Dan Ali / Photo: Xponential Fitness
Having reach sufficient scale as a business (2,000 locations in the US and 374 globally) we launched our own dynamic pricing booking system – called XPass – last year and we’re seeing great results.
With minimal marketing spend, more than two million minutes of class time has already been booked and almost 20 per cent of these customers are new to Xponential.
It means we don’t have to work with a third party aggregator, can drive incremental demand into studios that need it most and our franchise partners benefit from a steady stream of prospects and transparency with payouts. They also keep all the income, without having to pay fees, as they would with an aggregator. [Xponential takes a small cut of franchise turnover, so also benefits].
XPass has allowed us to bring all of our boutique brands – including Club Pilates, Pure Barre, Stretch Lab, CycleBar, BFT and Rumble – together in one offering, targeting customers who are seeking a quality boutique experience.
This makes boutique fitness more accessible than ever before, while enabling people to try all 10 of our concepts, meaning they’re likely to find the two, three or four they really love.
We’re seeing a 30 per cent conversion rate of ‘XPassers’ becoming studio customers after using XPass. Usually in the aggregate space customers like to move around, but we’re finding that XPass attracts the type of customer looking for their passion. They want quality, boutique, community and to support local business owners.
The pricing algorithm used per seat is called SmartPay and takes into account more than 10 different factors – including the time of the class and the instructor – and creates a price for that seat. Our franchise partners can choose to have a fixed price or go with dynamic pricing: they choose their desired price range and every time a seat is sold it affects the price of the next seat booked.
Customers like dynamic pricing – some like the excitement of catching a deal and others value the convenience and cross-modality. Our franchise partners like it because they have total control. It’s a win-win.
Having reviewed the results over the year, we’re launching an updated version, with a new look and are transitioning from subscription-based to a freemium model. The new XPass is modern and incorporates all the features which people have asked for – such as being able to book a particular bike, rower, to treadmill – and it allows many more options, such as searching for their point of interest and filtering. It achieves our mission of making boutique fitness accessible to everyone.
To drive new people in, we’ve curated high quality and differentiated content, such as healthy recipes on social media, celebrity partnerships and brand deals which has helped us to acquire a whole new customer base.
Going forward, the sector needs to leverage technology and differentiated marketing to make fitness easier to absorb and access.
XPass attracts
customers looking
for their passion