Our phones are deeply ingrained in our daily lives, and we rarely (read: "never") leave home without them.

Experts say cell-phone dependency has grown by 20% in the last two years, and the average person checks their phone 96 times a day or every ten minutes. Moreover, text messages have a 98% open rate, and most messages are read within three minutes. These facts make SMS messaging a reliable and consistent way to keep your members informed and active at your club.

Let’s walk through some ways you can use it to improve overall member engagement.

Welcome New Members and Celebrate Special Milestones

Beyond the superior open rate for SMS messages, studies show that consumers prefer text messages over emails for all types of communication. Use this fact to your advantage by sending your members an initial “welcome to the club” message.

From there, workout milestones, club anniversaries and birthdays all make perfect reasons to show your members you appreciate them with an automated text message.

Confirm Lessons and Appointments

You know that one of the essential ways to retain members is to keep them coming back and participating in club activities and services. But they’re busy, and it can be hard to remember their scheduled appointments and lessons. Help your members keep track of these things by automating text message confirmations and reminders. Whether it’s a massage appointment, personal trainer session or a tennis lesson, SMS reminders can drastically reduce no-shows and cancelations, keeping your members active and engaged.

Promote Events and New Programs

You can also help your members stay up to date on upcoming events and new classes and programs through automated text messages. Start by promoting the program or event with an initial SMS message, and then send out reminders for registration deadlines.

Since text messages have a higher open rate than emails and a better impression rate than social media posts, using them will boost registrations and program participation.

Confirm Court Reservations

With SMS messaging, you can provide full-service court reservations with convenient text reminders. This feature helps keep your courts booked while increasing member engagement and improving tennis program revenue. More and more, members expect full-service features, and SMS messaging helps meet this need.

Share Updates and Schedule Change

Whether it’s due to inclement weather, a sick instructor or an annual holiday, it’s essential to keep your members updated on facility closures and class cancelations. Automated SMS messaging allows you to do it in real-time, ensuring no one shows up for a canceled class or closed facility.

Inform Members of Sales and Special Offers

As we mentioned earlier, people generally prefer text messages to emails. Moreover, your club members will read your text messages, but they will only read about 25% of your emails. For this reason, you should be using SMS messaging to communicate sales, promotions and special offers.

It’s best to use SMS messaging as part of a multi-channel marketing campaign, which will allow you to balance your communications for maximum effectiveness. This strategy works best because people communicate on multiple platforms and in many different ways. Balancing your marketing communication by using a mix of SMS messaging, email and paid social media ads will drive conversions and result in increased revenue.

If you’re tired of sending emails that aren’t opened and posting updates that get lost in Facebook newsfeeds, it’s time to embrace the benefits of SMS messaging to aid membership management. Through text messaging, you can reduce cancelations and no-shows while improving overall club program participation, therefore, improving club member engagement.

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