It’s hard to go on the internet today without seeing some sort of news article about how Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world. There has also been an explosion of new tools that leverage breakthrough AI technology in order to help people solve problems, save time, and change the way they work.
As a gym owner, it can be overwhelming to know where to start or if AI is even something that you should be using in any capacity for your business. In this article, we will try to help you make sense of this new and fast-changing landscape and provide you with some ideas on how to use it in your business. Specifically, we are going to focus on how gym owners can use AI to improve client retention.
If you want a deep-dive on AI and the nuances in different types and applications, check out this article: What is AI?
For the purpose of this blog post, let’s use this definition:
AI is the development of computer systems that can perform tasks like humans. It uses data to learn and make decisions. For gym owners, AI can help with things like creating personalized workout programs, providing coaching, predicting member behavior, and improving customer experiences. It's a powerful tool that can revolutionize how gyms operate and retain clients.
The most popular AI tool that has emerged in the past year is one you have probably heard of, if not already used yourself, ChatGPT. This free-to-use tool is incredibly powerful and works by interpreting a text prompt from the user and returning a text response. Try it out by creating an account and using this as a test prompt:
“Come up with 10 ice-breaker questions to use at the beginning of a group fitness class. These questions should be fun, casual, and unrelated to fitness.”
For the purpose of this blog post, we’ll use ChatGPT. However, many of the ideas outlined below can be used in other software products that incorporate AI.
Before we dive into the strategies to use AI for your fitness business, let’s review our focus: Retention. There are countless articles available online about the power of using AI to generate marketing collateral (ad copy, blog posts, etc.). However, we chose to focus on a less-discussed topic of retention. That is because it costs five times as much to acquire a new client than to keep one, according to Two Brain Business.
As a gym owner, you likely already know the financial impact of retention, so let’s dive into how you can improve your retention rates by using AI!
As a gym owner, it may be tempting to ignore AI since you deliver a product & service that is (most likely) in-person and relies on expert coaching, motivation, and other skills that a computer can’t replicate. While this may be true, think of AI as a supplement to the amazing coaching and client experience you’re already delivering.
Here are a few ways that you can use AI, and specifically ChatGPT, to create value for your clients and improve retention.
One of the best ways to use ChatGPT is to generate ideas, refine the list, and then create plans to execute.
You can start with something as high level as “what are 5 initiatives to engage with gym members in order to improve retention” or as specific as “what is a good name for my summer-themed fitness & nutrition challenge”
Let’s walk through an example of a prompt and other questions to do this:
Prompt example: Come up with 5 ideas for an end-of-summer event to host at my gym for members to get to know each other and invite their friends & family.
Pro tip: Use ChatGPT to further refine ideas down to the budget and marketing collateral. Using the previous example, continue by saying “for option #1, put together a budget for 100 attendees, a schedule for a 4 hour event, and an email marketing this event to members”. Keep asking follow-up prompts until you have everything you need to pull off the event!
One of the best ways to improve retention is to continually provide more value for your clients in a way that helps them work towards their fitness goals. Fitness and nutrition challenges are a great way to do that while also building community at your gym and, ultimately, improving your client retention.
Promt example: Come up with 3 ideas for my gym to run a back-to-school fitness challenge. The challenge should be six weeks long and include daily tasks to help people get fitter and healthier.
Remember to keep building out the idea by asking follow-up prompts, such as “create a daily breakdown of the tasks”
Pro tip: Use Wodify Rise to maange registration, daily tracking, and leaderboards for your challenge!
One thing that AI tools are particularly good at is analyzing large & complex datasets. For this recommendation, there’s actually no need to use ChatGPT, because Wodify has already built the first Retention Intelligence tool in the fitness industry.
Wodify Retain works by using millions of data points across thousands of businesses to predict which of your clients are likely to cancel their membership, so you can prevent churn and increase your revenue.
Pro tip: Wodify Retain is included for every Wodify customer! If you’re a Wodify user and need any help or have questions about Retain, feel free to email support@wodify.com.
We hope that these tips help you get started using AI for your fitness business. Once you familiarize yourself with ChatGPT and try out these examples, there are endless possibilities that you will likely think of to apply in your business!
Want to learn more and get starting using the first Retention Intelligence tool for gym owners? Book a demo to chat with someone from our team today!
