Success stories with SMS: using SMS in a gym

STARTING POINT

This well-known gym contacted us about 4 years ago, before the pandemic. They had gyms throughout Spain. When they contacted us, they mainly wanted to win back old clients who stopped going to the gym and wanted to offer them new promotions to return.

NEW CHALLENGES

What they wanted most as a company was to be able to communicate with their old customers and retain them again. But also for gyms there are certain times of the year that are also important for them. People in September and after the Christmas holidays have resolutions to lead a healthier life, and it is at this time that the gym wants to capture them.

Talking with LabsMobile they saw that one of the most effective communication strategies for a gym is SMS Marketing. Their capacity for immediacy, the ease of segmentation of the gym's database and their efficiency were the key. An SMS strategy that was effective in attracting new audiences, recovering old ones and retaining them.

A SOLUTION?

This is how LabsMobile advised them to offer them the advantages of SMS for a type of business like theirs:

1 Currently the vast majority of the population has a mobile phone, and SMS reach everyone, smartphones or older ones. That is why the SMS that was offered to them is a very universal form of communication.

In addition, it allowed them to attract new clients, retain those they already had, increase the performance of the gym and at the same time reduce costs of calls and customer support staff.

2 SMS have an open rate of 98%, and that was very conclusive for the gym marketing team, since other means of communication such as email marketing do not have these numbers. In addition, this increases the conversion of the messages sent.

3 The flexibility to segment your database into men, women, people who go at one time or another, people who use the pool or simply the machine room. This personalization allowed them to create more direct and highly personalized messages. In SMS messages, you can also automate and customize the name of the sender.

4 The certainty that they do not transmit malware to their clients. The speed of sending SMS and also adding SMS Landings that could be interactive convinced them.

Success stories with SMS: using SMS in a gym

From that moment on, the use of SMS for gyms is stipulated for various use cases that they continue to use today and throughout the pandemic.

• SMS for offers and promotions. This use case focuses on certain times of the year before the pandemic, but changes during the pandemic and its subsequent return to the new normal. The return to new habits of life is no longer just after vacations or Christmas parties, now it is at all times. In addition, the offers are intensified during Sales, Black Friday or other indicated dates.
• SMS to recover contact with old clients. This was one of the main functions and objectives of incorporating LabsMobile in marketing and loyalty in gyms. These revised their old database in search for clients who were no longer clients and sent an SMS to invite them to the gym again for a day, for free, or to send them a great reincoporation offer with a discount.   

Example:

"Come back to training in TUMARCAGYM, your safe space. Now, with free enrollment from 20 to 25/06. More info at lm0.eu/j9E"

• SMS for Events. During these last two years with Covid among society, SMS have not been used as much to send invitations with a QR code to Events, but before, it was usual in the organization of special occasions: inauguration of a new exercising room, to invite people to come and try the new spinning class, or come to celebrate the center's anniversary with a healthy snack.
• The use of SMS for the organization of outdoor competitions, meetings or races. These types of messages were ideal for them to appeal to gym members in case they were organizing this type of sporting events, very often during the outdoor pandemic. In this way, they could notify all those who were interested to participate in a simple, economical and fast way.
• SMS for the launching of new courses. SMS are an ideal means to publicize new courses or sessions, either physically or online, to potential members. 
• Create a new contact list with SMS. This use of SMS is also very useful to create our own mobile database. In Spain, thanks to the SMS message reception service, customers were allowed to sign up for an SMS news bulletin, or for paddle tennis groups or other automated forms of communication.
• The SMS for reminders of collections or due dates was also another of the uses that our clients adopted. Reminding customers to pay duties or about the expiration of their subscription was decisive for the collection problem. SMS for collection notices or for collections are usually accompanied by a link to the payment website, or to a specific landing page with special buttons to pay, for example, by a credit card or through PayPal.
• SMS to promote the gym's social networks. Most sports centers want to have a considerable number of followers on social networks to be able to interact with their clients, have a greater window of visibility and create a socialization group that provides them with a community. And, in this sense, we also helped them to increase their number of followers.
• Sending SMS to inform about the gym’s services. Another function that was agreed for sending SMS was to be able to send customers information about the services quickly and cheaply. Especially when they wanted to advertise their new personal training or nutritional advice service.
• SMS to congratulate customers' birthdays. Sending a birthday greeting via SMS always helps to pamper and retain customers and, in this sense, the gyms were no different. With LabsMobile, it was possible to automate these sendings so that the database clients received them correctly on their birthday, which they already had in their database. In addition, he sent them offers, gifts or small discounts on additional services so that they felt exclusive and privileged. This marketing move later helped increase the number of people who signed up for the personalized workouts and diet plan.

Example:

¡NO ENROLLMENT FEES! Sign up from 2/1 to 2/7 an join the best fitness group without enrollment fees. We’ll be waiting for you! More informartion and signups at link.eu/qo71hO1

Results of sending SMS in a gym with LabsMobile

Then, sending SMS was a very efficient strategy for every type of gym client:

• Habitual clients received a loyalty strategy and continuous communication to attend events or competitions. Plus, they got special offers on their birthdays together with greetings. 
• The non-habitual client started receiving focused communications with added value.
• Possible clients were another target that improved with LabsMobile’s SMS strategy.
• And clients who had unsubscribed were given new reasons to attend the gym, with attractive promotions and new services in the open air (during COVID times). 

Success stories with SMS: using SMS in a gym

All in all, SMS was a strategy that was perfectly adapted to the needs of sports centers, since it was a tool based on constant communication with the client (also called proximity marketing). All this created a direct and constant communication with the client that gave this company better engagement.