Rapid Recovery Data: Boutique Fitness Industry Trends from Zen Planner

Since COVID-19 began to impact the boutique fitness industry, the Zen Planner team has been collecting, analyzing and reporting weekly data trends for our customers. This week, we are going to share that with the entire Zen Planner community.

We are fighting for you, as you are fighting for your members, students and athletes. In addition to these weekly trends, Zen Planner encourages you to check out the Rapid Recovery Toolkit and the industry-leading Re-Opening Playbook.

Membership Trends 

Membership trends are showing positive signs. Active memberships have held steady for the last three weeks at nearly 70%. We expect that is because many of you have begun reopening and members are moving their memberships off hold. With that, we are seeing 12.13% of those members who were active before COVID-19 are now on hold and 17.66% have canceled.

Since early March, 584,704 boutique fitness members have been “orphaned.” These members will be looking for a fitness community to join at some point. Are you positioning your business to capture these new members? Now is the time to start strategizing for this with digital marketing and strategic communications.

Payments Revenue for Zen Planner Customers 

In the first two months of 2020, we saw about $75M per month in processed payments volume for US customers. In March 2020, that dropped to $66M. In April 2020, it dropped to $42M. And, in May, it’s projected to be around $41M. We’re projecting about $304M in payments volume in the US by end of May, compared to $373M we hit by May 31, 2019. While that is a 19% decrease year over year, our industry is undoubtedly on the road to recovery.

Virtual Workouts and Community Engagement

When stay-at-home orders were announced, Zen Planner launched a virtual class feature within the management software. Nearly 20% of Zen Planner customers were using this feature as of May 16^th. In the seven-week period since this feature launched, an average of 13,247 virtual classes have been scheduled each week. We will continue to track virtual class usage as locations begin to reopen and adapt to their new reality.

SugarWOD’s impact on gym workout programming and community engagement during COVID-19 has been massive, creating new and exciting opportunities for connection. Gym subscriptions have increased by 250.52% compared to this time period last year. Additionally, free trials have increased by 74.85%, and logged workout results have increased by 11.35%. For many of you, the virtual programming and memberships will be a part of your new normal. Now is the time to provide value to members with virtual options and determine a plan to continue these offerings as you reopen.

Capture New Members with Digital Marketing and Strategic Communications

In the UpLaunch Broadcast Center, emails and texts sent the week ending May 16^th were 65% higher than the week ending March 8^th, the time period right before stay-at-home orders and closures went into effect. In addition to communicating with your current members, now is the time to start positioning your business for recovery and growth. As you fight through this challenging time and consider those nearly 600,000 orphaned members we mentioned, consider your strategy now for attracting those people who are searching for new fitness homes.

In addition to our library of resources in the Rapid Recovery Toolkit, leverage this data to inform your business decisions in this ever-changing time period. Thank you for your leadership, be well and recover strong!