Everyone recognizes that business reviews have value (NYT link or some contested business review story). However, it’s been a challenge to tangibly measure their true value. Most recently, new companies have made significant progress in showing how this value can be looked at from 2 different angles, one of which can definitely be measured! (more on that later!).

The Basis

Let’s start with something that has been demonstrated, proven and measured – the value of customer retention.

According to MethodCRM:

• 80% of small business revenue comes from 20% of customers
• 5% higher customer retention can increase profit by 25%
• Repeat customers spend 67% more than new ones

Since the dawn of time, Word of Mouth (WOM) has been a driving force of business growth. Numerous studies show that WOM clients provide more value than walk-ins and other kinds of customers because they stay longer and spend more money. There is a definite correlation between WOM and Customer Retention.

In today’s internet era, online reviews are the new word-of-mouth, especially Google reviews. Official studies show that 84% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 91% of customers read online reviews before deciding to purchase.

Why? Because the opinions of others are crucial in creating trust about a product or service, or a business in general. We rely on other people’s experiences, hoping to get the same good experience and – avoid the bad ones.

That means that good reviews will definitely help you organically get the people through the door. Coming in with the element of trust – they will be more likely to stick and become loyal as well.

Measuring Impact of Reviews

Remember the first sentence where we stated it’s been “a challenge to tangibly measure” the value of reviews? That’s changed. Companies have been looking at it for years, and at least one – ClubReady Partner Referrizer – has managed to crack the code.

How it Works

Google’s algorithm takes into account both the quantity and freshness of reviews (how recently it was posted), comprising approximately 15-20% of its decision-making process regarding the visibility of a business.

Looking at the data collected over the years, they’ve discovered a direct correlation between the growth of reviews and the subsequent increase in website traffic—specifically, in terms of website visit rates, click-through rates and impressions.

This example shows the rapid growth in website clicks, especially with the important mobile traffic tracks, after the addition of a focused review program with Referrizer.

To increase the trust factor of your business with google reviews and start gathering more positive reviews, consider a second party solution such as Referrizer’s Reputation Management.

Ready to Get Started?

Note: This article was written by Elena Spasojevic, Co-Owner & Corporate Accounts, Referrizer

RockBox is a boxing and kickboxing fitness franchise that helps members build muscles, build confidence, and build self-esteem. According to the RockBox website, boxing is one of the most effective exercises to tone muscles, boost cardiovascular health, improve core strength and stability, increase stamina, and burn fat.

To build their network of over 60 boxing and kickboxing studios, they needed the software that would help them grow. It was time for them to start scaling their business and provide brand uniformity to all of their new franchises.

It was important to Roger Martin, the CEO + Co-Founder of RockBox, to have uniformity in his reporting, billing, and overall task management, so members would receive the same experience no matter their location. This would also allow him and his business partner to track multi-location success via those same reports.

In 2019, Martin and his RockBox team started using ClubReady across the 15 stores operating at the time. By the time those locations were fully migrated, they had over 25 studios utilizing ClubReady. Currently, they have over 60 studios across the nation.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

“We’ve built out the entire system, so when the next door opens, it automatically is pre-populated in their CRM that every prospect coming in is assigned a lead type. We usually push anywhere from 200 to 300 tasks per day. Once you get your lead list built up, you never run out of tasks to do,” says Martin.

When they open and start setting up a new Rockbox franchise, everything is auto populated for lead management and lead nurture. There is no learning curve because everything is provided for you. They only need to make it happen as the franchise owner!

“They have every drip campaign needed auto synced into the system, so a new owner just needs to follow the playbook. That’s what we want to do as best we can as a franchisor is create an ability for a franchisee to just focus on the execution. When you do that, you have a much stronger network,” says Martin.

Starting with prepopulated workflows in the CRM allows each franchisee to start contacting prospective members on day one, but thankfully, it doesn’t stop there. Rockbox stays in contact with their members throughout their entire lifetime to upsell them, communicate deals, celebrations, and even to check in on those they have not seen in a while and that’s when those automations come in.

Building A Community

A task management tool was what Martin felt RockBox needed. It would provide them with the ability to build a community and not just a place to work out. ClubReady’s software allowed them to set automatic reminders for text messages, emails, phone calls, and even handwritten letters using the automations tools within their CRM. Prior to using ClubReady, they were trying to remember to do all of these things on their own, so when they found the correct solution for them, it really changed the game.

