Augie In Action! Augie In Action! - Ihrsa

How to Turn Attrition Around
“ Whenever, over
a 60-day period,
a member’s usage
drops by 50% or
more, that member
is in danger
of quitting. ”
74 Club Business International | MARCH 2008 | www.ihrsa.org
Clubs with strong member-to-member connections
have higher retention than clubs with weak memberto-member
connections. Multipurpose clubs have
higher retention rates than fitness clubs (71.9% vs.
69.1%, according to the 2007 edition of IHRSA’s
Profiles of Success). Although IHRSA does not collect
data on tennis-only clubs, we know, anecdotally,
that tennis clubs have higher retention rates than
multipurpose clubs.
Anecdotally, we have also learned that country clubs have higher retention rates than
commercial clubs of all types. These private clubs achieve this despite the fact that many of their
properties, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, lie fallow from November 1 to May 1.
This point underlines the importance of a fact that is seldom discussed: namely, that memberto-member
connections, as distinguished from member-to-staff connections, are integral to every
club with high retention. An argument can be made—and it is an argument with which I agree—
that in terms of achieving high membership retention rates, member-to-member connections
are much more important than member-to-staff connections. Therefore, the assumption that
the retention issue can be resolved simply and exclusively by enhancing staff-to-member
connections is, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed.
I have visited many private clubs where the staff-to-member connections are no better or
no worse than such connections at athletic or fitness facilities. Yet, year after year, these clubs
achieve membership retention rates that are substantially higher than those of even the best
performing athletic or fitness facilities. Several factors are at play here, including price
and cachet, but it is the member-to-member connections and the social environment of these
facilities that give them such a huge advantage with respect to membership retention.
Members who use multiple services at a club have higher retention rates than members
who only use one service. For example, the member who uses only the treadmill is
more likely to leave than the member who uses the treadmill, the café, personal training
services, and the spa.
Getting members involved in multiple dimensions of a club is always advisable. This is
another advantage of couple and family memberships because generally the spouses and the
different members of a family are all involved in different activities at the club.
It is also part of the rationale behind why club cafés—though they are often not profitable in
themselves—can be an important asset with respect to membership retention. Such facilities
not only expand members’ breadth of usage, but they also facilitate member-to-member and
staff-to-member connections.
Retention rates are higher for ‘group fitness’ members than for ‘machine members.’
Every club has hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of “machine members,” i.e., members
whose only interactions with their club are with the particular exercise machines on which
they exercise. Such members tend to be deficient in both member-to-member connections
and member-to-staff connections. Their only connection to the club is the connection that they
have to the cold metal machines on which they perform their exercises.
Machine members are, by definition, high-risk members.
They belong, as it were, in every club’s “intensive care
unit.” The loyalty of such members is paper-thin. For
them, their club is no more than a place that stockpiles
exercise machines.
Participation in group activites correlates with
higher retention. As might be anticipated from
the previous discussion of machine members,
members who are involved in group activities—