The conversation about fitness technology is expanding from “What tools should we buy?” to “Do we own what our tools produce?” For club operators, the two questions are closely connected: the value of a platform depends on what they can do with the data behind it.
This month, our very own Mahyar Ghasemali and Chuck Parrish joined operators and technology leaders at the Fitness Technology Summit, held in the Washington, D.C. area. The invitation-only gathering explored how technology is reshaping the member experience, inside and beyond fitness clubs.
Here are a few ideas that stood out to us at the Summit:
Member experience starts with retention
Bringing members through the door is only the beginning. The harder question is what keeps them coming back, and how decisions about programming, pricing, and engagement support that goal.
The summit agenda included global retention research and sessions on connecting fitness systems without replacing core platforms. Together, those topics point to a practical need: understanding not just how many members stay, but which experiences and interventions are associated with longer membership.
Personalization and community need context
Personalization and community were central to the conversations we brought home. Both start with understanding members as people, rather than as separate records in booking, billing, app, and CRM systems.
Industry research reinforces the importance of connection: ABC Fitness’s Mid-Year 2026 Wellness Watch report found that 67% of members identify community as their biggest driver of motivation and accountability. For operators, the opportunity is to connect participation, engagement, and membership history to ask better questions. Which programs are associated with repeat visits? Where does engagement begin to drop? Which outreach efforts help members reconnect?
One example we heard: younger members are leaving faster than earlier generations, moving between studios, apps, and memberships more readily. That matters because a single, club-wide retention number can hide it. A club might see overall retention holding steady while its newest, youngest members quietly churn after a few months, masked by long-tenured members who stay for years. Those groups join for different reasons, engage in different ways, and respond to different outreach. A younger member drawn in by a class format or a social community may need a very different nudge than a longtime member who comes for the equipment. Personalization starts with seeing those differences in the data, so teams can understand what each audience values before deciding how to reach them.
Unified data gives teams a stronger basis for answering those questions, audience by audience, and measuring what works. That’s what our tagline, “From Data to Insight”, means at dbSeer: bringing scattered records together so teams can see what keeps each group of members coming back and act on it.
Connect the tools already in place
The clubs we heard from were not starting from scratch. They were looking for ways to make existing technology work better together. That shifts the focus from adding another platform to connecting the systems already supporting daily operations. For multi-location operators, it also means agreeing on consistent definitions of an active member, a cancellation, and retention, so comparisons between clubs are meaningful.
Data Sovereignty vs. Digital Sovereignty
Two related ideas are worth separating. Data sovereignty is control over the data itself: who can access it, how it is used, and where it is stored and processed, which also determines whose rules apply to it. Digital sovereignty is broader. It is control over the technology, infrastructure, and operations that data runs on, including the freedom to change or leave a platform without losing what you have built.
At dbSeer, digital sovereignty is the principle we push for, and data sovereignty is the requirement to function: a club cannot run on data it cannot reach. For club operators, that translates into a few practical questions. Can we access and combine our data? Can we move it when the business changes? Can we decide who uses it, and for what?
Yet control is only half of it. The data also has to be accurate and consistent. When clubs own their data and trust its quality, they can put it to work with confidence, whether that means more relevant member engagement, better marketing measurement, or spotting members at risk of leaving before they go.
Going Beyond the Summit
For Mahyar, the summit’s central theme reaches well beyond fitness industry.
“Connected data has as many uses as there are businesses: tailoring how you reach different audiences, seeing what drives revenue, and making sure your data works for you. Advertising is one example. Your ads only know who filled out a form. Your CRM knows who actually bought, signed and stayed. Connect the two, and your campaigns learn which clicks turned into real customers and optimize for those. One of our customers saw their cost per new customer drop by more than 30%. But this only works when your data is unified, accurate and yours. That’s what we build at dbSeer.”
Many clubs operate across multiple locations, brands, and systems, which is where our franchise and multi-location experience comes in. We help organizations bring fragmented data into a shared platform their teams own and can use to compare performance consistently. That work recently earned dbSeer accreditation as a member of The Franchise Consortium, joining a network built to help franchise systems grow.
Alongside the platform itself, our DataOps Foundation keeps data accurate and trustworthy over time, and our AI Accelerator helps teams turn that foundation into working AI solutions, from member insights to smarter outreach. Together, that’s what “From Data to Insight” looks like in practice.
If your club or franchise system is working toward unified, trustworthy data, we’d love to hear where you are and where you want to go. Get in touch with our team to start the conversation.
