A Hack To Reduce Gym Churn & Make Price Increases Painless
I love finding hacks no one is thinking about...
Read time: 4 minutes
TLDR: Regularly sharing monthly improvement lists with your members creates a perception of constant value growth, making price increases feel justified and reducing overall churn. This simple communication strategy costs nothing but dramatically changes how members perceive your gym.
How a Random Facebook Thread Revealed a Retention Gold Mine
It started with Lori Becker from CrossFit Exclamation (SEO backlink comin’ at ya for starting the thread!) posting in our Facebook group about justifying rate increases.
She was making a list of improvements to justify raising rates, but got stuck wondering which items were "too small" to include.
Then Alie Kimbrell from CrossFit Lake Wylie (two client SEO backlinks in one post!) dropped this gem in the comments:
"I keep a list of everything I do for the gym or at the gym including things like 'fixed the broken toilet seat' or 'implemented committed club' or 'repaired broken rower monitor' and I provide that list to my members every year so they see all that we do."
This hit me like a ton of kettlebells.
Why wait until the price increase letter to show members all the improvements you've made?
The Problem With Saving Your "Value List" for Price Increase Day
Picture this: Your member opens an email announcing a price increase. In that same email, you list 24 improvements you've made over the past year.
Even with all those justifications, what's the only thing they're focused on?
The price going up.
You're asking them to process two competing pieces of information simultaneously:
"I'm taking more money from you"
"But look at all this value you've been getting!"
It's like telling someone you've been secretly cooking them amazing meals for a year, but only revealing this fact when you hand them the bill.
The Monthly Value Report: Dead Simple, Crazy Effective
Instead of ambushing members, send a monthly "Things We Improved This Month" update.
Break it into simple categories like:
Facility & Equipment Upgrades
Coaching & Staff Development
Programming & Class Improvements
Member Experience
Convenience (this can include tech enhancements)
Community & Culture Development
Recovery & Wellness Enhancements
Cleanliness & Hygiene
Don't stress if some months only have 2-3 items. Consistency matters more than volume.
If you have less than 3 things in a month, push this to a quarterly email and look for more ways to improve things monthly.
The Three Massive Benefits You'll See
1. An Improvement Forcing Function
Here's the more important (and overlooked) bonus: knowing you need to publish improvements each month forces you to make them.
It's like telling people you're running a marathon. Suddenly you feel compelled to actually run.
This simple accountability hack will push you to constantly seek ways to enhance your gym.
Increasing value in your gym is the fastest way to make your clients happy AF.
2. Churn Killer
Members develop what I call a "momentum mindset." They see your gym as constantly evolving and improving.
At PushPress we notify clients about every feature we build. Mostly because they need to know about things that we build to use them - but we see the “momentum mindset” at play daily.
Our clients have come to see that we keep building better and better products for them, and even though everything cannot be perfect, we build trust that it’ll get closer to perfect every passing day.
This creates a powerful psychological barrier against leaving. Who wants to quit a place that's visibly getting better every month?
3. Price Increase Insurance
When you eventually raise rates, members will have seen months or years of documented improvements. The price increase feels like a natural progression, not a shocking demand.
Your price increase email becomes simple:
"As you've seen from our monthly updates, we've been continuously improving your experience. To sustain this growth, we're adjusting rates by $X starting next month."
No defensive justifications. No scrambling to remember what you did.
Easy Implementation Steps
Create a simple template for your monthly report
Set a calendar reminder to document improvements as they happen
Send the report on the same day each month
Include both big upgrades and small fixes
Don't overthink it – even small improvements matter
Bonus: For PushPress clients, I’d pepper this into the social feed on your member app!
And if I can leak some future product thinking - if we happened to have an announcements feature, this might be a great place to leverage that to place it on screens as well ;)
The Hard Truth About Value Perception
Your members don't see 90% of what you do to improve their experience.
They don't see:
The hours your coaches spent getting certified
The upgraded insurance policy
The backend system improvements
The enhanced cleaning protocols
If they don't see it, it doesn't exist in their value equation.
Bottom Line
As I told our Facebook group: "I think it's best to create the general sentiment that you're hustling all through the lifespan of every client."
Don't wait until you need more money to show members the value you're creating. Share it consistently, and watch how it transforms both their perception and your behavior.
What improvements did YOU make this month that your members might not even know about?