Client retention in your studio: Why it’s cheaper to keep the clients you have than to chase new ones

Why it’s cheaper to keep existing clients than to constantly chase new ones

Here’s a story you probably know all too well:

January hits and your studio is “on fire”. Reception is packed, new faces everywhere, and the numbers look fantastic. But a few months later, half of those enthusiastic newcomers are gone. In the autumn you catch yourself wondering where everyone went – and how much time, money and energy this constant churn is really costing you.

Everyone keeps asking: “How can we get more new clients?” But hard data from the fitness world say something else: your biggest win lies in how many existing clients you manage to keep.

In this article, we’ll look at:

• what the numbers say about retention in gyms and studios,
• why so many new clients disappear during the first months,
• a simple LTV (lifetime value) model – 3-month client vs. 3-year client,
• how Zenamu helps with retention: smart emails, attendance statistics, and memberships, credits and passes designed for consistency.

The hard data: how long do your members really stay?

Let’s start with data from the fitness industry.

According to overviews that compile numbers from different clubs and studios, a few patterns show up again and again:

• roughly half of new gym members quit within the first six months.¹
• Traditional health clubs have an average annual retention around 71.4%, with personal-training studios doing slightly better.¹
• Average membership length is often quoted around 4–5 years, but it varies a lot by club type and clientele.¹
• Industry talks and retention studies suggest that around 15% of members leave within the first 3 months, up to 30–35% by the six-month mark – and after a year, a substantial portion never return.²

Add to that two well-known business findings:

Acquiring a new customer can cost up to five times more than retaining an existing one.³

and:

A small increase in retention – just a few percentage points – can boost profitability by dozens of percent.⁴

In other words: fighting for retention is not a “nice to have”. It may be the single biggest lever you have in your business.

Why do so many people drop out? (And in most cases, it’s not really about you)

Why does half of your new January crowd disappear by June?

You probably recognise at least some of these reasons from your own experience:

• Unrealistic expectations “In a month I’ll look like that person on Instagram.” When that doesn’t happen, disappointment sets in.

• No real routine Initial motivation is quickly replaced by reality – work, kids, fatigue. If a client doesn’t build a specific habit (Monday 6 p.m. pilates, Wednesday 7 a.m. yoga), your studio slowly slips out of their mind.

• Nobody is “keeping them in the game” Once they stop coming, no one checks in. No email saying “We haven’t seen you in 3 weeks, are you okay?”, no offer of an easier program, no gentle nudge.

• The feeling “this isn’t really for me” The class was too hard, the vibe different than expected, nobody really guided them on their first visit or listened to their individual needs. They never quite felt like part of the community.

The important part: most of these people are not leaving because they dislike you. They are leaving because they lack enough support, structure and feedback to make a new habit stick. And this is exactly where smart use of data and communication can make a huge difference.

A simple LTV model: 3-month client vs. 3-year client

Let’s put some numbers on it.

A simplified example:

• monthly membership: 60 USD,
• the client comes on average once a week, billed monthly,
• we’ll ignore acquisition costs and inflation for now – the goal is to illustrate the principle.

Client A: the 3-month enthusiast

• stays for 3 months,
• LTV (lifetime value) = 3 × 60 USD = 180 USD.

You might have spent money on Facebook or Google ads to get them in, invested time in their first visits, explained how your studio works, maybe walked them through Zenamu… and before you know it, they’re gone.

Client B: “normal human” who stays for 3 years

• stays for 36 months,
• LTV = 36 × 60 USD = 2,160 USD.

Difference? 1,980 USD on a single person.

Now imagine:

• instead of 20 clients who stay 3 months, you have 10 “short-term” and 10 who stay 3 years,
• or you manage to move your average membership length from 6 months closer to 12–18 months.

On top of that, remember that new clients cost you more (ads, free trials, staff time, onboarding) than clients who already know your space, instructors and your app.³

Suddenly it’s very clear why people in business keep saying:

“Your most expensive client is the new one. Your most valuable client is the one who’s already with you.”

What you can do about it: from “hunting” to caring

Knowing that retention is important is not enough. You need three things:

1. Visibility in the data

   • how quickly new clients drop off,
   • when the “critical periods” are (3 months, 6 months…),
   • how many people return after a break.

2. A plan for how you support them

   • onboarding (first emails, explaining the system, recommended classes),
   • a check-in after a few weeks (“How are you feeling in our studio?”),
   • offering gentler or more suitable classes when you see attendance falling.

