PureGym (Fitness World) helps build muscle and healthy habits
Everyone joins their fitness centre with the ambition to work out regularly. But, it takes healthy habits to turn ambition into reality.
Fitness World (now known as PureGym) helps establish and support those habits through personalised, automated communication flows. They’re designed to motivate, praise, and inspire members to build and maintain good exercise patterns. And doing so has significantly boosted retention rates.
“Our product is happening, so to speak, when the customer is at our premises. And our communication has one purpose: to help and motivate our members to have healthy training habits and come to our clubs at a stable frequency to reach their goals. If we succeed in keeping them motivated, we are more likely to retain them as members over time,” says Kirsten Lund Petersen, Head of Member Engagement and Retention (CRM) at PureGym.
Kirsten Lund Petersen
Head of Member Engagement & Retention (CRM), PureGym
“The business case is clear: with a solid data model supporting the right business drivers, the pay-off is immediate.”
A great member experience in the clubs and across the customer journey is paramount and communication is instrumental to achieve this. When PureGym started working with Agillic, they prioritised the retention flow as this has the highest potential due to volume.
The new communication flow immediately gave weighty results. In the first year, the retention rate was 6% higher compared to the control group. This is a significant increase in an industry renowned for high churn.
A welcome flow with a focus on supporting and motivating the members to develop healthy habits was implemented in January and showed the same increase in retention over six months. It seemed PureGym had cracked the code to successful retention.
Training and data experts co-creating
When building the data model and the flow, it made sense to, first of all, understand the attributes of a loyal member and how this was reflected in the data. PureGym’s training experts and Agillic partner Kaplan collaborated and found that many of the loyal members worked out at a stable frequency, and they often joined classes or teamed up with buddies.
“The knowledge about training and motivation that our staff has is priceless. Their insights constitute the principles for the communication flow and the underlying data model,” says Kirsten.
Data is loaded into Agillic daily, and the automated and personalised flows are executed based on the individual member’s behaviour as reflected in the data.
Having identified a steady frequency, regardless if it is a high or a low one, as a critical signifier for loyalty, the communication is supporting and motivating the member to exercise regularly, a bit like a personal trainer.
In personalised communication, PureGym encourages members to join classes, participate in challenges or create a training programme in the PureGym app.
Data model with motivational drivers
The data model enabling the triggered communication was built from scratch and PureGym is now at a stage where the most distinct parameters for the motivational drivers are in the Agillic platform.
“The more fields your data model contains, the more personalised and relevant you can make the communication and the product throughout the customer journey from the welcome, to the retention and to win-back.
It is tempting to want it all at once, but we’re taking it step by step and learning by experience. We have a clear picture of the things we want the data model to comprise as we grow our business. At this stage, we are already seeing great results and strong potential, and we continue to drive our development,” Kirsten says.
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