Why Do We Love Referrals at zingfit?

We all know customer referrals are a great way to get new members into a fitness facility. It’s been said open gyms gain 50% of their new customers through friends and family referrals.

But did you know – although I’m betting some of you do – this statistic is even higher for boutique fitness? If so, do you know how high? (A clue, it’s very high.) In boutique and group fitness studios, 85% of new customers are referrals.

Whether you knew that stat (or not), it’s pretty incredible when you think what that means in relation to the tight knit community within your studio and how they are your path to growth. And, knowing how truly social your attendees are, we’ve built native functionality into zingfit’s platform that’s revenue generating and increases facility usage. Further, it is all tied to the social nature of boutique fitness attendees; and the business goals of the studio’s management team e.g.:

  • Rewards for social referrals
  • Refer-a-friend campaigns with unique, trackable links
  • An assign-a-guest feature built into the customer booking journey

We can talk about the percentage of customers who come in through referrals occur but what’s the value of referrals?

What’s Your CRV? (psst…we’re not talking about Hondas here)

As with all growth strategies and tactics, a value needs to be put on it. However, calculating a Customer Referral Value (CRV) can feel more daunting and time-consuming than other measures you might have explored in the past.

Our CRV Analysis To Help You

With that in mind, we thought it would be nice to share some analysis we did across the boutique fitness industry. Here’s how we approached it and some of the results we saw:

  • We took a fixed period of data from different boutique modals where referral campaigns had been executed.
  • Then, we created anonymous cohorts within the studios where zingfit’s referral feature was being used (i.e shared a unique referral link tied to their account).
  • We noted the $ (USD) value of this cohort within the fixed period of data.
  • This cohort of referrers spent $254,000 on class packs.
  • We dug a little deeper into the spending habits of this first cohort and were able to see the group was notall big package spenders in themselves.
  • Indeed, 33% of the group was spending $20 to $40 per purchase (presumably buying a single class).
  • The cohort of Referral Recipients also skewed toward only spending $20 to $40: 46% of the incremental revenue generated from referrals came from classes purchases of $20 – $40.
  • But there’s money to be made from referrals across the board: 15% spent $190 to $200 on pack/series purchases in both the referee and referrer cohorts.
  • But most importantly, the $ (USD) incremental revenue generated by running referral campaigns totaled $126,000.
  • Meaning, people actively making referrals on behalf of the studio generated an additional 50% in revenue.

What’s Your CRV?

By using zingfit’s reporting, and spending time with the data, you can analyze what’s happening at your studio. We believe in providing detailed CSV reports that smart operators can interrogate, analyze and build ROI modeling around. Dig into your data today. Even if it feels a little daunting to look at all that information, have a go. Moving over the starting line is sometimes the hardest part of the race. And our Customer Support team will gladly help you with your questions when it comes to exporting data.

A Few Tips For Promoting Referrals

  • Don’t make it feel like you’re just trying to make more money.
  • Do make it about building the community.
  • Make it rewarding for your current customers to reward in some way…perhaps they don’t get anything but their friends and family get free classes.
  • Make it feel special – it’s a privilege customers get to share with VIP friends once a month. Train them to think about it each month so they are already primed to refer!
  • Use your digital real-estate to promote referrals – consider a homepage takeover to promote it.
  • Build a consistent message and visual campaign promoting your referral on your website, in-studio, on social, in the class itself, and in emails.
  • Help your customers get to their referral link on their MY INFO

CLICK HERE to book a zingfit demo!


By Patrick Armitage, VP of Marketing