This article is part of The Huddle, Upper Hand’s quick tips and best practices for customers. Want to join the community? Schedule a walk-through of the platform today. 

The Ins and Outs of Membership Analytics

Last week, we introduced our newest feature, Membership Analytics, giving you deeper insights into your recurring revenue and membership performance.

We hope you’ve had a chance to poke around and get to know your new Membership Analytics dashboard, but if not – check out our feature guide to learn the basics.

In this week’s Huddle, we outline a few tips, tricks and important things to note about your Membership Analytics dashboard. Let’s jump right in:

Membership Analytics Tips & Tricks

Reactivation Revenue through Pandemic Loss

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many sports and fitness businesses saw membership cancellations and suspensions. If you’re in that boat, you are not alone. With Membership Analytics, we give you the tools to re-engage those past members and welcome them back to your business. Here’s how:

1. Using the “Time Span” filter at the top, filter to the months you lost most of your members (most likely March – July).
2. Scroll down to the table below and click on the cell for each month in the rows of “Cost of Cancellations” and “Cost of Suspensions”.
3. Export the information in the sub-table.
4. Using the exported .csv file, reach out to your cancel/suspended members with a marketing promotion – honoring their membership price. If you’re looking for some inspiration to get started, here are some examples of emails you can replicate.

Forecasted Revenue for Future Expansion

Our Monthly Recurring Revenue graph is a great tool for not only having clear visibility into the revenue you have received for a specific month, but also what that recurring revenue will look like in the months ahead. Our predictive revenue graph will help you visualize the future of your recurring revenue if you did NOTHING differently – no new members, no suspensions or cancellations, etc.

Why is this important? If you’ve been looking to physically expand your facility and/or open a second facility, this data can be extremely useful in outlining both what you CAN afford and any changes you may need to make to your memberships in order to afford those expansions. For example, you may choose to implement a price increase.

Note: If you decide to put a price increase into effect, the result of the increase will show in the “Expansions/Contractions” row in the Membership Analytics data table.

Achieve Positive MRR by Retaining New Members

Turning new members into loyal, repeat clients is the key to good MRR health. There are plenty of things businesses can do in order to retain their new members, but the one I’d like to highlight is communication. Having a constant stream of communication with your members fosters a community and allows your members to feel valued, ultimately resulting in their retention.

In a previous Huddle article, I mentioned that gyms lose 50% of their new members in the first six months. In those six months, clients are forming their opinion of your brand and/or offerings – more importantly deciding whether or not they want to stay a member. So what can you, as a business owner, do to retain those new members? We outline an example, utilizing Membership Analytics for an email campaign, below:

New Member Email Campaign

As your new members settle into their routine, they will gain a better understanding of your business, brand, and offerings. This is a great opportunity to reach out and ensure they are having a positive experience.

A good practice is to pull a list of your new members at the end of each month.

1. Within the Membership Analytics dashboard, filter your membership data to “Last Month.”
2. Once you’ve filtered the data, scroll down to the table below the MRR graph.
3. Click on the New Members Revenue cell and you’ll see a sub-table appear below.
4. Using the export icon in the top right corner of the table, export the list of members.

Now that you have a list of last month’s new members and their contact information, you are able to reach out to them! This communication can be as simple as thanking them for being a member, or asking for feedback on the perks of offerings included in their membership, or sending them a coupon code for additional discounts! These customer satisfaction touch points can be used to better understand their experiences and uncover opportunities to improve. By monitoring customer satisfaction, you are able to pick up on small issues that may have been overlooked and make improvements that increase satisfaction and reduce churn.

For more on client retention, check out our Huddle article outlining 9 Free Survey Templates.

Important Notes Regarding Membership Analytics You May Have Missed

• The first four rows (New Members Revenue, Cost of Cancellation, Cost of Suspension, Reactivation Revenue) and the last row (Clients) are clickable. This means if you click on a cell in the row, you will see a new table appear below that indicates more details around that specific data point.
• MRR calculation does NOT include:
  • Refunds/waived payments
  • Free memberships
  • One time payments
• Discounts and coupons are deducted prior to calculation
• Credit card and billing system transaction fees are not deducted
• There are “i” icons throughout the dashboard that will provide you with information on how certain items are calculated
• The tables are exportable

For detailed information on Membership Analytics, check out our feature write up.

Ready to get started? Log in to your Upper Hand account. Not an Upper Hand customer? Schedule a call with a member of our team, and see a personalized walk-through of our membership management software!