to promote. The topic of cardiovascular wellness screening/Comparative Vascular Age is the type of thing that captures attention and engages people to take action.

[IHRSA]

Darrell,

Thanks for the input. Glad to hear you've found success in the social media space.