By Aaron Eisberg, VP of Marketing for Accuro
Increasing your customer acquisition or conversion rate is one thing - improving the lifetime value of your customers is quite another. Lifetime value means repeat payments from the same people, a strategy that costs you 90% less in marketing than trying to attract new customers over-and-over again. Repeat customers are also much easier to upsell, and there are many other advantages to looking at lifetime value as a priority KPI.
Wearable technology is a relatively new phenomenon in the fitness studio, but it is already being used as a tool to improve the customer experience and keep them coming back. Here's how you may be able to increase your own customer lifetime value through wearable technology.
What is Wearable Technology?
Wearable technology in the fitness industry is an industry that is taking advantage of the increased capacity of smart tech. Smart watches, smart players and other objects that easily fit into the wardrobe of the average person now have the ability to monitor heart rate, steps and workout intensity, among other things. One of the steps that forward-thinking studios are taking is to implement wearable technology as a feature of the studio itself. This keeps the patrons from having to find their own gear, and it adds another benefit to the studio membership.
Wearable tech keeps up with data in the same way that a personal trainer would record progress. Members are able to keep up with their goals, and those records are maintained even if a member switches away from the personal training option at the studio, another advantage for budget conscious patrons.
How Does Wearable Technology Increase Customer Lifetime Value?
Because wearable technology is becoming part of the features that the studio offers, people are more likely to use the feature as a normal part of a workout. With data recorded in real-time and readily available to be pulled up during future workouts, studio members can focus on the physical work to be done rather than carrying around a notebook or a digital recording device. Because the technology is built into the framework of the exercises, members can easily check their progress as they move rather than stopping to refer to notes. This convenience has been shown to bring customers back for more frequent visits, the first step to increasing customer lifetime value.
Because the technology is built into the framework of the exercises, members can easily check their progress as they move rather than stopping to refer to notes.
Once a patron begins to enjoy coming to the studio, that patron is more likely to be open to upsells. They may purchase more expensive memberships, and they will stay longer during each visit. In some cases, wearable technology being incorporated into workouts can lead into requests for personal training. Patrons get hooked on data and the improvement in performance, and they want to supercharge their results.
Forward thinking studios are also tiering wearable technology as a separate membership option, charging a nominal fee for the privilege. In this way, simply using the tech means more money in for the studio for very little extra marketing or manpower, a huge increase in ROI.
Members may also be enticed to take other group classes. With the ability to compare their results to their last performance, rather than against the other people in the class, members will be less self conscious. The more competitive members may also compare notes and create friendly rivalries.
Overall, the opportunities presented through the convenience of wearable technology and the data it stores are quite robust. They give members a sense of being in a modern space, feeling more taken care of, and eager to return to improve their performance. Once they are in the doors, the indirect marketing methods that you have for upsells will naturally take hold, increasing the lifetime value of those customers with a minimum of effort.
Aaron Eisberg is the VP of Marketing for Accuro. A company with over 15 years in the business of capturing fitness data, private cloud storage, data management and data analysis services. Products offered cover a wide array ranging from hardware devices such as wireless enabled body composition scales, blood pressure meters, and heart rate monitors to the data collection and management app, heart rate projection program and cloud based member vital data profile. Our vision is to offer the fitness industry the infrastructure on which a gym or club can build their services and establish their brand to their members.
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