Now, within their ClubReady CRM, text messages and emails are prebuilt with what to write, so each staff member across all franchises can copy and paste the same messages. This makes the task so much faster and easier for them to complete. It provides the franchise with the ability to focus on the members that are in the studio for their workout.

For the phone calls and the handwritten letters, they are provided with what to say through a message reminder. Consistency with the messages shared across every franchise is very important and this allows them to make that happen even over the phone. Martin wants to ensure that people who attend RockBox workouts can relate to the staff, as well as the other members whether it is their first time being there, or their one hundredth time. If a member can walk into their RockBox location and say, “Thank you for the birthday card!” It provides meaningful interactions versus the staff never noticing or acknowledging them.

Start Today

RockBox has set their franchises up for success by building out their task management tool. They developed these processes overtime to provide their franchisees with brand consistency and confidence, but it doesn’t have to take multiple franchises and a time of brand inconsistency for you to make these types of changes. ClubReady will set up the necessary automations you need to start providing brand consistency at your studios with pre-built emails, text messages, and more!

Let’s start today.

Twisted Cycle is an indoor cycling, strength training, and HIIT studio currently with locations across Atlanta, Georgia and Alabama They decided to switch to PerformanceIQ and ClubReady after learning that the benefits of ClubReady outweigh those of their old software.

Why did you decide to partner with ClubReady — what problem were you looking to solve; or what solution were you looking to incorporate?

When I started looking into ClubReady, I wanted to switch to PerformanceIQ from the current software I was using. On my initial call, we discussed the benefits of using ClubReady and PIQ in tandem versus using PIQ with a different main software. During this discussion, we also focused on ClubReady’s automation chain and the abilities it has compared to our current automation tool.

As a business owner, we’re always trying to capture the attention of our customers and our leads. The most important question to me is how many ways can we get in front of our members/leads to bring value and highlight our business? I also liked the ability to assign tasks to my staff. I have a saying inside my company, “Move the needle!” Meaning, there is some way for us to improve in some area of the business. Every. Single. Day. By assigning tasks it allows me to keep my staff accountable and ‘move the needle’.

How has ClubReady benefited your club and your members?

When we made the switch, we were able to get a better app (PIQ app). This gave our members a much better, personalized experience. The ability to assign tasks and make them complete has made a huge difference for us.

How would you describe ClubReady’s customer support?

Amazing. From day one, our reps have been responsive and have worked very closely with us to come up with solutions to problems.

Why should other club operators consider working with ClubReady?

The support team has been amazing. If you have an understanding of automation and how an automation chain can benefit your business, then ClubReady makes perfect sense.

 

Interested in learning more about Twisted Cycle, PerformanceIQ? Do you want to hear from another customer about their experience with ClubReady? Click below.

A recent study found that 98% of text messages are opened compared to just 20% of emails delivered. Cold calling stats are harder to find, but if you don’t ignore calls from unknown numbers you’re in the minority. That makes it clear that effective and engaging text messages should be your first choice in communications. The great news is that it can also help scale your business while maximizing staff efficiency. Like everything else, start with a plan and strategy.

Have A Call to Action

Whether reaching out to a lead or a member via text, the main objective is to get a response that turns into a dialogue that directs them to the purpose for the contact. A common complaint heard from owners is, “I paid for these digital leads, why aren’t they responding?” Just because a person clicked an ad, they DO NOT owe us a response! It is our responsibility to create a call-to-action that merits a reply. Remaining in control of the conversation will ensure that the lead stays engaged and open to reply, for example:

Lead: “What are your hours?”

Studio: “We are open 7 days a week with classes from 6 am-8 pm during the week and mornings only on the weekends! Tell me, when do you prefer to work out?”

A common mistake is answering their question completely without a follow-up call to action. Keep it open! This keeps you in the driver’s seat and prompts the lead to reply to your objective, whether it’s a sale or booking them for a class.

Identify Yourself

First and foremost, identify yourself and where you are texting from to make the client comfortable communicating with your unrecognized number. Without this, you can create a lack of trust right off the bat and decrease your chance of any response. After the introduction, you can segway into your purpose for the contact.

Timing is Everything – Be Ready

People are busy! For every person that prefers morning communications, another will prefer late evening. Some locations will send automated messages when a new lead enters their CRM system, but if the client thinks that message is starting a conversation when it’s not they’ll be disappointed. Engaging when they initially reach out in minutes is great if you can, but being ready to really communicate when they reply is more crucial to results.

What Can Happen?

