Blog · For gyms · retention, getting started
Your first 30 minutes with the community features
Eight switches arrived in the member app. Here's the order to turn them on, what to leave for later, and the one mistake to avoid in week one.
The short version: turn on the Community tab, check the milestone thresholds, enable self check-in and print the door QR code. That is about fifteen minutes and it delivers most of the value. Run your first challenge a week later, and leave comebacks and guest passes until you have a month of data.
The 1.1.1 release of the member app is eight features, and every one of them is a switch in your console. That's deliberate: nothing appears for your members until you turn it on. It also means the order you turn them on matters more than which ones you pick. This is the order we'd use, and roughly how long each step takes.
Turn on the Community tab (2 minutes)
Settings → Community → Community tab. That one switch gives your members the leaderboard, weekly streaks, check-in milestones, membership anniversaries, belt badges and Beat Last Month, all with sensible defaults.
The leaderboard is split automatically by membership type, so adults and juniors are never ranked against each other. Members see a first name and last initial only, and anyone can hide themselves from the board with a single switch while keeping their own stats.
Check the milestone thresholds (3 minutes)
The defaults are 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 and 500 check-ins. They suit most gyms. If your members train six days a week, space them out; if you run a once-a-week kids programme, bring the early ones closer together so a badge arrives in the first couple of months.
Make check-in frictionless (10 minutes)
Everything else in this release is only as accurate as your attendance data, so this is the step that earns the rest. Enable member self check-in, print the door QR code, and put it at eye level where people walk in. Members scan it on the way to the mat and the session logs itself. Gyms that prefer a scanner at the desk can scan the code on each member's profile instead; both produce the same record.
Stop there for a week
This is the mistake to avoid: switching everything on in one day and announcing it all at once. Members absorb one new thing at a time. Let people find the leaderboard, hold a streak through a weekend, and get their first badge before you add anything.
Week two: run your first challenge
Start with Attendance Race. Bronze at 8 check-ins, Silver at 12, Gold at 16, over four weeks. It's the easiest format to explain on a whiteboard and it needs nothing else enabled. Announce it in class on the day it starts, not the day before.
Once that's running, add a Whole-Gym Goal alongside it, something like 200 check-ins in four weeks. It has no losers, everyone watches the bar fill, and it's the one members talk about to each other.
Month two: comebacks and guest passes
Comeback challenges compare each member's last fortnight against their own 60-day baseline, then quietly offer anyone who has dropped off a short personal goal. It needs a month of check-in data to be meaningful, so leave it off until then, and start at the recommended 70% sensitivity.
Guest passes let members invite a friend from their phone; the friend arrives with a QR code already in your system. Set the allowance first, then run a Bring a Friend challenge on top of it. In that order, because the challenge counts visits, not invitations.
That's the whole sequence: two switches and a printed QR code in the first half hour, one challenge a week later, and the rest when the data is there to support it. If you're not on Mat Track yet, it's free up to 200 contacts, and the full release notes are on the what's new page.