Membership (Contracts & Autopays)

The final piece of the customer journey automations target our members. Leads have been guided to create an account on your booking software, entering the contact into the Prospect automations. These prospects have been nurtured to purchase an Intro Offer and book their first event, triggering First Visit Confirmation, First Visit Follow Up, and moving the contact to your Intro Offer automations. You’ve successfully converted your Intro Offer client to a long term member by selling their first contract.

The membership automations will focus on 3 key types of touch-points, which we’ll cover in this reference guide:

• First Membership Purchased - This automation will trigger when a client purchases their first membership (contract or autopay). The purpose of this communication will be welcoming your new client as a member of your community, celebrating their commitment to your studio, and outlining any perks the member will receive with their new contract/autopay.
• Membership Check-Ins - These automations will focus on new members only (first contract/autopay touch points) and will serve to checkin with your member throughout their first active autopay/contract.
• Membership Expiration - These automations will target all members, first time contract/autopay members and existing longterm members, serving to notify your staff or the member directly of an expiring contract.

Before getting started, let’s go over a few basic contract rules which will be used throughout these automations.

Membership Segment Basics

The filters we’ll be using to build these automations will be in the contract category.

It will be good to familiarize yourself with the following filters:

• Contract Count - We’ll use this to define a member has only purchased one contract (setting up our First Membership Purchased and Membership Check-in automations)
• Contract Status - We’ll use this to determine a contract’s current status.
• Contract Purchase Date - This filter will be used to trigger automations based on the date a contract is purchased.
• Contract Start Date - This filter will be used to trigger automations based on the activation date of a contract.
• Contract Expiration Date - This filter will be used to trigger automations based on the expiration date of a contract.

Contract rules will almost always include multiple contract filters. Below are a few common examples of contract rules you’ll use:

Specific Contract Purchase Date (contains 2 filters):

• Contract Purchased = [Select Contract Name]
• Contract Purchase Date = [Select date of purchase]

Specific Contract Expiration Date (contains 2 filters):

• Contract Purchased = [Select Contract Name]
• Contract Expiration Date = [Select date of expiration]

No contracts purchased in timeframe (contains 2 filters):

• Contract Count = 0
• Contract purchase date = in the last [select time frame]

No Contracts activating in the future (contains 2 filters):

• Contract Count = 0
• Contract Start Date = in the future

Membership segments will often include multiple contract rules. We’ll use “First membership Purchased” as an example. As we don’t want this type of automation to trigger for anyone that has only purchased 1 contract, we want to it trigger the day someone purchases their first contract, we’ll include 2 contract rules. The first rule will validate the client has only purchased one contract (ie - their first), the second contract rule will validate this first contract was purchased “today.”

Example “First Contract Purchased Today” segment:

Rule 1 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract count = exactly 1

Rule 1 described: client has purchased only 1 membership.

Rule 2 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchase date = today

Rule 2 described: client purchased a contract “today”

Take note that, if we added the filters in the above rule groups in the same rule, the audience would be “has purchased exactly 1 contract today” which is uniquely different than “has purchased only one contract ever, and that contract was purchased today.”

Membership Sequence Automations

Below is an outline of the typical automations that target a client after becoming a member. These important touch points with your clients will serve to:

• Welcome a new member to your community and congratulate them for their commitment
• Checkin with new members to ensure they’re enjoying their membership
• Request reviews or referrals (a great validation of a client’s satisfaction is becoming a member! Ask for reviews and referrals!)
• Notify members as their contracts/auto-pays are about to expire to ensure they remain longer term committed members.

First Membership Purchased

You can find this automation built out in our automation catalog. The segment in our automation catalog takes into consideration some businesses may sell 2 contracts at the same time: A true membership, and an annual gym maintenance fee. If your studio sells more than one contract/autopay to a new member (such as maintenance fees, on demand access, etc), you’ll want to follow the segment setup of the automation in our catalog. Otherwise, below is a segment outline targeting a member’s first contract purchase:

Rule 1 (optional, but highly recommended):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = [select your stop tag for membership automations] All automations in the LoopSpark automation catalog use the tag Membership: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Client has an active profile on booking software, and has not been removed from this segment by having the stop tag.

Rule 2 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract count = exactly 1

Rule 2 described: client has purchased only 1 membership.

Rule 3 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchase date = today

Rule 3 described: client purchased a contract “today”

The segment above explained: Person has purchased only one contract, and that contract was purchased “today”

Example First Membership Purchased screen shot

If your studio does sell multiple contracts at the same time to a new member, such as annual fees, on demand access etc, your audience will be slightly different:

Example First Membership Purchased automation for studios that sell multiple contracts on the same day:

Rule 1 (optional, but highly recommended):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = [select your stop tag for membership automations] All automations in the LoopSpark automation catalog use the tag Membership: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Client has an active profile on booking software, and has not been removed from this segment by having the stop tag.

