Managing Your Gym's Memberships – A Guide To Choosing And Setting Up A Membership Booking Software
Owning and operating a fitness business is your dream come true. It's not easy getting fitness businesses up and running; there are a lot of complicated and time-consuming tasks that gym owners have to complete just to get the doors open.
Once you've tackled those opening hurdles it's time to take the next step and start thinking about membership management, optimizing your class scheduling, implementing marketing tools, and guaranteeing a great member experience.
To run a successful fitness business, gym owners need an easy and efficient way to streamline their gym management system. The solution is to adopt an excellent gym membership booking software.
What Is Gym Membership Booking Software?
Gym membership booking software (also called gym management software) is an all-in-one software solution – with a suite of fully-integrated features – that helps gym owners like you streamline and automate many of the day-to-day operations of running successful fitness studios.
With a comprehensive suite of software that is specifically designed to help gym owners achieve the best gym management, you'll find that you can get back hours in your week to focus on what you love (creating awesome workout experiences for your members and a great work environment for your employees) and spend less time on administrative tasks.
And a fitness management software doesn't just benefit gym owners; it also benefits gym members and employees. An easy online booking system, secure payment processing, and sophisticated scheduling software makes gym membership management easy for everybody.
Who Can Use Gym Management Software?
Gym management software can be used by any type of fitness business: traditional workout gyms, personal training, yoga or dance studios, boutique gyms, MMA gyms, and martial arts schools just to name a few.
All fitness centers can benefit from a membership booking software that is specifically designed to reduce the amount of time spent on business admin tasks for the owners, managers, and employees.
Top Features Of A Great Fitness Management Software
The best features of a gym membership management software will reduce human error, streamline your operations, simplify your everyday tasks, and help you grow your fitness center to be a thriving business. Let's take a look at some of the key features you should look for when considering the best gym management software for your fitness center.
Gym Scheduling Software
One of the most time-consuming tasks of running a gym used to be scheduling. The best gym management systems will have powerful scheduling software to help you build a class schedule, personal training sessions, and employee schedules with ease and efficiency. They can also help you quickly adjust any last minute schedule needs or changes. Goodbye to spreadsheets, hello to getting hours back in your week.
Online Booking System
Today's gym clients want 24/7 booking access. Your gym scheduling software will be a user-friendly way for gym members to easily book classes from anywhere, anytime. Easy class waitlist management is a huge benefit to adopting a gym management system because it will automatically alert clients when a class they have been waitlisted for has an opening. This helps keep your classes full and prevent loss of potential income.
Online Prepayments
With online prepayments you can easily process payments and collect revenue. Plus, automated billing allows for quick and secure payments for memberships, walk-in classes, or other services – keeping your check-in process smooth and classes running on time.
Member Check-Ins
A mobile check-in system will reduce back-ups at your welcome desk. Gym clients can quickly and easily check into their classes on their mobile app
with this line: A mobile check-in system will reduce back-ups at your welcome desk. Gym clients can quickly and easily check into their classes on their mobile app development.
App Integration And Mobile Apps
A great mobile app is a must for today's gyms and fitness centers. Mobile apps make booking a breeze for busy customers who are booking appointments and classes on the go and allows them to easily manage their accounts and client data for you.
For gym owners and staff, integrated apps are an efficiency game changer. A great membership booking software will offer a wide array of integrated apps, and some of the most popular features are:
Mobile front desk apps that give you incredible flexibility throughout your work day to do things such as create service notes, process client credit cards, scan product barcodes with your camera for quick and easy retail sales, check in clients for classes or services – all without being stuck behind a desk.
Integrated payment processing apps that let you sell services, retail, and gift cards in-store or online, build customer loyalty with rewards programs, securely store cards on file, and accept any payment type.
Business management apps that support payroll, timecard tracking, purchase orders, inventory management, let you quickly access and view the dashboard to track your business goals, and much more.
Digital Marketing Solutions
The marketing solutions that come with a complete software platform will help you build and deploy email marketing campaigns. For example, you can use these communications tools to send your new members referral links to share with their friends, offer discounts on classes or services that need a boost in sales, or let members know about new classes coming to your fitness centers that they might like to try.
Business Data and Analytics
Easy-to-use reporting tools will help you keep track of business goals, marketing endeavors, membership data, and other factors that will allow you to make solid, data-driven decisions with confidence.
Selecting The Best Gym Management System
These are just a few of the many features that gym management software will offer you. So, you want to look for a program that has all of these (and more) when selecting a gym scheduling software for your fitness business.
You will also have access to management features, inventory management support, retail and web storefronts, equipment tracking and maintenance scheduling capabilities, and much more if you select a comprehensive program designed with gym management in mind.
