Generating revenue in lockdown

As early adopters, Myzone has played a key role at Astley Sports Village in Cheshire for some years. However, the technology has become a critical tool during lockdown, helping to keep members engaged and connected and even generating crucial revenue, as Mark Storie, Director of Astley Sports Village, explains.

We have really pushed Myzone during lockdown

We froze memberships at the start of lockdown, and since then we have been delivering 25-30 group exercise classes a week for free. We’ve really pushed Myzone during lockdown. We post on our group page every day and our instructors host their classes in front of a Myzone banner and refer to Myzone throughout their sessions.

The fear of losing their Myzone status kept members engaged

For the first two weeks of lockdown, our members were exercising more than ever. Some were taking part in three or four of our online classes a day earning 9,000 MEPs a month instead of their usual 4,000-5,000 MEPs. But that started to reduce in week three as cabin fever set in. We saw some people drop out of exercise for a while, but the fear of losing their Myzone status made them re-engage in exercise towards the end of the month.

We’ve generated £2,000 in new belt sales during lockdown

We’ve had a great uptake in classes. Ensuring members continue their exercise habit is key, so we purposefully schedule our most popular classes at the same time they would run in the club. Members are really grateful for the free classes and we’ve received some amazing feedback. They’ve been sharing the timetable with their own contacts, which has attracted new users, which we hope will convert to membership when we re-open.

Approximately 400 of our members workout with the Myzone belt, but all members have to use the Myzone app to book into a class, regardless of whether they have a belt. This means they see all the posts and workout updates from other members. During lockdown, these posts created greater interest among our non-Myzone users than usual, who felt they were missing out. As a result, we’ve been able to generate £2,000 in new belt sales so far during lockdown.

Getting members to post photos has increased the sense of community

The global challenges in April and May really helped to keep members motivated. For the May challenge, people had to post five photos of their workouts to their Myzone summaries. They say a picture paints a thousand words and that’s certainly true with Myzone. More and more of our members are posting photos after their sessions, showing them working out alone, with their families or even using some of the gym equipment they’ve hired from us. This has created a much more engaging news feed in the Myzone app and has increased the sense of community among our members.

The more people engage with Myzone, the more chance they will return

We recognize that some people will prefer to exercise from home after lockdown. We will continue to deliver an online offering when we re-open and we are looking at how we can monetise this. We’ve been spending a lot of time educating new and existing Myzone users about the product during lockdown, to encourage further engagement.

Retention is our number one target; sales has always come second to this. That’s why we place so much emphasis on Myzone. We know that the more people engage with Myzone during lockdown, the greater the chance they will return to our club when we re-open.

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