With the new year just around the corner, one of the busiest and most exciting times for your leisure centre is almost here. And this coming year could be your most successful yet. 

As resolutions are made and health kicks begin, your centres will be looking to recruit as many new members as possible. 

If you want to enhance your new year’s recruitment drive, attract more prospects and convert more new memberships, make sure you’re using the right software. 

It can improve efficiencies, streamline operations and increase the success of your recruitment efforts. 

Here are a few ways you can take advantage of your software in the new year:

1) Automate Your Marketing And Prospect Engagement

Put the right marketing software in place, and you and your team should find advertising to new prospects simple and effective. 

Use your software to send the right messages, on the right channels, at the right time, reaching the right audience. From online pop-ups and app notifications to emails and SMS messages, set up your software to promote all your New Year’s membership offers in a variety of ways, so you can engage as many people in your community as possible. 

You can also automate your software in a number of ways, creating digital customer journeys to guide prospects through the process of arranging their visit and signing up. And you can reduce the admin demands on your team by making sure all unsubscribes and other GDPR compliant procedures are followed automatically.

2) Maximise Your Data Collection And Insight

Your membership management software can help you collect data on all the prospects who visit your centres, helping you to re-market and re-engage with anyone who doesn’t sign up then and there. 

With a very busy new year period, you’ll likely have lots of visitors your team don’t get to talk with as much as they like. Use your software to identify those you need to follow up with. 

And if you have an integrated database across all your centres, you’ll get accurate, real time data on prospects wherever they visit. If someone visits a second time, or makes a first visit to a different location, your software will help your team spot the opportunity to talk about membership options. 

3) Improve The Sign Up Process

One of the biggest challenges of new year’s recruitment drives is signing up all those new members in the quickest and most efficient way. 

Cumbersome paperwork takes up your team’s time unnecessarily, often gets misplaced, looks messy to prospects and should be avoided. 

Your software can take all that hassle away with fast and simple sign up options. Deploy it so prospects can pick their own preferred membership plan via an easy-to-follow process online or on your app. 

With the right processes in place, you won’t have new members waiting around to sign up – it will all be handled by your software.

4) Make Payment Options Work For You And Your Members

Another barrier that could prevent your new year’s recruitment drive from being as successful as you like is payment options. 

If your new members have to pay for half a month, or for time they haven’t used the facilities, they might be put off joining. Or if you have a fixed monthly Direct Debit date that doesn’t match with a member’s pay day, they might not feel confident agreeing to a monthly membership. 

You can use your software to avoid all those problems and help convert more new memberships. The right membership management software means you can:

• Avoid any pro-rata payments, starting the day when a member joins 
• Allow members to pick their billing dates to suit their needs
• Demonstrate flexibility and support for your new members 

5) Streamline Direct Debit Mandates 

The right software can also make the Direct Debit process a lot smoother and simpler for your new members, improving the efficiency of your recruitment drive. 

Your team won’t need to worry about more paperwork or making sure forms are filled in correctly – your software takes care of all that. 

Use it to collect digital signatures on Direct Debit Mandates and automatically verify all the information your members enter, so you’ll never find you have incorrect bank details that you need to chase up at a later date. 

6) Get Real Time Oversight Of Your Efforts 

If you’re running recruitment drives across multiple leisure centres, you’ll want to know exactly how things are going on the ground. You’ll want to know if your centres are signing up lots of new members, or if you need to introduce more incentives and offers to meet your targets. 

Your membership management software can give you that insight. With real time, accurate reporting from all your centres, you’ll always have the full picture for your recruitment drive and be able to act accordingly to enhance its results. 

7) Let Your Team Do What They Do Best 

Perhaps most importantly, when you have the right software in place, you’ll free up your team to do what they do best. To engage members, conduct tours of your leisure centre and offer their help and advice wherever it’s needed. 

Use your software effectively, and you’ll reduce – or even eliminate – the unnecessary time your team spends on paperwork and payments. 

Use your software to your centre’s advantage, and your team can spend more time on showing prospects around and converting them into new members – making sure your new year’s recruitment drive is as successful as possible. 
Do you have the right software in place to support your new year’s recruitment? Find out how Legend could help your leisure centre today.