Boulevard's Best: Boosting Revenue and Growing Loyalty Through Memberships 

We’re back with the next installment of Boulevard’s Best, the series where we explore the key business metrics that can make or break a self-care business and examine them through the lens of Boulevard’s top-performing customers in these areas. Today, we’re diving into the multi-faceted benefits of memberships. 

If you follow Boulevard, you know we’re huge fans of memberships. For years, we’ve written in this very space about how memberships represent a significant area of current and future opportunity for self-care businesses.  

But what does the data say? How does having a top-tier membership program boost your business? And what does a top-tier membership program even look like? 

Let’s start with that last question. With something as nuanced as running a successful membership program, there’s no single data point that by itself tells all. The incredible diversity of business types in the self-care industry means that what constitutes a successful membership program varies across businesses. 

At the end of the day though, nothing gives us a better signal than revenue. Across Boulevard, top-performing membership programs generate 72% of business revenue. That number dips to just 20% among average-performing programs. 

Why is that so important? The data clearly shows that a dollar derived from a membership client is far more likely to translate into additional dollars later on. As is depicted in the infographic below, Boulevard’s data shows that membership clients have an 88% higher retention rate than non-member clients, schedule more than 3 times as many appointments per year than non-member clients, and spend nearly 75% more on retail. 

As if your clients staying with you longer, coming in more often, and buying more retail when they do isn’t enough, a healthy membership program also makes for a happier staff, as businesses with top-performing membership programs achieve 22% higher average monthly revenue per service provider.

If you think having a membership program isn’t important in your specific sector of the self-care industry, you might want to reconsider. While spas, medspas, and other esthetics-based businesses tend to be the most active in promoting and offering membership programs, hair salons, nail salons, and barbershops are beginning to follow suit. Our data shows that nearly 15% (and growing) of all hair/nail salons and barbershops already benefit from a membership program.

Starting a membership program and building it into a high-performance asset for your business is easier said than done, but Boulevard is here to help. Check out our recent blog to find a host of best practices for building a membership program that grows revenue and boosts client loyalty, then contact us for a demo today to see how our membership features can help you implement them.