“Clubs with 1,000 members will probably have about 1,500 ex-members, many of whom are thinking about re-joining and just need a push. We regularly survey clubs’ ex-members about their current exercise habits and usually find that over 50 per cent are currently doing nothing.

When making contact, email is the cheapest, easiest and provides intelligence in terms of opens and clicks. But email is also the easiest to ignore, so it’s important to mix the communication up – for example, SMS, a phone call or even a hand-written postcard if you have some news that will really resonate with the person. In order to do this effectively, you will need to find out about their goals while they are a member.

Don’t make messages too sales-like, or full of special offers: you risk devaluing the club with lots of discounts. Instead, talk about news that might be relevant, such as a new class or refurbished showers. Make sure the focus is on how you can help them as members if they come back.

The key is to focus on what the member is trying to achieve. Find out what they are interested in early on and use that to make the message more personal later on. You need to make them feel special and re-enthuse them about their goals.”

“When the circumstances are right, lapsed members can be a significant source of new business and can be brought in with little effort and resource by using electronic communications and automations.

We maintain a high level of lapsed member communications for a variety of reasons: with our City clubs, people often relocate and come back after a few years, so we aim to be the first port of call on their return. Also, by maintaining positive engagement, they might still recommend our clubs to friends who live in the area. We also inform lapsed members about circumstantial changes. For example, when we launched a pay-as-you-go option for studio classes, we targeted lapsed members who had cited lack of use as a reason for leaving the club. There was a significant uptake, and many have since rejoined.

A lapsed member strategy should involve an online exit survey, then stay in touch via social media and keep them engaged on their own terms. Our e-newsletters contain non-club specific communications, such as different training techniques, and we use personal preferences so people can opt out. When you have a reason to contact them about rejoining, use your data to make it specific and personal.”

“The lapsed member market represents an overlooked facet of business that health and fitness operators need to pay greater attention to: it can prove easier to re-engage this market and is more cost-effective than finding new members. Research has shown the net return on a new customer from an external source is 23 per cent, compared to a 214 per cent return from the reinstatement of a defected customer. So maintaining and utilising an accurate database of lapsed members is essential.

Establishing why members leave is the starting point of the re-engagement process and crucial to the success of any re-engagement strategy. However, my research showed that only 52 per cent of health and fitness operators in Ireland complete an exit analysis to find out why members leave. Clubs should be implementing a short exit analysis survey of every member who leaves, finding out what incentives would help re-engage them.

Importantly, this survey should form part of the overall customer service menu on offer in the club, with members regularly being asked their opinion of the service. This can provide an advance indication of members at risk of discontinuing membership, and affords clubs the opportunity to salvage potential lost business.”

“Re-engaging lapsed members is not the only way to grow market penetration, and not as important as club location and ease of access, for example. However, I’ve spoken to many operators who say the lapsed member database is a good source of members. All lapsed members once valued the offering and had the exercise habit, so this is a good start.

One of the main obstacles to re-engaging lapsed members is that clubs don’t usually have a deep understanding of why people joined, what they did when they were in the club, and what caused them to lose the habit and cancel their membership. If clubs can capture this information while people are still members, it gives them a much better chance of re-engaging them at a later date.

In order to get lapsed members back in, clubs need to offer easily consumable services that people will be interested in. Special offers can be a good way of getting people back into the club, but once they’re there, you need to have a habit formation plan to retain them. If not, they will just yo-yo in and out of the door. It’s worth investing in electronic ways to re-engage customers: you can still look after members even without lots of human resource.”