Class packs, memberships or pay-per-visit: which model suits your studio

Do not pick a pricing model by copying the studio down the road. Pick it by counting your own members. This post gives you a sheet to fill in with your attendance register, and a rule that turns the answers into a choice between pay-per-visit, a class pack and a monthly membership. Take your last two months of attendance and a pen. The sheet takes about an hour.

Step 1: sort your members into three piles

Go through the register and put every name in one of three piles.

• Tried it: came once or twice and never returned.
• Drifted: came regularly for a while and then stopped.
• Kept coming: attended most weeks, right to the end of the period.

Write the three counts here: Tried it ____, Drifted ____, Kept coming ____.

The biggest pile is your problem, and the model follows from it.

Step 2: read the result

If Tried it is largest, people are not getting from the first visit to the second. A low-commitment class pack helps, and a drop-in rate gives the curious a door. Moving everyone to a membership would only add a barrier.

If Drifted is largest, you have a retention problem that price alone will not fix. Look at batches and trainers first. A pack with a clear end date shows you when people leave, which a membership hides.

If Kept coming is largest, your regulars may be paying more per class than they need to, or you may be leaving a commitment unasked. Offer them a membership at a better rate per class than the pack, in return for committing.

Step 3: fill in the price ladder

Every model should sit on a ladder so that the cheapest per class is the one that asks the most commitment. Write your own numbers in. The figures below are made up for illustration.

Check two things. The pack must cost less per class than a drop-in, or nobody buys the pack. The membership must cost less per class than the pack for the person you built it for. In the table that is someone attending four times a week, which fills the sixteen classes. A twice-a-week member pays ₹600 a class on that membership, so decide whether the membership is meant for them at all, because they will do the sum at the counter.

Pick figures you can say aloud at the counter without reaching for a calculator.

Step 4: set the rules in writing

A pack needs a validity long enough to finish at a normal pace. Someone who comes twice a week should finish a ten-class pack comfortably past five weeks. Print the validity on the receipt, decide in advance how you treat illness and travel, and send a reminder when two classes remain.

A membership needs a pause rule and a cap on classes per day. Unlimited access to a full class is a promise you cannot keep.

Decide your refund policy before the first sale. Many studios allow a pause or a transfer instead of a refund, and whatever you choose should apply to everyone alike.

The same sheet in Tirupati (an invented example)

Imagine a yoga studio in Tirupati that sold only a monthly membership at a flat price. The owner fills in the sheet from the register. The counts, made up for this example, are forty names in Tried it, thirty in Drifted and twelve in Kept coming. Tried it is the biggest pile by a distance.

The mistake is asking a stranger to commit to a month on a first visit. So the owner adds a single-class price, set above the per-class cost of a new ten-class pack, and a pack valid for ten weeks. The membership stays, but only for people who have finished a pack. The renewal conversation moves to the pack's last two classes, because by then the member has a pattern to talk about. The owner now reads income from live packs and active memberships, and treats footfall in a single week as the lesser number.

The first cycle is mixed. Of the forty, say fourteen buy a pack, and only three of those later take a membership. Two long-standing members complain that the pack undercuts what they pay, and the owner has to explain what existing members keep. It is a better ladder than a single flat price, and it is not yet a finished one.

Step 5: test it on one cycle

Run the new ladder for one full cycle of your longest pack. Then compare three numbers with the old period: first-time visitors who bought a pack, pack buyers who became members, and members still attending in the last fortnight. If the first rose and the third fell, you have made joining easy and staying hard, and the repair is in the classes, not the price.

The renewal side is covered in how personal training studios get package renewals, the spa and salon version in how to sell memberships and packages, and batch filling in how dance fitness studios fill batches.

When this sheet is the wrong tool

If you do not keep an attendance register, you cannot fill it in. Start with a plain sheet of names and dates, and change nothing in your pricing until you have two months. If most of your members are a handful of long-standing regulars, a pile count tells you nothing new, and a conversation with each of them will teach you more.

Tonight's task

Fill in the three counts from your register before you touch a price. A price only matters once enquiries and trials turn into visits, and that side is under wellness and fitness. If the ladder will not settle, that is the question behind pricing and packaging strategy, and when you want a second pair of eyes on the numbers, tell us what you need.