Fitness club: membership renewals and reminders

A premium fitness club with a large base of regular members and memberships of various lengths. The core of the revenue here is not the first sale but the renewal: a member who renews on time stays for months ahead. But expiry reminders rested on the administrators, who already have plenty of work at the front desk. Calling everyone whose term is running out was physically impossible, and some members quietly dropped off.

We looked at how the base behaves toward the end of the membership term and saw a predictable dip. Churn grew noticeably in exactly the last days of the membership: without a reminder the person put off renewal, then stopped coming and in the end did not return. Manual calls covered only part of the base, depended on the administrator workload and did not scale at all. It turned out the club was losing already acquired and loyal members not because of service quality, but because of silence at the right moment.

We needed to close the gap between the membership ending and the member decision to renew. The assistant should remind them in advance and without pressure that the term is coming to an end, offer clear options and let them renew right in the chat, without a trip to the front desk. It was important not to turn care into spam: one fitting message on time instead of a stream of mailings, with an easy way to opt out.

We built an assistant on WhatsApp that watches the terms across the base and reaches out itself a few days before the membership ends. In a calm, friendly tone it reminds the member that the term is coming to an end and offers convenient renewal options based on which membership the person used. The decision is recorded in the CRM at once, and those ready to renew or wanting to discuss terms are passed by the assistant to a manager with the chat history. The message arrives once and on time, and opting out takes one tap.

The launch took about three weeks. First we exported the terms of active memberships and synced them with the assistant so the reminder went out exactly when needed. Then we scripted the scenario: how many days ahead to write, which options to offer and how the message sounds, so it reads as care rather than a sale. We ran it on a small group of members, tuned the wording from real replies and only then switched reminders on for the whole base.

After launch, retention rose by several percentage points, because members began renewing on time rather than remembering the membership a month after it ended. Administrators were freed from endless calls and switched to live work in the gym and at the front desk. Renewal turned into a short dialog in the messenger, which is more convenient both for the member and for the club. Importantly, the reminders did not cause irritation: people take one timely message as normal service.