The new ClubWise demographics tool provides in depth member, prospect and general demographic data that allows you to effectively market and make informed decisions on the management of your club. With features including target pin-pointing using google maps, downloadable postcode lists and email/SMS marketing by demographic segment, this powerful tool ensures your campaigns are seen by the right people in the right way, for the best possible return on investment.

Demographics are important to all businesses, especially those that are looking to impact the lifestyle of their customers or, in this case, members. Demographics split the population down into groups relating to gender, wealth, age, life stage, children, ethnicity, home ownership, employment status, location, and more. Highly accurate census data means you can target prospects and retain members with intelligent direction, avoiding costly mistakes.

Targeting your prospects

Demographics crucially help you to personalise your marketing (personalisation undoubtedly being the marketing buzz word of 2014). Whilst personalisation is especially prominent in digital marketing, it essentially boils down to a growing consumer trend in wanting a tailored experience based on specific needs or interests. One-size-fits-all just isn't going to cut it anymore.

It only makes sense that you should have a different message for the student population, to the young families with small children. Their lives are very different, therefore what they find important in a club will be very different too. A student is likely to focus on cost, whereas a young mum with very little time on her hands is more likely to focus on whether the opening times fit in with nursery drop offs and the quality of the facilities.

That said, you'll also want to hone in on marketing to some of the tougher areas, for example, those near to your competitors. The demographics tool allows you to put handy little flags on where your competitors are located, so when it comes to targeting that particular area, you can do so with full impact! Identifying your prospects and understanding their key demographic characteristics enables you to create campaigns that will resonate with them, setting you ahead of the competition.

Where should I start?

With so many options to drill down into, it can be difficult to know where to start on your demographic targeting, here are a few good places to start:

• Active members
By identifying your active members, you already know the demographic types that your club appeals to. All that's left is to find out where these groups are located (if you're looking to outreach), or simply run a report to send an email or SMS campaign to.

• Location location location
It makes sense to target those closest to your club for convenience above anything else, so create campaigns for the demographic groups that fall into this catchment and again, either get your outreach guys on standby or prepare to send highly directed emails and SMS messages.

• The "nice-to-have" members
Depending on your club, your nice-to-have members could be those that rarely default on payments, have referred friends, are long-standing members, are providing additional business as a PT client or are on the highest DD rate. Now, you can view the profile of your memberships to see which demographic groups perform the best in these areas, and use these as a starting point for targeting.

Retaining your members

Understanding the demographics in which active members, members and ex-members fall into will ultimately help you to improve your member experience, and therefore your retention.

So, let's go back to our student friends. Let's say that about 40% of your membership base is made up of students. How can you enhance their experience? What do students like? Two things spring to mind; social media and free stuff. This tells us that you need to ensure you have a strong social media presence with good content, and perhaps run monthly competitions with prizes. And how do we let them know about your competitions? You got it - by targeted email or SMS. Simple!

The same applies for ex-members. If there are a large amount of leavers that fall into a certain demographic - why is that? If several females that fall into the young families demographic leave, you can investigate why that might be. Is it because your competitor is open earlier? Do they have a creche? Is it simply that there are limited classes at your club? Again, send targeted communications addressing some of these issues, or perhaps send a quick survey.

Establishing your active member groups as a benchmark will enable you to see if the changes and improvements you are making are impacting on the member activity. The happier your members are with your service and facilities, the more active they are likely to be.

In a nutshell, demographics enables you to...

• Effectively target email and SMS communications to members and prospects based on demographic group.
• Monitor trends within your membership base, so you can react accordingly.
• Compare the demographic groups to understand the detail behind your membership gains and losses.
• Identify the demographic groups with the highest/lowest: percentage of defaulters, percentage of referrals made, percentage of PT clients, length of stay, average DD rate and amount of active members.
• Retain your members by understanding their background, providing you with the information you need to enhance their in-club experience.
• Run reports on postcode listings for specific demographic groups, to ensure your outreach and leaflet distribution is as effective as possible.

Would you like to add demographics to your current suite of ClubWise services?

If you're already a customer looking to grow your business further using the demographics tool, get in touch via the button below for a demonstration and for advice on adding it to your solution.

Already subscribe to our location intelligence tool?

The new demographic features now come free as part of that package! For more tips on how to optimise the usage of your demographics tool, just get in touch with our our friendly support team on 01844 348300 (option 2) or email clubsupport@clubwise.com

Not a ClubWise user yet?
Get in touch via the button below to contact our friendly sales team for a demonstration on the whole of the ClubWise system, and for more information on how we can help you grow your memberships, retain your members and optimise your cashflow.