Capitan, the CRM for climbing gyms, recently hosted a roundtable discussion with existing customers to discuss Capitan’s industry leading feature, Associations. An Association on Capitan is a subgroup of customers that receive some sort of benefit, which can include initial membership discounts (for example, first month 50% off or no initiation fee), recurring membership discounts (for example, students get 20% off monthly recurring membership fees), entry pass discounts, event discounts and shared entry passes across the Association.
Associations have helped climbing gyms simplify their membership, entry pass and event offerings on Capitan. This makes it easier for staff and customers to find the appropriate product, and allows discounts or targeted offers to be granted automatically for both in-person and online sales.
Four powerful options within Associations that have helped climbing gyms using Capitan are as follows:
- Association Expiration: Organizations can set how long a customer is active in an Association: until manually removed (For example, Veterans never need to be reverified), after a set interval (For example, customers that receive corporate rates that are added on a rolling basis), on set dates (For examples, all students at the beginning of each semester). This ensures customers that are receiving discounts are still eligible. When removed from the Association, Capitan automatically removes discounts associated with the Association.
- Reverification Window: For associations where an organization wants to ensure the customer is still eligible, they can set a reverification window before the customer is set to be removed. This allows the customer to demonstrate what the organization requires (for example, a transcript or paystub) to stay in the Association until the next reverification window.
- Automatically add customers that complete a challenge to a set Association: When configuring a Challenge, an organization can configure it to automatically add any customer that completes the Challenge to a designated Association.
- Allow for online requests to join an Association: Organizations can allow customers to request to join an Association online and include uploads to streamline the process of Association management (for example, students can upload an ID or transcript online).
Customers shared how they are already utilizing Associations with each other and provided valuable input to the Capitan team to help keep pushing Associations forward. “Once again Capitan provides additional value. With an ever-growing roster of climbing gyms, it’s great to see Capitan taking proactive steps to understand its clients’ needs. Sharing with and listening to other gyms’ stories and ideas have led to new ideas for our gym,” said Clive Fitzsimons, who is in charge of IT at The Castle Climbing Centre in London, England. “With Associations we can see the huge time-saving opportunities. The auto-add functions simplify our pricing structures and helps eliminate the accidental mis-selling of the entry products by our reception team. Having Challenges drop people into Associations once a Challenge is completed has also opened doors for rewarding loyalty, and encouraging customers to create long-lasting habits.”
After the roundtable, all Capitan customers were invited to vote for their favorite feature requests to continue making Associations even more powerful. Based on the voting, Capitan has launched these additional features to enhance how gyms can use Associations:
- Automatically adding a customer to an Association after attending an event: Organizations can now offer targeted offers for participants after attending an event. This can help organizations do everything from attracting new members with offers geared towards customers in introductory courses, to increasing birthday party referrals as another way of getting young customers involved with climbing.
- Automatically adding a customer to an Association after using a guest pass: Referrals are the best way for organizations to attract new members, and organizations can now create targeted offers to increase the rate of conversion with customers that check-in using a guest pass.
- Automatically adding a customer to an Association after using a specific entry pass is used: Most people that come into a climbing gym will not purchase a membership. Organizations can now offer targeted offers for participants after they visit on a select entry pass to increase conversion. Many gyms already manually allow customers to “apply” the value of a day pass towards a membership. Now gyms can automate that process and allow customers to cash in on the offer even after they have left the gym.
- Limiting how many times one customer can use a discount: As organizations offer larger discounts upfront to help customers get over the hurdle of buying a membership, or offers targeted at reengaging customers that have not checked-in recently, Capitan can ensure the discounts are not abused by the same customer.
- Bulk adding customers to an Association: Organizations can now work with community or corporate partners to tailor offers to their group and easily manage a large number of customers. For example, an organization may offer a local business 25% off the first month to all employees, after receiving a list of their employees.
All of the above can tie directly into an organization’s email marketing strategy with Capitan’s integration with Mailchimp to help ensure customers are aware of the targeted offers.
About Capitan:
Capitan is a climbing-specific CRM that streamlines waivers, entry passes, memberships, events and more. Their open and supported API allows climbing gyms to connect with all other tools they use to run their business. Capitan is used in climbing gyms across multiple countries, from boutique bouldering facilities to large, multi-location organizations.
Interested in exploring how Capitan can help your climbing gym? Book a time here for an intro call or email Capitan at info@hellocapitan.com.
CBJ press releases are written by the sponsor and do not represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.
Want to post a press release here? Click here for more info.
CBJ press releases are written by the sponsor and do not represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.
