Most studios know which pack sells best. Fewer know which one people buy a second time. They are rarely the same pack.
Price lists tend to grow by addition. A 5-pack for the cautious, a 10-pack for the regulars, a 20-pack someone asked for once. Nothing is ever taken away, and after a few years the menu says more about the studio's history than about its members.
Your own sales can show which packs keep people. It takes one export and about an hour.
What to pull
From your booking system, export every pack and membership sale from the past 12 months: client ID, product, price paid, purchase date. Leave names out. An ID is enough.
For each sale, mark one thing. Did the same client buy anything again within 30 days of that pack running out or expiring? Yes or no. That is the renewal.
Then group by product. For each pack you want how many were sold, how many were followed by another purchase, and the average price actually paid after discounts.
An example
Made-up numbers, only to show the shape of it. A studio sells three packs over a year:
5-pack: 200 sold, 60 followed by another purchase. 30% renew.
10-pack: 150 sold, 90 followed by another purchase. 60% renew.
20-pack: 40 sold, 30 followed by another purchase. 75% renew.
The 5-pack is the bestseller. It is also where most people leave. That does not make it a bad pack. It makes it a door, and the question is what is on the other side.
So look at the 5-pack buyers who did come back, and what they bought. If most moved up to the 10-pack, the path works and the gap is everyone who never took it. If most bought another 5-pack, the small pack has become a habit. A habit with an end date every few weeks.
The pack nobody renews
Sometimes one product stands out for the wrong reason. It sells a little and almost never leads to another purchase. Often it is a promotional pack that outlived its promotion, or a size that sits awkwardly between two others.
Before retiring it, look at who buys it. If it is mostly first-timers, it may be doing an intro offer's job badly. If it is mostly existing members, they may be using it to avoid a commitment they are unsure about. Different problem, different fix.
Retiring a pack is quieter than it sounds. Stop selling it, honour what is already bought, and let the menu get shorter.
Nudging the small pack
Small-pack buyers do not need a sales pitch. They need the next step to be obvious at the moment they are deciding, which is usually the last class on the pack. A short message before it, from a person, does most of the work:
"Hi Sam, one class left on your pack. You've been in most Thursdays lately, so the 10-pack might suit you better, and it's a little cheaper per class. Happy to set it up at the desk. Jo"
Only mention the price if it is true at your studio. For someone who has bought three or four small packs in a row, a membership may be the honest suggestion. They are already paying for one, in instalments.
Discounts, counted properly
Average price paid is the number most studios skip. A 10-pack listed at one price and sold mostly through a seasonal offer is a different product from the one on the price list. If a pack only renews when it is discounted, the discount is doing the renewing.
Another made-up example: a 10-pack listed at $250 that sells at $200 half the time averages $225. Across 150 sales, that is $3,750 below list. Worth knowing before the next promotion.
Once a quarter is enough
Pack mix moves slowly. Running this every three months shows whether a change to the menu did anything, without turning it into a weekly chore.
The other half of the picture is how packs compare with memberships over time. We wrote about that in Class Packs or Memberships: Which Keeps People Longer.
Or we do the counting
If the export is the part that never gets opened, send it to us. An Excel file, a Google Sheet link or a few pasted rows, with names removed. Within two business days we send back who has lapsed, who is due and who is slipping, with messages ready to use.
