3 Winning Brands, 3 Unique Approaches to Member Retention
When it comes to retaining members, experience is everything. Fitness and wellness consumers might be spoiled for choice these days, but they usually know when they’ve got it good.
If pricing specials, glitzy marketing campaigns and persuasive salespeople are the keys to getting members inside your facility in the first place, the experience they have once inside is what gets them to stick around for the long term.
This “soft side” of member retention is essential in creating customer loyalty, a strong brand identity and driving profitability.
ATN breaks down how three top brands across different sectors of the industry – boutique fitness, big-box gyms and luxury lifestyle – are winning members over by creating a special and unique atmosphere.
MADabolic Prioritizes ‘Culture’ Over Community
Forging a coherent and appealing brand identity isn’t easy, especially in the crowded boutique fitness market. MADabolic, a strength-driven interval training franchise based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has carved out an impressive niche as a brand for Type-A young professionals.
Founded by former professional hockey players Kirk Dewaele and Brandon Cullen in 2012, the fitness franchise describes its target demographic as a “25 to 40-year-old high-performing go-getter.” MADabolic carefully tailors its marketing, communications and fitness programming to reach this client avatar.
“MADabolic isn’t about conforming to traditional molds,” Cullen has told ATN. “We’ve deliberately moved away from the overused group-fitness playbook, prioritizing structure and consistency over variety. Our focus is on sustainable strength training and personalized attention to detail. This approach tends to attract members who are serious about their fitness journey and expect more than just a generic workout.”
MADabolic focuses on building a brand “culture” over creating “community,” viewing the latter term as overplayed and underperforming.
“At MADabolic, we strongly believe that the concept of “community’ is oversold, overhyped, and overdone in the fitness industry,” the company wrote in an op-ed penned for ATN. “Community can be faked. Culture, however, cannot.”
credit: MADabolic
The culture at MADabolic includes intense, highly regimented 50-minute group fitness workouts, constructive feedback from coaches, and penalties for arriving late to class. MADabolic is also intentionally brash in the way it communicates with its members, inside and outside of class.
“We use bold and authoritative language in our client communications – from our newsletters all the way down to our waitlist confirmation text messages…we do NOT pretend to be soft and fluffy,” the brand proudly states.
MADabolic’s culture-over-community strategy seems to be working, especially recently. The brand counts over 30 locations nationwide and says it’s on track to reach 50 locations in 2025 amid a strong pipeline of franchise sales.
Chuze Brings Hospitality to Big-Box Gyms
Standing out in the boutique fitness market is tough, but it’s just as big of a challenge for high-value, low-price (HVLP) gym brands.
For Chuze Fitness, an HVLP gym chain with over 50 locations across the West Coast, Texas and the Southeast, it’s all about the member experience. Chuze has taken strides to establish itself as a hospitality brand rather than just a gym one.
According to Chuze CEO Cory Brightwell, this approach isn’t as common in the industry as it should be, especially among low-price operators.
“The gym industry is not seen as a hospitality industry,” Brightwell said. “That’s on us to fix.”
At a Chuze gym, members can expect to be treated the same way they would at a boutique fitness studio or luxury club, despite Chuze memberships starting at just $15.99 per month, Brightwell assures.
“We committed to being the friendliest and cleanest gym. Those are basic things, but they’re really difficult to execute at a high standard day in and day out,” he added. “We wanted to be known as the brand that knows its members’ names, that is spotless when members walk in, and where everybody feels welcome.”
credit: Chuze Fitness
Unlike many HVLP gym brands, Chuze doesn’t sell franchises, preferring to control operations at the corporate level so it can ensure hospitality stays top of mind at every location, whether in California or Florida.
“There are some great franchises out there, but for us, we don’t want to lose control of the standard of execution,” Brightwell said. “I’m not saying we won’t eventually explore that avenue, but for now, we like keeping things in-house so we can ensure from a quality-control standpoint that the experience we’re delivering to our members never slips.”
Life Time Creates a ‘Social Space’ for its Members
Life Time is more than just a gym; it’s a third place for its members.
The fast-growing athletic country club operator has established itself as one of the premier brands across fitness, wellness and lifestyle, attracting hoards of members across the United States for its approach that blends workouts, self-care and top-tier amenities.
Life Time clubs feature everything from state-of-the-art fitness equipment to pickleball courts to bars and coworking spaces. This means that for many people, Life Time is where they spend the majority of their time outside the home or office.
“(Life Time) — it’s everything to our members,” the brand’s founder and CEO Bahram Akradi has said. “It’s their social place, it’s their beach club, it’s their programs, it’s their network. Yes, they get a workout (too), and we are constantly working on how to improve those things from a member’s point of view.”
On recent earnings calls, Akradi has pointed to Life Time’s strong member engagement numbers, with its members logging 135 average visits per membership in 2023, up from 124 in 2022 and 108 in 2019 before the pandemic. Life Time’s visitation numbers were up again in early 2024, data from location intelligence firm Placer.ai has found.
“The increase is a clear indication that our members are more engaged, with higher retention as a key outcome,” Akradi has said.
credit: Life Time
Life Time’s third-space approach obviously pays off in engagement and retention, but it’s also helping the brand on the acquisition front.
Life Time has waitlists at many of its clubs nationwide, despite its average monthly membership price being $190 (and significantly higher in some markets). Perhaps most importantly, this demand is organic, Akradi has emphasized.
“These results are with zero salespeople in the company,” he stated. “We’ve told you guys this for the last three years, but maybe now the results speak for themselves: there’s zero promotions. There’s no advertising for the membership.”