You will find that – when you invest in a gym club management software program – you are able to significantly improve your gym's schedule. By streamlining and automating so many of your business operations, you will finally have the time to focus on the aspects of your business that you get up and look forward to every day.
Tips For Setting Up Your Membership Booking Software
Gym management systems are easy to set up and use, and they will help your fitness center excel at providing an effortless membership experience for your clients. From fitness space and trainer management, to payment processing, to making it incredibly easy to book appointments (and help customers remember to keep them!), you'll quickly see why fitness club management software is the best solution for building a thriving business!
Let's walk through some helpful initial steps for getting started with your gym management software.
Create a great booking page: A booking page is the online space where clients can find your gym's schedule of classes and services. Here you can create and customize classes, special courses, and services in a convenient calendar for you, your staff, and your clients to easily view and make bookings. Your customer site will synchronize with your mobile app for 24/7 access for everyone. Using tags and filters for instructor name, class type, and location will neatly organize your schedule and make it easy for your clients to book the classes and locations that are most convenient for them. If your booking page is disorganized or poorly done, it will deter potential customers.
Set up automated reminders: Automated reminders help your clients keep track of their scheduled classes and services at your fitness studio. Creating an automated reminder system is the best way to reduce no-shows, so it's a critical step in setting up gym management systems!
Offer customized membership plans: Tailor your fitness studio membership plans! You can create monthly memberships with pre-paid plans, walk-in class pricing, class packs, and more. Offering a variety of options gives active members more flexibility and can help bring in more members.
Use the customer relationship management tool: Use this tool to get to know your clients before they even walk through your door. Clients can enter their pertinent information such as limitations or injuries, fitness history or goals, and other relevant information. This will allow your personal trainers to learn about new clients and do any necessary preparations before their class. This is a great way for clients to feel welcomed by your staff and supported in your gym.
Update forms and waivers: Let your customers know about gym policies and safety information and collect important client information by including standard forms and waivers in the sign-up process. These can be accessed by customers and staff at any time for review.
Room and trainer management: Use your membership booking software to assign classes and rooms to your trainers. The ultra-convenient scheduling features in your software can help you ensure that rooms are not double-booked and that classes are allocated to the rooms that have the proper equipment necessary for the class.
Explore Next Level Features For Gym Owners
Once you've got your membership booking system up and running, start to use the business development tools to assess how things are going and make data-driven decisions about your next steps.
For example, use attendance and progress trackers to monitor customer activity and attendance. Which classes are filling up? Which classes have low attendance? Use this data to optimize your class schedules to meet your clients' needs and wants, which will drive positive revenue and help you grow your business.
Identify who is coming in less or has stopped coming in altogether. If a regular client has stopped coming in, reach out to them and see how things are going. Your gym is a place where you foster (and your customers find) community. Your regular customers will appreciate the time you take out of your schedule to check in with them. And hopefully, it will help them get back into the gym sooner.
A great membership booking system will have strong reporting and analytics features to give you critical business insight in easily digestible formats. Leverage these tools to compile data that will provide you with reports on customer behavior or industry trends. Use them to create an overview of your business, then assign goals and track them. These tools are easy to use and can be the difference between a growing business or a stagnant one.
Take it a step further and use integrated digital marketing tools to easily build email campaigns based on your business goals. Send digital coupons for classes with low attendance, to recover missing clients, or boost retail sales. The truly great thing about a comprehensive gym management software program is that all of the tools they offer work together to seamlessly support every aspect of your business.
Manage Your Gym Without Breaking A Sweat With The Best Gym Management Software
Whether you're in the beginning stages of opening a fitness studio or you've already been open for a while and are looking for a better way to streamline your everyday operations, a gym membership booking system is a great investment in your business' future.
An all-in-one solution with powerful software applications can help you move away from inefficient systems and manual processes and toward saving time that can be better spent on the aspects of your business that you love: fostering a great community of fitness-minded people and holding awesome classes.
With STX software, you will have all of the tools mentioned in this guide, and more, to help you build the fitness business that you've always dreamed of. With a powerful all-in-one small business management software, complete point-of-sale solutions, and a convenient client welcome app that makes for seamless communications between your trainers and your customers you'll have every advantage you need to reach your goals without breaking a sweat.
Reach Out Today To See How STX Membership Booking Software Can Help Your Gym Achieve New Heights
Let us show you what one of the best gym management systems can do to improve your daily workflow and help you grow your business. You can give us a call at (800) 766-4778 or visit our website to book a live demo with our team. Contact us today and learn more about how STX can make your business dream a reality!