Halo Leisure manages 20 sports and leisure centres throughout Herefordshire, Shropshire and Bridgend County Borough. An existing user of Legend Club Management Systems’ front of house, online bookings and reporting solutions, at the beginning of 2016 Halo decided that it wanted to be able to make greater use of the vast wealth of customer data at its fingertips. At its most strategic, the company’s objective was to communicate in an intelligent, relevant and entertaining way with its customers in order to strengthen brand loyalty, increase retention and minimise attrition.

Cathy Fletcher, group sales and marketing manager, Halo Leisure, explains: “It’s a competitive environment out there. Customers have greater choice than ever; there are more operators with attractive offerings, lower price points, and a wide variety of exercise options. It’s therefore business critical that every interaction we have with customers adds value to their experience with us. We knew that we had an absolute goldmine of information about our customers within the business, but we weren’t making effective use of it.”

The Customer Journey
In February 2016, Halo Leisure launched the first of its new automated customer communications with the assistance of Legend Leisure Services. Together, the two organisations identified a range of customer journeys and developed the frequency, tone and content of the communications that would form those journeys.

The objectives included:
• Improved customer retention
• Reduce the number of customers at risk of leaving
• Strengthen brand loyalty & reputation
• Upsell additional services
• Gather quality feedback from customers

The first to go live was Halo Leisure’s ‘New Customer Journey’. Designed to create instant engagement and reinforce the positive feeling that goes with joining, the New Customer Journey helps new members feel welcome; introduces them to the depth and breadth of services available; and familiarises them with their membership package and Halo’s online member community. This helps to establish strong commitment between Halo and its customers and ultimately lengthens their stay and loyalty. The early stats are promising: New Customer Journey emails see open rates of up to 38 per cent.

Halo and Legend then introduced a ‘Retention Journey’, which incorporates timely and informative emails and text messages such as the success of a customer’s first online class booking. Special offers, birthday messages, and newsletters with lifestyle information and seasonal recipes help maintain a high level of engagement.

Through these automated communications, customers are also driven online to Halo’s content-rich website, with a full class timetable, online bookings and access to other self-service functions. Since the launch of the automated member journeys, visitors to the website have increased significantly, whilst online bookings have increased by an impressive 15 per cent.

Halo and Legend also wanted to address two further customer segments: ‘High Risk Customers’ and ‘Families’.

The ‘High Risk Journey’ is facilitated by the rich stream of data that comes from having Legend Leisure Services’ customer journeys fully integrated with the Legend front-of-house and reporting systems.

“Using a clever set of algorithms built into the reporting, Legend is able to provide us with an alert when a customer’s behaviour changes and they might be at risk,” Cathy explains. “It may be that they have debt on their account, or they’re not coming to the activity they usually attend. This will trigger a relevant interaction with motivational, encouraging and supportive content with the aim of getting the customer back in and engaging with us. It’s been a hugely positive journey, with the data showing that of all customers opening the email, 10 per cent of high risk users end up reducing their score to low risk.”

Finally, Halo Leisure actively works with families who attend its centres to promote long-term loyalty and upsell opportunities. By offering every family who has a child enrolled in one of its courses - from swimming to gymnastics and trampolining - a party voucher in the run up to the child’s birthday, not only is Halo able to increase its ancillary services, but it also reinforces the value it places on customer focus and care to its users.

Value & Future Planning
Although early in its marketing automation and customer journey adoption, Halo Leisure has recognised the value of this type of informed and insightful interaction. The customer experience is underpinned by Halo’s measurement of customer satisfaction through Listen360, a Net Promoter Score (NPS) solution built into Legend’s service offering. Loyalty to the brand is measured by evaluating the propensity of customers to recommend the leisure centre to a friend or colleague. Not only does NPS provide real time feedback enabling immediate operational resolutions, it also provides a KPI comparison across sites.

Looking ahead, 2017 is set to bring further segmentation and analysis of the data for yet more personalised customer journeys as well as a ‘Prospect and Lead Generation Journey’.

“Legend has become the glue that is underpinning the majority of our communications,” Cathy concludes. “They really understand the customer process and the member journey, and their proposition gives more value for money and offers more functionality. Their advice and guidance, not just in the settling in stage, but ongoing, is outstanding. Our automated email and SMS messaging triggered at key points in the customer journey is the best it’s ever been, which is central to our CRM and retention strategy.

“Indeed, as a result of this work, overall attrition rates are now down to sub 4 per cent across the business and we're starting to derive real value from the swathe of data that has sat within the business untapped for some time. The close collaboration between Halo and Legend ensures the streamlining and tailoring of information, critical to the ongoing success, and continued growth of our business.”