One Million Strong: An In-Depth Study of Member Retention in North America
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This report, which is sponsored by Life Fitness, provides a comprehensive retention analysis of more than one million health club membership records.
“Measuring retention and its associated factors are a vital element of running any successful health and fitness business,” says Dr. Paul Bedford, director of Retention Guru, who authored the report and research. “This report offers not only key related statistics, but also a retention benchmark to measure against, which will have a wider impact on the approach used to manage sales, marketing, and customer service.”
The report most notably finds that based on more than one million member records in the U.S. and Canada, 67% of members retain their memberships for at least 12 months. While there is very little difference in retention rate between males and females, results show that retention generally improves with age. Also, members on longer agreements tend to post better retention rates than those on short-term agreements.