Keepme has announced the release of two unprecedented studies that shed light on the critical issue of lead response times in the fitness industry. These groundbreaking studies highlight the pressing need for rapid response strategies.

Key Findings from the Studies
Hilary McGuckin, Keepme's Director of Marketing, spearheaded the comprehensive "Fitness Industry Time to Reply" studies, uncovering eye-opening insights into the current state of lead response times among UK and North America fitness operators. The studies reveal significant delays in responding to membership enquiries, with substantial implications for gym sales performance in an omni-channel environment.

“We know from our research that leads responded to within 5 minutes are 100 times more likely to ‘connect’ and engage in conversations around booking tours, and 21 times more likely to convert into genuine membership opportunities. However, what we uncovered demonstrates that most operators' sales funnels simply aren’t optimized for lead generation because they can’t meet consumers' expectation of immediate, or near-immediate response times.”

McGuckin continued “It's striking that 42% of email enquiries and around 50% of all social media enquiries in the UK went completely unanswered and over 50% of North America membership info requests received no reply. Of the replies we did receive, we see there is huge potential to close the timeliness gap and dramatically improve lead generation efforts simply by becoming appropriately responsive and meeting the expected ‘certainty of reply’.”

The studies determine that fitness sales and marketing teams are not adequately resourced to promptly answer enquiries with real replies in a way that meets researched and reported consumer expectation, and that sales team members are too heavily utilized across administration, providing in-person tours and making call-backs that effective servicing of these ‘pots of potential, simply can’t be accommodated in their busy schedules’.

UK Fitness Operators Study Highlights:
• UK Multi-Site Brands avg lead response time is 714 minutes (emails).
• UK Public Leisure avg lead response time is 676 minutes (emails).
• 50% of all UK email enquiries went unanswered.

More analysis and UK Fitness industry lead response times across social media is available here.

North American Fitness Operators Study Highlights:
• North America Athletic Clubs/Single-Site Health & Fitness clubs avg lead response time is 172 minutes.
• North America Multi-Site Independents avg lead response time is 65 minutes.
• Franchise/Corporate Chains North America is 472 minutes.
• 58.19% of all North America email enquiries went unanswered.

More analysis and North America Fitness industry lead response times across social media is available here.

The studies highlight a significant gap between consumer expectations and current industry practices, with slow response times causing fitness clubs to miss out on substantial membership opportunities.These findings underscore the critical importance of prompt follow-ups, as ‘leads responded to within 5 minutes are 100x more likely to ‘connect’ and converse with you, and 21x more likely to convert into genuine opportunities’.

In response to these findings, Keepme this week announced the launch of the Keepme AI Sales Agent, a state-of-the-art solution designed to revolutionize lead generation and prospect engagement for fitness operators. These ‘omni-channel’ AI sales agents have been designed to ensure efficient, on-brand and informative responses to inbound enquiries, across live web chat, voice activation, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email, inbound and outbound calls; significantly improving lead conversion rates. Importantly, the agents are highly trained in the use of natural language, thus able to provide exceptional prospect experiences, in line with consumer demand for near-instant enquiry engagement.

Ian Mullane, CEO & Founder of Keepme, commented: "The results of our studies are a wake-up call for the fitness industry. The gap between consumer expectations and actual response times is staggering. Our Keepme AI Sales Agents are designed to bridge this gap, providing immediate, personalized responses to potential members, ensuring no lead is left unattended. They’ll actively book more tours and trials too, resulting in greater revenue growth from more active pipelines."

Both the UK and North America studies are live and ungated on the Keepme website for fitness operators to read.