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Custom text fields vs labels, what's the difference and how can they be utilized in gym software reporting?

Dru Hill
Dru Hill
Published on Sun, Jan 26, 2020

Labels are custom user-defined tags that can be applied to a member’s profile that can be used as an identifier when filtering the find-member page or your gym reporting. Learn what labels are and how they can be used here. If you are familiar with GymMaster’s Custom Text Fields, you may see the similarity between these and Labels. Like Labels, Custom Text Fields can also be used to store custom information about a member on their profile, however, there are a few scenarios where you would benefit from using labels over custom text fields (and vice versa).

GymMaster gym software new feature - labels

When to Use Labels

Storing Categorical Data Labels are best used to group your members based upon their specific attributes or characteristics, such as their interests or demographics. For example, the “Powerlifter” label could be applied to multiple members who enjoy powerlifting. A quick filtered search of your members list for this tag would then return a list of all your members who are powerlifters.

Tagging The Member With Multiple Labels.

Members can have multiple interests and other defining characteristics that they may qualify for at any given time, which is much easier to handle with labels than custom text fields. For example, a “Powerlifter” might attend classes and also be tagged with a “Class Attendee” label, and be a part of your VIP club and therefore hold a “VIP” tag. Situations such as this would usually require multiple custom text fields to be added to your member profile page, which looks cluttered and is much less efficient.

Marketing.

While you can use custom text fields for creating groups or segments of your members list, Labels offers functionality that is more suited to marketing a gym. You can have multiple labels per-member as mentioned previously, which is helpful for sending highly-targeted and relevant communications for members (increasing their effectiveness) through using specific labels or combinations thereof which can be used to narrow your audience list for an email or SMS campaign. Being able to quickly add a member to these groups in seconds due to the label recommendations displaying previously used labels simplifies the process of segmentation and helps eliminate the chance of mistakes that could result in grouping or reporting errors. When creating a label you can also outline details of when it should be used under the “Hover” description, this helps ensure they are effectively being used for their intended purpose by other staff members.

custom text fields gym software reporting

When to use Custom Text Fields

Storing information unique to a member

Unlike labels, a custom text field is ideal to be used on storing information unique to a member. For example, you might have a field called “Silver Sneakers Number” which is used to store the member’s silver sneakers number for reference at a later point when dealing with insurance companies. This information wouldn’t suit being added as a label as every member will have a unique number.

Recording Information During Sign Up

Custom text fields can be used to store information directly from sign up, either on your website through the gym member portal or on your kiosk. This makes it easy to store additional information from your members without the input of staff, as members can fill in these forms themselves to join your club. In contrast, labels are more of a tool to be implemented and used by a staff member, and therefore they can only be applied to the members profile from within GymMaster. To read more about Labels and gain further insight into ways you can incorporate this functionality into your routine when using GymMaster, check out this blog post: here