What are Renewals?
As much as it is important to gain new sales, it is also key to simply (& easily) allow your customers to renew their membership themselves without any real hard work for you in the club.
Making Member Renewals simple giving your member the chance to renew directly from their Members App
So here are some renewal examples
Annual membership coming to an end in 3 months time but you decide to introduce a renew "Early Loyalty Membership Offer", which will start when the existing membership expires in 3 months time
Offer Free weeks membership pass needs to be upgraded to a paying customer by offering instant joining options/renewal that they might like to purchase meaning you can offer a chance to buy without you even talking to your customer.
Always offer a renewal option for a membership that is due to expire allowing the customer to renew without any input from the club just happens all via the Members App
Renewal Logic
Simply any membership plan that has been set to "cancel at the end of contract" will be made available for being renewed by the customer using their Members App which will display the Renew button when the plan is due to renew.
Choose the Memberships you want to renew
In your current membership plans available to purchase you can also decide which options are available to your customer when their contract ends, therefore planning for their future renewal.
Decide how many days in advance of their current membership end date it will be available to renew.
Decide also how long the renewal will be available to the customer before the option to renew is removed/expires from their members app. This could encourage expired members to still renew for a while longer as well.
Example You can set up that 30 days before the end date and not be available after or you could say it is available 30 days before and also 30 days after the end date to see if that encourages your member to renew.
Decide also at this point which Renewal plans you wish to show the customer as well by selecting Renewable Membership Plans
Note - All renewed membership plans start when the original one expires
Example Membership Annual expires 01/01/2021 meaning the renewal can be sold today, but not start ticking until the 01/01/2021. Means the customer does not miss out on their time from the first membership plan still left to use.
This is decided within the membership plan settings, showing which plans can be seen when it is due to end. The membership plan purchased originally has the renewed membership options of your choice to set up.
Members App customer view will then display a "Renew Now" button to highlight to the customer that there is a renewal option available to them.
The membership renewal options that a customer will see will be the ones that you have decided are visible to purchase when the contract is due to end.
How to set up a Renewal Membership Plan
Our recommended approach would be to create dedicated Renewal Membership plans to ensure the right ones are set up to purchase. You can set up as many membership renewal options as you wish but ensure not to make it too confusing if you do, it is then difficult to measure the success of a renewal campaign.
Create a renewal plan in the same way as normal membership plan, but add in that it is available as a renewal option to be seen.
Also ensure that the membership plan is set to "Can be bought online", if not it will not visible to the Members App.
2. A Renewal plan means they are available to purchase when the current Active plan is due cancel at the end of contract, whether this is a paid in full membership or a monthly membership (which is not rolling)
3. Set up the rest of this Renewal plan in the normal way the only difference now is that this plan will be available to use for renewal's
4. You can also set up a Renewal Plan to do a repeat renewal every year if you wish by offering the same membership offer to renew, by selection of days before and days after the previous renewals cancellation date. Then this plan would almost be like a repeat offer every year.
Important Note regarding Pro Rata
Ensure that the Pro Rata box is NOT checked within the Renewal Membership plan you have set up. If it is ClubRight will start to calculate the Pro rata amount before the renewed membership start date meaning it will try to collect this amount when you would not expect to be taking a pro rata amount as it is a renewal.
Reporting
A new report called renewed members has also been introduced to make it easy to see who has what renewed plans and the ability to see the success of your renewal sales efforts.
Ideas for how to use Renewals
Membership renewals are particularly useful when you are i the quieter times of the year, when new membership sales are slower.
So for example always to do "Early Renewal Campaigns" say coming up to Christmas where you could offer a few months free for renewing early even though the current plan might be due to expire in March the following year you can renew early and get the money in the bank early.
Offer renewal options that also encourage your customer to start a Direct debit up with you and stay around for longer and at the same time increasing your recurring income.
Finally some quick top tips for you
make sure you create all monthly renewal memberships using GoCardless
make sure to have Stripe set up to take card payments for the paid in full renewal memberships
Important note renewals for Direct Debits will not work if you are using Harland's or DFC, but you can use the paid in full renewal option with Stripe set up to take card payments.
Go to your integrations section in Settings to find out more about setting up Stripe and GoCardless.
How to Video's
Here also is an overview of how renewals can be set up ready to use
Type of Renewal | Description | How to video |
Paid In Full Membership Plan | Shows how to set up a Paid in Full renewal option |
|
Monthly Renewal Membership Option | Shows you how to set up a membership plan that can be collected by Direct debit |
|
How to increase you sales with Complementary membership renewals | Shows you how to set up a Free weeks gyms pass and then automatically show the customer a renewal option a few days in |
|
Renewal of a Renewal | How to set up the option to keep offering a continuous renewal |
|