3. A system that lets you do this at scale

   • writing to every inactive client by hand works for a short while,
   • but it’s not sustainable in the long run.

This is where a booking and client management system can quietly become one of the most powerful tools in your studio.

How Zenamu helps you improve retention

1. Smart email outreach to inactive clients

In Zenamu, you have clear attendance history and last-seen data for each client. That makes it easy to find:

• clients who haven’t attended a class for 2–3 weeks,
• members who are still paying, but not showing up,
• people who only appear at certain times of year (classic January and September crowd).

With that information, you can:

• send a personal-feeling email (“We haven’t seen you in a while – is everything okay?”),
• recommend a specific class (“This gentler class might fit how you’re feeling right now…”),
• remind them they have credits or passes they’d probably rather use than lose.

Some of this communication can be done manually; other parts can be automated via integrations (for example, an email marketing tool connected to your Zenamu client data). See: integrations and automations.

2. Attendance stats and client behaviour, at a glance

Zenamu lets you look at attendance from several angles:

• by individual client,
• by membership (how much of what they paid for they actually use),
• by class type (which classes people come back to more often, where drop-off is highest).

This means you can:

• spot when people typically start dropping out (for example after 2 months of a course),
• respond in time (adjust course length, add a “reset / restart” session),
• fine-tune the timing and structure of your courses and open classes.

Instead of the vague feeling “people seem to be disappearing”, you have concrete data in front of you.

3. Memberships, credits and passes designed for consistency

How you set up memberships, bundles and credits has a huge impact on retention.

In Zenamu you can:

• design memberships that encourage a regular habit – for example, a monthly plan priced fairly for 1–2 classes per week,
• define validity periods for credits and passes in a way that nudges people to come, not to procrastinate,
• combine memberships with workshops and courses to deepen the relationship with clients who are already with you.

The key is balance: you want to encourage consistency – without punishing people for having a real life.

If someone has a busy month and knows they’ll get a gentle reminder or a small extension, rather than see all their credits disappear, they are far more likely to come back. Zenamu gives you the flexibility to set this up.

4. From “How many new clients?” to “How many stayed?”

One of the biggest mindset shifts Zenamu can support is a simple change of question:

• from “How many new clients did we get this month?”
• to “How many clients have stayed with us for 6 / 12 months or longer?”

Once you start tracking retention as a key metric:

• your marketing changes (less focus on quick spikes, more on long-term relationships),
• your schedule changes (you think about people who want to move all year round, not just “for summer”),
• your conversations with instructors change (it’s not just about full classes, but about who keeps coming back).

Zenamu gives you the numbers to support these decisions – while staying quietly in the background. The real stars of the show are you and your clients.

Conclusion: your biggest opportunity is not in ads, but in the people you already have

Let’s sum it up:

• Industry data suggest that up to half of new members quit within six months.¹
• Acquiring a new client is many times more expensive than keeping an existing one.³
• Even a small improvement in retention can lead to a big jump in profitability.⁴
• The difference between a 3-month client and a 3-year client can be thousands of dollars in lifetime value.

What you can influence is:

1. Know your numbers – what does your retention look like after 3, 6 and 12 months?
2. Have a care plan – onboarding, follow-ups, and a strategy for inactive clients.
3. Use a system that makes it easier – like Zenamu.

If you want all of this to live inside one tool, that’s exactly why Zenamu was created: a booking system for group classes and courses that keeps as much energy as possible where it really matters – with the people in the room and in your work as an instructor.

Simple and effortless.

Footnotes

1. GymRescue – Gym Membership Retention Statistics and Tips. Summarises IHRSA estimates of average annual retention (71.4%) and notes that roughly half of new members quit within the first six months. https://www.gymrescue.com/blog/gym-membership-retention-statistics-and-tips/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Hapana – Strategies to Increase Gym Member Retention Rates. Describes member drop-off over time (around 15% within 3 months, around 35% within 6 months, more than half not returning after a year) and highlights the financial impact of retention on LTV. https://www.hapana.com/blog/boost-member-retention-in-your-gym ↩

3. For example, Hapana (see above) and various marketing analyses note that acquiring a new customer can cost up to five times more than retaining an existing one. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Bain & Company – customer retention analyses (often cited in Harvard Business Review). They report that increasing retention by 5 percentage points can boost profits by roughly 25–95%. https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers ↩ ↩²