The fact is texting is how we communicate, and it can drive results. For example, Rumble Hoboken recently opened its doors in February 2023. During its first month of presale operations it was able to attain 311 members – 302 of which were the direct result of text communications!

Learn more, get a demo now.

Jordan Meinster has always had a passion for pickup basketball. “I’ve always played pickup basketball. I never really played organized or on teams or in high school or college. I would go to local parks or gyms or rec centers and join any games that were running,” Jordan says. There were many frustrations that came with him playing pickup games versus structured, organized basketball games; the courts were typically crowded and dirty and there was usually no structure to filter people in and out of games. So, Jordan had an idea to “create a business where it’s pickup basketball and you can still show up whenever you want, but it’s more organized.”

Jordan Meinster is the CEO of PickUp Fitness USA Franchise Company. He built his fitness business from the ground up to provide the industry of pickup basketball with structure and stability.

The first Pickup Fitness USA was founded in Irwindale, California, just outside of Los Angeles in 2012. They now have 63 franchise licenses awarded across the country with 20 locations either open or being built and they anticipate having over 70 locations open by the end of 2024.

The concept of PickUp Fitness USA started by providing adults the opportunity to have more structured game play in a pickup setting but has since expanded their ground into two verticals: adult hoopers and youth hoopers. Within their adult hoopers vertical, they utilize technology they call “CaseyQueue” – named after Casey Meinster, Jordan’s wife and co-founder.

It’s finally the holiday season and we are gearing up for the start of the new year!

In this newsletter, you will find new product features and simpler ways to do your end of year reports. You can also hear from a customer about their wonderful experience with iKizmet.

From the first franchises in 2018 to 160 studios open (Q4 2022) and more than 550 territories sold today, YogaSix has grown to become the largest franchised yoga brand worldwide. That growth didn’t happen by accident.

It takes a continued concerted effort, dedication to processes, and the flexibility to adjust as necessary. “Our business is very simple,” says Michael Leonard, Vice President of Sales, YogaSix. “It is not easy, but our business is very simple. Get leads, have them come in and experience the studio, have them have a great experience, and sell them something.”

Recent user feedback has been vital in prioritizing Scheduling Reimagined releases.

iKizmet 

Gauge how your different instructors are performing by class attendance or prospect (lead) conversion.

Looking to add a solution to your current toolbox? Book a meeting with Allison on the ClubReady team.

Evan joined ClubReady as our Senior Customer Success Specialist. He loves to help clients make their clubs a success!

When not working, he likes to be outdoors. Evan likes to go hiking, swimming, and camping. During these trips, he takes landscape videos using his drone and shares the videos on YouTube for others to enjoy!

End of Year Reports 

Review your end-of-year numbers with ClubReady reports! Learn from how many memberships were signed to leads converted for 2022.  

Refer to these suggested reports to understand how to generate and view your data.

Navigate to Help > Knowledgebase Articles to locate additional resources.

Join a growing, smart community of fitness studio owners using one of the most robust (and affordable) tools on the market today. Loyalsnap is an all-in-one marketing software for fitness studio owners who want to spend more time connecting with their members (and less time sifting through tasks).

With just 50 late-paying and non-paying members, the average studio loses about $40,000 per year. ClubReady is now fully integrated with Swift Financial Services. Swift is the only fitness-focused collections agency. There are no upfront fees and no long-term contracts. All you have to do is opt-in, and ClubReady and Swift will take care of the rest.

November, a time to be thankful for everyone that assists with the happenings of your studio; your staff, your members, and YOU!

In this newsletter, you will find information about how to look at your data without all those crazy spreadsheets, how you can make you and your staff’s work day easier by utilizing our tools for promoting holiday sales and last but not least, how you can utilize the updated ClubReady & iKizmet products.

On Thursday, November 10th at 2:00pm EST ClubReady hosted Visualize Your Analytics in Real-Time — iKizmet powered by ClubReady. Rich Peralta, iKizmet expert,  teaches about all of the ways that you can thrive as a studio and business owner without the hassle of a spreadsheet.

In this webinar you will learn:

• • • • • You no longer need to be a spreadsheet wizard or info gatherer — access all pertinent data in a single dashboard
        • It’s not all about the numbers — easy to read and visualize data with charts and graphs
        • Goal setting and tracking is more user-friendly with metrics focused on the fitness industry

Scheduling Reimagined is now available for use! Use the new platform in side-by-side mode and let us know what you think.

iKizmet 

Navigating through iKizmet just got a whole lot easier with our new makeover! We are no longer hiding reports and pages under the dropdown menu. Move around your iKizmet dashboard with ease and transparency with the new horizontal menu.

