The Membership Growth and Retention Model

We know that people start playing squash for a range of reasons and have their own goals to achieve - whether this is getting fit, having fun, making friends or competing at a higher level. If you think about it they key to any successful business is giving people what they most want. So how can we go about giving people what they really want?

The answer is motivation. That's why we have come to a club in the first place. Getting and keeping people involved in squash is all about understanding their motivation so they can achieve their goals. But how can we tell if we are giving people what they really want?

It's simple, people participate in our facilities more often. So how do we increase participation?

The process

The Membership Growth and Retention Model has been designed as a framework to help clubs approach participation and membership growth in a systematic way.

To start we need to identify and understand our club's target squash audiences and generate leads. Once we know what motivates people to try squash we can help them to participate by leveraging social interaction and enjoyable experiences. Making squash social is one of the most powerful motivators. We are social creatures who love to spend time with other people. This further motivates people so they choose to play more often and end up staying longer. Once we have satisfied members they renew their memberships and refer others.

The result

• As the number of relationships (through participation) increases… so does new-member retention.
• With better new-member retention… you have more money to spend on acquisition (getting more new members).
• With more compelling acquisition experiences… membership retention becomes easier.

The Membership Growth and Retention Model is great for squash clubs to follow and gives a structured step-by-step approach that can be tried, tested and improved over time. The key will be having different people take responsibility for each of the five different steps.

More information

• For help with identifying target squash audiences click here
• For promotional resources to help with creating leads click here
• To view the range of programmes available click here
• For ideas on new member management click here
• For ideas on improving current member engagement click here