Zapier integration and better bulk messaging

We’re back to our regular feature updates after a busy end of year. This time the big addition is a Zapier integration and a bunch of smaller quality-of-life enhancements. We also launched our new podcast, Gym Heroes – read more on that below.

Zapier Integration

We announced last update that we were about to launch a Zapier integration, and quite a few of you participated in our private beta and we would like to thank you very much for that!

Our Zapier integration is now in public “beta”. This means everyone can now use it without an invitation from us. You can find it on Zapier here, or by searching for “Gymdesk” when creating a zap.

Our documentation page on the Zapier integration can be found here. It provides an example of how to create a Zap to connect Gymdesk with Slack, and also details the different actions, triggers and searches you can use currently. We will continue updating the integration based on user feedback.

Bulk messaging improvements

We’ve added several enhancements to bulk messaging that should make managing it more productive and also increase deliverability.

Member Communication Preferences

We’ve added a section in the member profile that provides more specific control over what communications a member will receive.

Previously, Emails and texts could only be switched on and off completely for a member (with the “do not Email” and “do not text” boxes). You are now able to turn off some communication without turning off everything.

The first two options – “Important updates” and “Announcements and events” are both for bulk messaging. When you send out a bulk Email or text, you can now select whether it’s an important update (such as schedule changes, gym closure, etc) or a lower priority announcement, and members can unsubscribe from one or the other.

All Emails affected by these settings will contain a link at the bottom of the link to allow members to quickly change their communication preferences without being logged in.

Bulk message drafts and templates

We’ve added an auto-draft feature that saves your bulk Email or text when you click out of the text box.

If you move to a different page and come back, your draft will automatically load so you can continue where you left off.

You can also create a template from previously sent messages, by clicking on the “…” dots icon in the message history –

You can also choose to resend it instead, if you just want to send it again once and not save it for reuse later.

All of these options are available for both the Email and text bulk messaging features.

Other enhancements

• We’ve made tasks that are not assigned to anyone visible to everyone on the dashboard and in their task list. Many of you have requested to be able to have unassigned tasks accessible by everyone and we’ve made this change to accommodate that.
• Log-in by code – You and your members can now log-in without a password, by requesting a temporary code be sent to your Email instead. The option to do so is shown on the log-in page after a failed log-in. Failed log-ins are 99.9% due to either incorrect Emails or mistyped / forgotten passwords, and we’ve looked at what other products are doing to mitigate that. This should also help log-in on new devices if you don’t remember your password.
• We’ve redone the lead to member conversion flow to allow for greater flexibility. It now shows the full member form when converting, allowing you to add a membership and set a payment card in one step.
• We’ve added open tracking in the Email settings – you will need to set up an additional DNS setting to activate it, but it will allow you to see with some degree of accuracy whether a member has viewed your communication in their messaging tab on their profile. This is done by injecting a small invisible image in the Email, so it’s dependent on whether members’ Email clients show images by default or not. It should be able to track about 40-50% of members when they open the Email.

The Gym Heroes Podcast

We started a new podcast interviewing gym owners and other fitness business owners about their journey creating and building a business in this space. We already have 5 episodes live with 3 more recorded and waiting editing / transcription. You should check out – some of those discussions are very interesting.

I’ve been reaching out individually to some of you to participate as guests while we built up to a point where we had enough content to launch. Now that’s officially launched, anyone who is interested in being a guest on the podcast should feel free to reach out to us and we’ll coordinate time to talk.

You can check out the podcast here, or read the transcriptions on the blog.

A Weekly Article Newsletter

Some of you might have noticed we’ve been updating our blog more regularly. We have a couple of regular contributors that are creating excellent content based on their years of experience running gyms and other fitness businesses.

While we had a subscription option for the blog for a while now, we haven’t been very consistent with sending updates from there. That is changing starting now, as we’ll be sending weekly updates with the latest 2-3 articles from the blog. If you’re interested in the content we have there, you should definitely head on over to the blog and sign-up for updates. The feature updates will continue to be sent separately to your account Email.

And that’s it for this update! If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out.