Rule 2 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchase date = today

Rule 2 described: client purchased at least 1 contract today.

Rule 3 (contains 2 filters):

• Contract count = 0
• Contract purchase date = Not Today

Rule 3 described: Client has not purchase any contracts on a date other than today.

The segment above explained: Client purchased at least 1 contract today (rule 1) and has not purchased a contract on any other day (rule 2), making the contract(s) purchased today their first.

Example First Membership Purchased (if selling more than 1 contract on same date) screen shot

Membership Check-Ins

Membership Check-ins are recommended as a best practice to ensure your new members are enjoying their experience, but also serve as a great opportunity to request public reviews and referrals.

We recommend checking in after the first week, first month, and 2-3 months into a membership. We recommend basing these automations on a contract start/activation date rather than purchase date, as it wouldn’t make sense to checkin on a new member if their membership hasn’t started. All of these automation segments will be almost identical, only requiring a change of one filter contract start date.

Rule 1 (optional, but highly recommended):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = [select your stop tag for membership automations] All automations in the LoopSpark automation catalog use the tag Membership: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Client has an active profile on booking software, and has not been removed from this segment by having the stop tag.

Rule 2 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract count = exactly 1

Rule 2 described: client has purchased only 1 membership.

Rule 3 (contains 2 filters):

• Contract status = active
• Contract start date = exactly X days ago (x being how many days after the client’s first contract activation)

Rule 3 described: Person’s contract is still active (making sure client hasn’t cancelled), and that active contract activated X days ago.

The segment above explained: Client has purchased only 1 contract (rule 2, ie their first contract). This contract is still active, and activated X days ago (rule 3).

Example Membership Check-in screen shot

You may also elect to add booking rules to these check-in automations to make sure clients have recently attended. This would be a best practice especially if the content of your automation is requesting feedback, reviews or referrals.

Below is an example booking rule which would ensure the client had attended at least 1 event in the last X days. For review automations, you may want to add an additional filter to this rule booking count and only trigger the communication if a member has attended at least X events in the past Y days.

Optional Rule (contains 2 filters):

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

Contract Expiration Alerts:

These automations should be setup to trigger for any member, regardless of being a first time or repeat contract/autopay holder.

There will be some intricacies to how we suggest setting up your audience, as we’re accounting for studios that may sell monthly memberships which create new memberships every 30 days, and ones that do not. We also want to account for the fact that clients may have already purchased a renewed contract by removing anyone that has either recently purchased a contract, or has a contract which activates in the future.

As a best practice, we recommend setting up a few automations. The first touch point we suggest is a To-Do automation, prompting your staff to personally reach out to discuss renewal (30 days in advance), and a client facing communication sent closer to the expiration date (such as 15 or 7 days in advance). Both automation segments will be the same, only differing in the value you place in the filter contract expiration date

Rule 1 (optional, but highly recommended):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = [select your stop tag for membership automations] All automations in the LoopSpark automation catalog use the tag Membership: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Client has an active profile on booking software, and has not been removed from this segment by having the stop tag.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Contract count = 0
• Contract purchase date = in the last 30 days

Rule 2 described: Client has not purchased a contract in the past 30 days. This rule serves a few purposes. First, this would remove any month-to-month membership which is set to re-create a new autopay monthly (no need to notify someone of an expiration if the auto-pay renews monthly), and, this serves to ensure that a client that purchased a new membership recently, which has already activated (ie - overlapping active contracts) will not trigger this automation.

Rule 3 (contains 2 filters):

• Contract count = 0
• Contract start date = in the future

Rule 3 described: Client does not have any contracts that will activate in the future. This is a safety rule to ensure that, if a client has already renewed their membership, they won’t trigger your renewal automation(s).

Rule 4: (contains 2 filters, and the effective “trigger point”)

• Contract status = active
• Contract expiration date = in the next X days

Rule 4 described: Client has an active contract which is set to expire in the next X days.

The segment above explained: Trigger this automation for clients that have not purchased a contract in the past 30 days (removing month to month renewals and people that have already renewed, rule 2), have no other contracts which activate in the future (also removing people that have already renewed, rule 3), and have an active contract which expires in the next X days (rule 4, the effective trigger point for these automations, and only rule that will change between any contract expiration automation).

Example Contract Expiration Alert screen shot

Automation Catalog

Need help building your First Visit - Confirmation automations, or want to add a few more touch points? We have plenty of templates in our automation catalog to get you started:

1. Click on Automations -> Catalog
2. Locate the category Membership
3. Select the automations you’d like to add to your account.

Automation build out video

Watch a full Membership automation sequence built from scratch:

Dashboard Segments

A few suggested segments to keep in your account or place on your dashboard to help your staff recognize clients with expiring memberships, and for your staff to keep on hand to analyze current membership trends.