Appointment Reminders for Personal Trainers and Fitness Classes

As a personal trainer or fitness expert, you only make money if a client comes to their session. Reducing no shows, however, does require sending appointment reminders. In this post, we will examine how appointment reminders can reduce no shows and boost your personal training business.

As all of your clients know, working out with personal trainings and in fitness classes are way more enjoyable than working out alone

Fun Exercise: A recent poll revealed that 84% of people would work out more if it weren't so boring. Fitness classes and personal training sessions are always less boring than lifting weights alone.

Social Exercise: 38% of people polled were more likely to work out if a friend is also going to the gym. If one friend skips fitness training sessions, the other friend is more likely to skip too. Many clients bring prospective clients to classes, offering another way to boost your business.

How No Shows Hurt Your Personal Training Business

Unfortunately if you can't work with a client, you usually get paid, even when it’s not your fault. 

Pay by Class: Most personal trainers are paid by training sessions. If a client skips or misses the appointment, you don't get paid.

Looks Bad: Empty fitness classes do not inspire more people to join. In fact, it's the opposite. When clients see empty classes, it frequently reflects poorly on the personal trainers. 

Fewer Reviews: Mostly empty fitness classes also means that there are fewer possibilities for clients to leave positive reviews or recommend you to their friends. This can severely impact your fitness business.

Fewer Clients Lead to Even Fewer Clients: According to recent research, 45% of adults go to the gym to both socialize and work out. If one client skips or misses a class, their friend may also skip.

Why Clients Miss Personal Training Sessions

Most clients miss personal training sessions because they forget. It's easy for a client to forget a one hour personal training appointment when their week is full.

Some clients may try to reschedule their personal training services but forget.

Both of these result in a no show or a last minute cancellation.

Why Appointment Reminders Can Help Personal Trainers

Forgetting: The main reason that clients miss their personal training sessions is that they forget. Sending an appointment reminder message significantly reduces the no show rate, by as much as 90%. Your personal training clients are dedicated to their fitness, they sometimes just need a reminder.

Personal Message: Additionally, your personal fitness business may ask clients to bring specific items, such as a yoga mat, yoga block, towel, and/or water bottle. You may also want to ask clients to arrive five minutes early to get situated. An appointment reminder offers an easy way to communicate this information.

Additional Reasons You Would Send Text and Email Messages to Your Clients

Share Tips: You may want to send a message after an especially grueling class reminding your customers to drink plenty of fluids and stretch.

Promotions: With automated reminders, you can easily send promotions to clients, encouraging them to buy class packages or apparel at a discount.

Renewals: Many clients may forget to renew their membership, or the credit card required may have expired. Automatic reminders can update customers when they need to renew their membership, class pass, or update their payment information.

How Reminderly Can Help Personal Trainers

Reminderly has many features built into its platform to help personal trainers connect with clients. In this section, we'll go over a few ways that Reminderly’s appointment reminders can help improve your fitness businesses.

Two-Way Communication: We offer our clients the ability to communicate with their clients in real-time. Your clients may have questions such as "I'm still sore from my last appointment, should I come to our personal training session today?" or "I pulled a muscle in my back. I know we are doing abs today, should I still come to class?" In these scenarios, being able to respond directly through text message streamlines all communication.

Customize the Reminders: At Reminderly we recognize that every business is different, so we allow you to completely customize your messages to meet your needs. This might look like sending an appointment reminder when the customer books the services and again the day of. Or it may be a reminder to arrive five minutes early and to bring a yoga mat. At Reminderly, we offer full customization of your appointment reminder.

Group Messaging: As a personal trainer, there are many occasions when you will want to message an entire class. This might be to let everyone know that you're running late, or that class is moved to a different studio, or that you are out sick and will reschedule. Regardless of the message, Reminderly offers "group messaging," so that the communication is private and doesn't disclose recipients, similar to BCC-ing in email. This feature streamlines communication while keeping the recipients private.

Wait List: Lots of fitness trainers have schedules that fill up quickly. Maybe at your fitness business. Appointment scheduling becomes more challenging when customers repeatedly cancel at the last minute, no show, or reschedule their appointment. Reminderly offers a "Wait List" option so that any class or training session vacancy can be automatically filled. This reduces wasted time in filling empty slots, and wasted revenue in empty classes.

Reviews: Reminderly offers two main ways to gather reviews or survey responses. When enabled, customers receive an internal survey within 24 hours of their appointment. It asks two questions: how likely are they to recommend your business, on a scale of 0-10, and why. Additionally, you can easily send a direct link to your business's Google page to leave a review. These two steps can help you gauge your business's success and also promote positive reviews.

Link Shortener: You may want to send a link to your clients, either to your Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Google business page, or mobile scheduling software. Regardless, many links are extremely long and may take up significant space in text messages. After all, text reminders can only contain 160 characters. We at Reminderly offer a feature to reduce links to the smallest possible link, making your message easier to read and the links easier to click on.