Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketing Automation Misses Your Gym Membership
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, here's a question: how many gyms have you belonged to in the last five years? Luna: Oh, I don't know, maybe three? And I still get emails from the first one, telling me about their new yoga classes. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the gap we're going to dig into today: why marketing automation so often misses your gym membership. Not just the cancellation, but the whole lifecycle of join, cancel, rejoin. Luna: I feel like every gym I've ever quit has sent me at least three 'We miss you' emails after I left. Lucas: Right, and they're not even bad emails, they're just pointless. Because the system doesn't actually know you left. It treats a cancellation like a pause, or worse, it just keeps the campaign running. Luna: So what's going on under the hood? Why is this so common? Lucas: Part of it is that gyms run on third-party software for billing, and their marketing automation is a separate tool. The two don't always talk cleanly. So when you cancel, the billing system updates, but the marketing tool doesn't get a clean event. It might get a status change, but the automation isn't built to handle that status as a trigger. Luna: So it's a data pipeline issue. But I've also seen gyms that use the same CRM for both. Why do they still mess it up? Lucas: Because the lifecycle stages are often oversimplified. They have 'member' and 'former member,' but they don't have 'canceled last week' versus 'canceled two years ago' as separate segments. So a re-engagement campaign goes out to everyone who ever canceled, even if they'd never come back. Luna: And when you rejoin, the system treats you like a brand new person. I actually rejoined a gym after a gap and got a 'Welcome new member!' email with a promo code I couldn't use because I was already a member. Lucas: That's the 'lost in transition' problem. When a churn event isn't captured correctly, the rejoin doesn't know you're a returning member. So you fall into the new-member flow, and you get all these onboarding emails that make no sense. Luna: What's the cost of that, beyond just annoying emails? Does it actually hurt the business? Lucas: It does. There was a mid-sized fitness chain in the Midwest that went through a CRM migration last year. After the move, they saw re-enrollment from past members drop by 15 percent. The reason: all those returning members were being put into the wrong nurture track. Luna: Fifteen percent is huge. What were they sending them? Lucas: They were sending the standard new-member series: here's how to book a class, here's how to use the app, here's a discount on personal training. But these were people who already knew the gym. They had their own history. The messaging felt off, and they didn't rebook. Luna: So the automation didn't just fail to retain them, it actively pushed them away. Lucas: Exactly. And the fix is actually pretty straightforward, which is why it's so frustrating. You need a proper churn event, and you need to suppress those people from the regular campaigns. Luna: But what about the 'We miss you' emails? Those are still going out to me years later. Lucas: That's a segment suppression issue. They never put a time limit on the re-engagement campaign. So it just fires forever. A good practice is to cap it at 90 days, then move people to a dormant list that gets no marketing unless they explicitly opt back in. Luna: Ninety days feels generous. Most people who are going to come back do it within three months, right? Lucas: That's the assumption, and it's usually right. But the bigger point is that the automation needs to respect the person's current state, not their past state. Luna: So what would a well-built returning-member flow actually look like? Lucas: First, the rejoin event has to trigger a different journey. The welcome email should acknowledge they're back: 'Welcome back, we're glad to see you.' Then it can remind them of their favorite class categories, or if they had a regular trainer, it can reference that. Luna: That requires the CRM to actually retain historical data. Which I know some gyms don't do because they purge records after a certain period. Lucas: Right, and that's a data retention policy decision. But even if you purge, you can keep a simple flag: 'returning member, joined previously.' You don't need their entire workout history. Luna: So it's not about building a super complex system, it's about getting the basics right. Lucas: It is. And that's why I think this is such a good case study for anyone working in marketing automation, not just gyms. Because the same pattern shows up in any subscription business—streaming services, meal kits, even software. Luna: Actually, I just realized something. I canceled a streaming service last month, and I'm still getting their 'come back' emails. But I'm not subscribed anymore, so I can't even watch the content they're showing me. Lucas: And that's the exact same failure. The email is useless because the person can't act on it without re-subscribing, and the email doesn't even ask them to subscribe. It just says 'look at this great show.' That's a missed opportunity. Luna: So the fix would be to make that email actually convert. Instead of just showing the show, it should have a clear call to action to re-subscribe, and maybe a special offer. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the 're-engagement with intent' approach. You're not just reminding them you exist, you're giving them a reason to come back. Luna: I think the reason this keeps happening is that marketers default to the easiest automation, not the most accurate one. Lucas: That's a fair way to put it. And we saw that in the gym example. They had the data, but they didn't have the event-based triggers set up. The tool is only as smart as the architecture you build around it. Luna: Before we wrap up, I want to say something about this show. We keep it ad-free on purpose. It's a choice we've made to keep these conversations clean and focused on what matters. If that's something you value, and you have a few dollars to spare, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely helps us keep the lights on. Lucas: And it's a small gesture that goes a long way for us. We don't mention it often, but it's how we stay independent. Now, back to the gym. Luna: So if you're listening and you're a marketer at a gym or any subscription business, what's the one thing you should take away from today? Lucas: I'd say: map out your churn event and your rejoin event as two separate triggers, and don't let a former member fall into the general nurture stream. That single change would fix most of the problems we've talked about. Luna: And if you're a consumer, you can at least know that it's not you, it's the automation. Lucas: Exactly. The next time you get a 'We miss you' email from a gym you left three years ago, you'll know exactly what went wrong.