Looking to add a solution to your current toolbox? Book a meeting with Allison on the ClubReady team.

Rich joined the iKizmet team in 2015. The opportunity was exciting to him as one of his favorite things to say is “data never lies, but it may not always tell the whole truth”. Rich enjoys assisting his clients and brands grow through their data as he works with them to shape and define the metrics that make sense for their business.

Rich is a husband to his beautiful wife, as well as a father to his wonderful teenage daughter. While he is not looking at the data, data, data, he is riding horses and watching his daughter at her horse show jumping competitions. He enjoys playing guitar and spending time outside with his 3 horses (Hope, Echo, & Nate), 2 donkeys (Velma & Daphne), and 3 dogs (Eleven, Moxi, & Oliver).

Promote your Holiday Sales!

Use our communication features to let your users know of available sales you may have in this holiday season.

Refer to the articles below to understand available features.

Best Practices: Creating Successful Email Templates

Send An Email Blast

Send A (SMS) Text Blast

Navigate to Help > Knowledgebase Articles to locate additional resources.

Join a growing, smart community of fitness studio owners using one of the most robust (and affordable) tools on the market today. Loyalsnap is an all-in-one marketing software for fitness studio owners who want to spend more time connecting with their members (and less time sifting through tasks).

With just 50 late-paying and non-paying members, the average studio loses about $40,000 per year. ClubReady is now fully integrated with Swift Financial Services. Swift is the only fitness-focused collections agency. There are no upfront fees and no long-term contracts. All you have to do is opt-in, and ClubReady and Swift will take care of the rest.

From the very first location in 2017, Mayweather Boxing + Fitness has partnered with ClubReady. Now with more than 60 locations, ClubReady is the nucleus of everything they do, helping them manage growth at the corporate level and empower their owners to better manage their business.

“It’s allowed us to be a really great advocate for the owners to be able to identify when something is missing or make more meaningful recommendations,” says Amanda Enos, Vice President of Sales & Operations, Mayweather Boxing + Fitness. Hear how the Enos and the Mayweather Boxing + Fitness corporate team use ClubReady to make their businesses as strong as possible.

Enos: Yes, we do use it. We own three corporate locations. First and foremost, the locations that we have all run on ClubReady.

Secondarily, my team strategically helps plan sales and operations to grow the business. That requires us, not only to say, here’s what we think you should do. We can say here are our recommendations, let’s hop into the system and see how your team is actually managing a lead. We can ask about what they are saying when they send a text message or what their email template looks like. We use ClubReady to not only be something that navigates the studios we own, but it navigates the conversations for development and training that we need to provide to the owners based on what we see happening or not happening in the system.

Enos: When I came in October, nobody owned ClubReady. I had a team of Sales and Operations support people that I was trying to figure out ‘how are you actually supporting people if you don’t know what you’re doing in the system’. Along the way, we’ve developed and also acquired team members whose part of their job description is being a ClubReady subject matter expert. It’s allowed us to be a really great advocate for the owners to be able to identify when something is missing or make more meaningful recommendations when we know that there are other opportunities for them to optimize a certain part of what ClubReady offers and, or a partner company that ClubReady connects with. Aurora is a great example of that.

We have some studios that go through staffing ebbs and flows, and previously, somebody from ClubReady could have said, ‘Go to Aurora’, but the studio is going to say, ‘okay, great.’ When my team comes in, they can go look and say ‘you are in a staffing scenario, you’re going to lose traction on results, here’s what Aurora the platform does, here’s how we see it integrated into ClubReady beautifully. Would you want to take advantage of speaking to them?’ Since we’re experts in the system, we now can be better about being prescriptive to our franchisees to get them what they need.

Enos: We have the iKizmet plugin, so we use the reporting in there for details. We use the main dashboard to say ‘here are some symptoms. Now we have to get to the root cause with what’s causing the symptoms to be as they are’. A lot of those answers, even from a corporate level with overall company results that we see on the iKizmet dashboard. We can make a lot of guesses based on what we see in iKizmet, but tell us what’s really occurring. It’s our way to prove assumptions about the business.

ClubReady was created to enable growth-minded businesses to reach their goals. From booking to royalty management to custom mobile apps to data analytics, ClubReady provides everything entrepreneurs need to achieve their goals.