Challenges Help Engage and Retain
If there are two words that the fitness club industry rallies strategies around, it’s engagement and retention. Only 67% of fitness club members keep their memberships for 12 months, according to an IHRSA report created by Retentions Guru, Paul Bedford. According to Harvard Business School, increasing retention rates just 5% can increase profit from 25% to 95%.
To ease this industry-wide attrition, choose strategies that help your members feel engaged and like a happy part of your club community. One way is to offer fitness challenges designed just for your members. Friendly competition and the thrill of winning something, even if it’s small, are powerful motivators that keep people coming back. And what’s even better, the inevitable fitness benefits help your members see how much the club means to their overall health; a proven value worth investing in. Challenges can be simple and easy, requiring no additional staff and minimal time to administer.
Challenges keep your tribe thriving and active
Welld Health makes it easy and secure to run tailored fitness challenges at your center. From simple weight loss competitions to team-based points for check-ins, muscle mass, wearable data, and education, Welld keeps track of all of the moving parts. Here are some ideas of how you can overcome your member’s challenges with, well, challenges.
Get in the Fishbowl!
Some of the easiest challenges to run are “fishbowl” challenges, where you set a simple goal based on attendance or number of steps in a month. Welld is integrated with several top club management software products to pull check-ins and other data. It also lets your members connect to their favorite devices and fitness tracking apps to make scoring this challenge a breeze. Once the challenge is underway, everyone who meets the goal you set has their name added to a fishbowl for a chance to win. What they win and how often you choose to do this type of challenge is up to you.
Biggest Loser Wins
Between the obesity epidemic and the popularity of the reality TV that made this game an American household name, you can tee up a weight loss challenge with just a few clicks in the Welld dashboard. As your challengers come in for their weekly weigh-ins you get a chance to have a face-to-face conversation with them. There is no substitute for this kind of facetime when you can encourage someone to do something that is hard. With each pound lost, they win a little ground in the battle to recover their health.
Trainer-led Challenges Stoke the Fitness Fire
Whether you want to focus on a 90-day weight-loss intensive or an ultimate 30-day shred-style competition, or both, it’s up to you. How you set up your challenge reflects your brand and membership priorities. Crank up a challenge that features your top trainers who are your best brand ambassadors and wellness champions. Think about how you want to charge for the challenge to make it the right balance of “skin in the game” for the member without being cost prohibitive.
Gamify InBody and Measurement Devices
Leverage your current investments in hardware to accelerate their adoption with challenges that use less common biometrics like Basal Metabolic Rate or Lean Muscle Mass. Improvements in these numbers are appropriate for all but the super athlete. If you’re using InBody for your biometric screenings we pull the scan data directly into your challenge.
Gamify Assessment Programs
If you’re running assessment wellness programs at your facility, consider packaging the programs as part of a workplace wellness challenge for your corporate partners. Or leverage the pace and structure of your program to create challenges that incentivize Annual Health Risk Assessment questionnaires.
We’re here to help.
Are you looking for a challenge? Contact us to get started using Welld and kick off your first challenge within days.