These software tools are indispensable for the business of Urban Sports Club.

Subscribing and being able to exercise in thousands of gyms in five European countries: this is the profit promise of the Urban Sports Club. The number of possible monthly "checkins" depends on the subscription package of the respective users. How does the company technically implement such a complex product with several participants? And what software does it use to organize itself and attract customers? This was revealed to us by two leading employees of the company.

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While many companies focus on one of few large target groups - either end consumers or business customers - Urban Sports Club even appeals to three: Business-to-Consumer, Business-to-Business (companies that want to offer their employees sports programs in partnership with Urban Sports Club) and Business-to-Partner, that is, the studios that Urban Sports Club must first acquire as partners. Studio operators should be able to better utilize their studios, gain more visibility and tap into new customer groups (such as corporate athletes) through Urban Sports Club.

A project management tool for the marketing plan

It's not surprising that such a complex business model requires a lot of coordination and communication - and a large part of it runs via the chat tool Slack. "This is definitely the tool that has created the most value internally for us. In the pandemic and home office time, Slack has only become more important," says Stas Hagemanns, Head of Product Partner & Platform at Urban Sports Club. "Slack is also connected to many of our marketing channels, so we receive automated notifications through it," adds Ítalo Vietro, VP of Platform Engineering at the company.

The entire marketing plan is created and managed with the project management tool Asana. "Asana allows teams to develop their own way of working that best fits their processes", so Vietro. The brand and design team uses the typical Adobe Suite tools, "Our advertising materials and our sales deck we manage with Figma (here in the OMR portrait). In the creative process, instead of the whiteboarding tool Miro, we now use Figjam, because it is connected to Figma."

Self-developed tool for subscription management

And how and where does Urban Sports Club win new end customers? "Google is our most important digital marketing channel, because with Google Ads we can reach the most people," says Stas Hagemans. Urban Sports Club not only books ads in the results of Google's search engine, but also uses Google Display Ads. There are also Google tools for tracking, attribution and evaluation: the Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Looker Studio, formerly Data Studio).

If you take out an Urban Sports Club membership, you then have to check in at the partner studios via a special QR code. For the management of subscriptions on the end customer side, USC relies on a self-developed tool. "This can be a challenge when we develop new products. That's why we always check again whether we should switch to a ready-made software-as-a-service tool. However, our own tool is still working very well at the moment", says Hagemanns.

Automated Sales Funnel for New Corporate Clients

"The majority of our members are corporate customers. This was the case before, but it has been intensified by Corona", Urban Sports Club founder Moritz Kreppel already said in June to OMR. "When we win new corporate clients, there are different expansion stages", explains Stas Hagemanns. For smaller companies, there is an automated sales funnel based on HubSpot CRM. "They are led to a registration page and provide all necessary data in a form. Our sales team contacts medium-sized companies and we also create tailored offers for large companies."

The studios receive a fee agreed upon by Urban Sports Club per checkin. Instagram is the most important channel for winning new partner studios, according to the product manager. For the B2P division, the company has set up an automated sales flow in Zapier (here in the OMR portrait). "When a new lead comes in, our sales team can discuss whether personal contact is necessary and who can pick this up", says Ítalo Vietro.

"The SaaS prices for large companies are too high"

Is there a tool that is currently missing on the market in the opinion of the two Urban Sports Club managers? "Less a software, more a pricing model", thinks Ítalo Vietro. As a company, one wants to always offer customers the best service: the best (suitable) shop, the best payment solution, the best CRM solution, etc. "But most software-as-a-service products become virtually unaffordable at large volumes." This often leads to in-house solutions being used. "Although they are cheaper, they only solve the problem at a basic level."

These are the tools used by Urban Sports Club

Here is a list of all the tools used at Urban Sports Club:

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