Running a gym, like any small business, can seem like a never-ending series of chores and tasks, right?
You got into this work because you enjoy training, or you like helping people live better lives, or you want to spread the good word about health and fitness.
But with everything on the daily/weekly/monthly “To Do” lists, you feel like there isn’t any time for what you love – let alone for growing your business. You’re spending too much time on repetitive, tedious administrative jobs – and not enough time helping clients improve their health.
“Really, isn’t there a better way?” you say as you type out yet another text message or email to a prospect.
Well, as a matter of fact, there is a better way. It’s called “automation.” And it could be key to driving efficiency and freeing up time so you and your staff can focus on what really matters – providing exceptional service, maximizing member satisfaction, and growing your business.
Fitness business automations are powerful tools that can transform the way you run your gym. And at Naamly, we’re experts on helping you get the most out of fitness business automations.
Why Fitness Business Automations?
Before delving into specific examples of tasks ripe for automation, let’s first understand why automation is indispensable for gym owners:
- Timesaving: Automating repetitive tasks frees up your time to focus on high-value activities such as member engagement, marketing strategies, and business expansion.
- Reduced Errors: Manual tasks are prone to human error. Automation minimizes the risk of mistakes, improving consistency and accuracy across your gym’s operations.
- Enhanced Member Experience: By automating routine processes, you can deliver a better experience for your members, seamlessly tracking everything from sign-ups to attendance of classes.
- Scalability: As your gym grows, automation provides scalability without the need for significant growth without also significantly growing the size of your staff. It lets you take on more work and handle it efficiently and effectively.
Examples of Tasks to Automate
Now, let’s dive into some specific examples of tasks that are ideal candidates for fitness business automations. These first three, in particular, highlight how Naamly provides gym owners with a single source to manage systems, member experience and team communications, taking automation to the next level and beyond.
1. Gathering and Converting Campaigns: Automate leads captured from any source, whether it’s Facebook, your website or a referral. Nurture those leads through campaigns with automated communications, and deliver the personal touch through multiple channels, including phone, email and text. (Read more on “How to Crush Gym Leads in 2024.”)
Naamly campaigns excel at various aspects of this process, automating email and text campaigns to new leads; personalizing outbound emails; and sending them for you without any inconvenience.
Delivering lead magnets is crucial, and we use a follow-up nurture sequence to make sure this gets done in the most efficient manner. Lead magnets are a powerful way to build your contact list, and our fitness business automations convert leads into paying customers.
You can even assign some of them to staff members to focus on closing the sale.
New leads might need to get helpful, engaging messaging from you 10 times or more before they decide to purchase. Automations create the right positive touchpoints for you to maximize those conversion opportunities.
2. Raise Retention Rates: Centralize member information, like attendance, nutrition and heartrate. Get alerted on critical member events, like 100th sessions and birthdays, so you can “shout out” people and given them a smile. Track member progress and goals, and increase visits and referrals.
This focus on retention starts the minute a prospect becomes a member, and you must develop and employ a comprehensive onboarding process – much of which can be automated.
Even after the critical first 90 days are over, automation can alert you to further opportunities to enrich the relationship, like service upsells.
All of these steps will make your members feel appreciated. Don’t let them feel neglected after you have their contracts signed. Remember that it’s far more expensive to get a new member than to keep one.
Related to current members: alumni. Automation can keep them engaged with tempting offers to come back to your gym, planned and delivered systematically.
3. Support Staff: You can simplify daily tasks and streamline operations through fitness business automations. Just one example: Using a shared inbox ensures everyone on your team is on the same page.
- Membership Management: Forget keeping track of sign-ups, membership renewals and cancellations by hand. Membership management software automates the whole process, plus billing and payment processing to save administrative overhead.
- Class Scheduling and Attendance Tracking: Can your members book classes online? Check-in when they arrive? Can you keep attendance for everyone?
- Email Marketing Tools: In addition to automated sequences, you can segment your audiences based on things like status, interests, and behavior, to effectively target them with the right messaging.
- Keep Track of Inventory: Inventory Management: You can arrange to receive alerts when levels of supplies are low, automate the reordering processes for all kinds of things, and make sure your stock is always at the right levels.
- Staff Scheduling: There are fitness business automations for staff scheduling that take into account everyone’s availability, skills, and even relevant labor laws. Your staff can view schedules online, request time off, and swap shifts – and you can rest assured that everything’s covered like you need it to be.
- Social Media Posting: You don’t have to remember when to post – or what or where. You can basically program all your social media tools to post on schedule. And fitness business automations can provide engagement metrics and analyze performance to help you see what’s working and what needs adjustments.
Implementing Automation in Your Gym
Make sure you choose the fitness business automations that are right for your business. Remember, the point is to make things more efficient and to drive your business goals. If something new and shiny comes along that doesn’t necessarily move those needles, then think twice.
Get staff input as you consider which fitness business automations are right. Then train your staff on how to use the new tools, and how to get assistance when it’s necessary.
Inform your team why you’re using fitness business automations, and make sure they know they’re not being replaced – indeed, make sure they know you’re freeing them up to do more of what they really love.
Continuously evaluate and make adjustments to any fitness business automations. Your business is unique, just like every business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, fitness business automations can help you level-up lots of categories of your business operations.
Just think of all the ways you use automation in your personal life – from automatically paying monthly bills to re-ordering basic supplies for your household, from depositing money into savings accounts to relying on social media and calendar alerts to remind you about important birthdays.
Especially now with technology so abundant and affordable, there’s no reason to waste time and energy doing a lot of the daily tasks associated with running a great gym.
All of this will help you bring in more money, understand your metrics, save time by avoiding tedious tasks, and free up your team’s time and energy to elevate your members’ experience.To learn more secrets of how to raise your game, enroll in Naamly Online University today.