Lapsing Client Sequence

Not to be confused with “Lapsed Client” or “Winback” campaigns, the Lapsing Client sequence of automations is designed to make sure active members do NOT cancel due to non use or under utilization of their current membership. Think about this as “preventive” measures instead of “responsive” measures, as we’ll cover in our Lapsed Client/Winback campaigns.

Sequence Goals

The purpose of the Lapsing Client sequence is to notify a staff member to personally reach out to an active member (defined here as having any active contract) to prevent them from cancelling. Instead of having the same automation trigger each 7 days, we have created a sequence of automations that trigger based on an active contract holder’s most recent attendance. We’ll also take into consideration that the person does not have any upcoming events scheduled, and are not currently in class when these automations trigger.

Once a client attends again, the sequence of automations will start over. Each automation in this sequence acts uniquely, so if a member attends after the first prompt, they would be eligible to trigger that same automation again should they have another 7 days of consecutive absence.

Where Lapsing Client Sequence fits in your client journey

Membership - You’ll likely have a series of automations dedicated to welcoming clients as they purchase their first membership, and nurturing them throughout the first few months of their membership to checkin on their progress.
Lapsing Client Sequence - The Lapsing Client sequence is really a sub category within your membership targeted communications, as the purpose of this automation is to prevent clients from cancelling due to under utilization.
Membership Expiring - Also a sub category of membership targeted communications, the purpose of these few touch points would be alerting staff to reach out to clients before their current memberships expire, proving a more effective strategy to renew those contracts, and more seamless transition for you clients with no lapse of membership.
Lapsed Client / Winback - For those members we are not able to renew, or fall off our radar for other reasons the Lapsed Client automations serve as a safety net, ensuring we can continue to keep out brand top of mind for when the former client is ready to return.

Designing a good Lapsing Client Sequence

1. Keep it personal

In our automation catalog we’re intentionally providing To-Do automations only (of course, you are more than welcome to change these to SMS or Email if you prefer). Notifying your staff to reach out with a personalized message vs automating an SMS or Email provides a few benefits:

Allows staff to delete the To-Do if it doesn’t make sense to reach out. Some clients will have extenuating circumstances such as vacation, injury, complications at home etc. By populating a To-Do instead of texting the member directly, your staff has the ability to reach out only if it makes sense to do so.
Levering client data - Your staff can leverage client data from their LoopSpark profiles to make the communication more tailored, such as noting the client’s preferred class time or class type. This can go a long way in keeping your customer service personalized, such as “Hi Jane, haven’t seen you in a while and been thinking about you recently. We have 2 spots open in our 8:00am vinyasa class tomorrow. Should I reserve one for you?”
Unique content each time - Instead of receiving the same “we miss you” message each X days, your staff can change up the content, providing an extra layer of authenticity.

2. Provide a way to temporarily stop these automations

Just like every other series of automations that spans a long duration of time, you should have a mechanism to prevent these automations from triggering for a specific client. We’ll use the concept of a Stop Tag again in this series of automations, but this time we’ll talk about an additional automation that will remove this stop tag after the sequence ends, allowing a member to “temporarily” not receive lapsing client outreach, but be eligible to receive them again in the future.

In the templated automations provided by LoopSpark, we’ll use the tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out to prevent a client from triggering these automations (staff adds this tag to a member’s LoopSpark profile if they want to prevent the client from triggering these automations, such as knowledge of the client being on vacation)

We’ll also have an automation to remove the tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out after a 30 day period of time, allowing the client to trigger these automations again in the future.

This may seem a little complicated, but it’s going to be as easy as adding the following automations to your account from our automation catalog.

Automation Catalog

We’ve got your sequence all built out! Below you’ll find links to 5 automations you’ll want to have in your LoopSpark account, and a few tips to take this sequence to the next level.

Automated Alerts:

The 4 automations above are all To-Do automations, alerting staff to personally reach out to lapsing clients. They’re all similar in nature, triggering for anyone that:

Has an active contact,
Attended exactly X days ago
Has not returned since
Has no upcoming events scheduled, and
does NOT have the tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out in their profile.

