Most Important Metrics for Barre and Yoga Studios
Are you excited! Get ready for the most fun with numbers you’ve had in a long time! I am sharing with you The Most Important Metrics for Barre & Yoga studios, in my not so humble, OG KPI Expert opinion. These are the ones that I come back to time and time again when working with businesses who are trying to optimize and grow long term. I have personally calculated these metrics with thousands of businesses since 2006. I will see some of these metrics change based on market, studio history, and well, pandemics, and such, yet the spirit of them DOES NOT change. What spirit are you talking about, Roxy? These metrics point to and give clarity surrounding the most effective strategy for studio growth and profitability which is to (drum roll in your head, please):
Optimize Members
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Optimize Members ~
When I say “optimize members”, I mean it’s in your best interest to optimize the amount of people who come to your studio the most. This strategy translates into optimizing the lifetime of your customers relationship with you, optimizing revenue, profitability, and community. I will give more details on strategies for optimizing those members in another post, but for now, lets take a look at what the data of your business says in general and how well you are currently optimizing that group.
Revenue
Revenue is really The Ultimate KPI. We need to make sure we can cover our base and biggest expenses, especially those Big 3: Rent, Payroll, Owner Draw, (Insurance), before we can make our businesses the life-enhancing spaces they are meant to be. I like to think of this as giving your business oxygen and meeting it’s basic almost physiological needs. This metric I can’t give you a standard goal or average because it’s so different based on each studios unique location, how saturated your market is, capacity, type of class offered, etc. Yet, I can tell you that you want to pay attention and make sure you are meeting the goal of paying those Big 3 and that you have some leftover to reinvest in the business. Growth goals and expectations during a pandemic after being in business for 10 years might be very different than goals for a brand new business in an unsaturated market. I like to pay attention monthly, quarterly, and annually, set goals, and be sure we are at least maintaining current profitability and revenue levels.
Revenue by Client Persona
A new metric that I love to look at for businesses is to think about the amount of revenue you earn by client persona. I like to take a look at the amount of revenue, visits, and unique people who fall under three buckets: Members, Regulars, & Sporadics. Members are those who are ideally on a recurring billing option, or your equivalent, and they attend the most. Regulars are those who are regular in their attendance, but maybe not often, and prefer one off purchasing options like a 10-pack. Sporadics are those who prefer drop in or Classpass type pricing options.
Members Goal
A good goal for members is to shoot for 60-80% of revenue to be from members. Basically, get this as high as you can, and you will reap the rewards of increased revenue, profitability and a more connected community.
Retention Goal
A good goal for retention overall is higher than 33%. 33% is the average year over year retention of wellness clients based on a study done by MINDBODY back in 2018. People would like to see that study updated, but I feel we can and should use this number to motivate us. This analysis was done on all MINDBODY’s clients at the time, which was ~60k businesses and they found that the average was the same for class and appointment businesses.
New Client Retention
When you look at brand new clients or first visitors, a good goal to shoot for is getting 70% of them to come back for a 2nd visit, at least. This means 30% don’t come back after that 1st visit. Average for this is 50%, meaning 1 out of 2 new clients don’t come back for a second visit.
New Clients Converted To Intro
A good goal for the percentage of new clients who purchase an introductory offer that is designed just for them to try you out is 70%. Average is about 50%. This is important because it sometimes takes time for clients to feel the benefits of your services. Newbie sore legs, anyone? MINDBODY’s 2018 data analysis also showed that retention was always better when new clients came in under an intro offer (30% versus 50%). I usually see 1 month intro offers outperform other time frames.
New Clients Retained
A good goal for the amount of new clients who convert to any purchasing option within 90 days of their introductory period is 50%. Average is 20%. This is a game changer retention statistic! If you can get this number near this goal, you will see profitability and community thrive!
New Clients Retained As Members
It is our ultimate goal to get 25% of new clients in any given month to convert to members. Average new clients to members is 5%. This is another game changer metric to focus on. When businesses do everything possible to get this to increase, profitability and community are truly optimized. These are the businesses I see with the most revenue growth and long term viability.
Bonus Metrics
If you love data and are looking for other metrics to dig into that can be really telling for your business, consider the following:
Capacity. If you are near full capacity, then time to raise prices and/or expand somehow. If you aren’t, you perhaps have some wiggle room with pricing surrounding your intro offer and/or membership for new clients.
Year Over Year. I love to look at my business on an annual basis to get a better idea of seeing the forest for the trees. I like to see how all of the above metrics compare on a year by year basis.
Marketing KPIs. Marketing is constant and watching key metrics surrounding it can be really helpful. I love the keep an eye on New Clients, Intro Offers Sold, and Referral Categories minimally, in addition to others based on my digital marketing strategy.
How To Get This Data
My little buzz lightyear enjoy a rainy spring in SLO this year
Dig into your business management software! I want to encourage you to roll up your sleeves and explore your reports and see what you can find. Most software products nowadays are providing this data in some way shape or form and you just have to find it. If your using MINDBODY software to manage your business, they have great videos instructing this here (mostly recorded by me). Mariana Tek has iKizmet dashboards which are quite comprehensive and developed by a friend and collegue. If you want me and my team to dig in to your software on your behalf and create a KPI report card for you, reach out or read more under consulting. Meet me in person at a conference in 2023 for a special offer on our KPI Report Card offering.
To Infinity and Beyond
I encourage you to channel your inner Buzz Lightyear (anyone else have a toddler obsessed?) and “fly/fall with style” into your software and see what you can find that inspires you in your mission to enhance the lives of those around you.