International workout facility Fitness First dropped its loyalty program, and replaced it with a data-driven rewards offering. The gym experienced a significant branding overhaul at the beginning of 2014, including logo change and web redesign, and is continuing to pass mile markers in improving its customer experience reputation.
The three-year project to beef up its brand was motivated by a desire to become more in-tune with members on increasingly personalized levels. Until now, Fitness First had maintained a traditional customer loyalty program that offered third-party discounts as well as added-value member perks.
While loyalty as an ideal remains a top priority for the company, the previous loyalty program offering fell short of expectations in terms of online engagement with rewards. As a result, Fitness First saw the opportunity to offer more personalized customer benefits by discontinuing its program.
“Our position is that we are changing for the best,” Emma Collet, national marketing manager, said in a release. “We want to listen to members more, and to ask and respond in everything we do.” While not fully fleshed out, the central aim of the new offering is to help customers reach individual fitness goals and best utilize their membership for specific needs.
To achieve this, the company had to better understand consumer behavior, and thus turned to data analytics. “If someone can only come two times per week and it suits them, then we need to understand why that is their habit,” Collet said. First Fitness purchased Helix Persona data, which provides lifestyle and demographic information, and combined it with transactional visitation data, in order to build accurate and informative profiles of their members.
“If you can make it work so it’s built into the membership identity,” she added, “customers can jump on the website or the app and see their details. We want to have a surprise and delight element to it all but about being a motivational tool.”
In an industry where New Year’s resolutions tend to last until the end of January, the ability create unique and engaging experiences that carry longevity is critical. At last year's Engagement & Experience Expo in Dallas, we saw with another unique fitness group Iron Tribe Fitness leverage personalization to lift the customer experience in similar ways.
“We continue to see brands realize that points, thresholds and traditional reward mechanisms are not creating the value proposition that brands require,” Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, said. "The need to reconfigure programs to focus on a mutually beneficial exchange that focuses on creating reciprocity between brand and consumer has never been greater."