We suggest keeping these as To-Do automations, but you are welcome to change them to automated SMS or Email automations if you staff lacks the bandwidth for personal outreach. We do recommend updating the content of the To-Do by adding phone scripts, pre-populated copy/paste-able SMS messages, and directions for what kind of client data your staff may want to include in their messaging.

If you have setup Role Groups for your To-Dos, we also suggest assigning the To-Do automations to the appropriate staff departments.

Tag Management:

The next automation from our automation catalog you’ll want in your account removes the tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out from a client’s profile after 30 days.

Remove Tag: Lapsing Client: Opt-Out (after 30 days)

For example, if a client responds to your staff after the 7 day automation letting your team know they’ll be on vacation for 2 weeks, it wouldn’t make sense to reach out again day 14, 21 etc. This is when your staff would add the tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out to the clients profile, preventing further communication; however, we also don’t want to permanently remove this client from Lapsing Client automations when they return from vacation, so automatically removing this tag will just ensure your data remains relevant, and the client will be eligible to trigger this automation sequence again after 30 days.

Dashboard Segments

Adding a segment to your dashboard to keep lapsing clients top of mind is a great way to supplement your Lapsing Client preventive strategy.

Below is an example segment you can add to your dashboard to keep track of active contract holders that have not visited in 30 days and have no upcoming events scheduled:

Rule 1 (contains 1 filter):

Contract status = active

Rule 1 described: client has an active contract (of any type)

Rule 2 (contains 1 filter):

Booking status = attended

Rule 2 described: client has attended at least 1 event. This rule simply serves to prevent clients that purchased a contract but have yet to attend their first class from appearing in your segment.

Rule 3 (contains 3 filters):

Booking count = 0
Booking status = attended
Booking event start date = in the last 30 days

Rule 3 described: client has not attended any events in the past 30 days. You can change the filter booking event start date to whatever you like, such as in the last 14 days if you would prefer to view clients that haven’t attended in at least 14 days.

Rule 4 (contains 2 filters):

Booking count = 0
Booking status = upcoming

Rule 4 described: client has no upcoming events scheduled.

Example Lapsing Client Dashboard Segment

Example Lead screen shot

Building a custom sequence

Incase you want to build your own cadence of lapsing client automations, or expand upon the day 7, 14,21, 30, below is an outline of each rule so you can setup whatever you like!

In this segment we’ll define the variable X , where x = number of consecutive lapsed days So, if you want to trigger an automation when a client has exactly 10 days of consecutive absence, X would equal 10.

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters)

Client profile status = active
Client tag does NOT have = Lapsing Client: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Client has an active profile on your booking software, and does NOT have the stop tag Lapsing Client: Opt-Out which if present in their LoopSpark profile would prevent them from triggering this automation.

Rule 2: (contains 1 filter)

Contact status = active

Rule 2 described: client has an active contract/autopay. If you’re a Mindbody customer, you may also consider replacing this rule with client member status = active which would filter based on member status as opposed to contract / autopay status.

Rule 3: (contains 2 filters)

Booking status = attended
Booking event start date = exactly X+1 days ago

Rule 3 described: client attended an event (group class or private) exactly x+1 days ago. In this example, if we want to trigger based on 10 days of consecutive absence, the filter would be booking event start date = 11 days ago

Rule 4 (contains 3 filters):

Booking count = 0
Booking status = attended
Booking event start date = in the last X days

Rule 4 described: X here is the number of days the member has not attended. So if in rule 3 we had 11 , this would be 1 less, 10. Combining the logic of rule 3 and 4, we’d then get “client attended 11 days ago, but nothing in the past 10, therefor the event attended 11 days ago was their most recent”

Rule 5: (contains 2 filters):

Booking count = 0
Booking status = upcoming

Rule 5 described: Last thing we’d want to do is send a message like “we miss you” and have a client tell us they’re already on the calendar.... this rule just removes anyone that has an event scheduled in the future.

Rule 6: (contains 2 filters):

Booking count = 0
Booking event start date = in the last 180 minutes

Rule 6 described: This is another edge case rule, similar to rule 5 above that simply serves the purpose of preventing an embarrassing message. This rule prevents the automation from triggering for anyone that might currently be in class, and provides a little buffer time following class end time for your staff to update the class attendance.