I’ve belonged to a Goodlife Fitness gym for about three years. It’s convenient and basic, which is all I ask for in a club. I want to come in, do my thing and go, preferably without speaking to anyone.
Lately, they’ve been running a new promotion.
Pretty straight forward, right? If you work out six times in a month, you get entered to win $1,000. Exercising is good for you. Going more often means you get more value out of your gym membership. And we all love the possibility of free money. Wins all around, yeah?
Except . . .
. . . your club has to be the winning club for that month across all of Canada, and you then have to be chosen as the winner within your club. (If you’re curious, the full contest rules are posted on the Goodlife Website.)
This means your odds of winning are only as good as the number of total club franchises and then factored by the number of members in your club who submitted a complete ballot that month.
It’s hard to tell how many franchises Goodlife has — they don’t make it easy to count based on how their “search for a club†feature is laid out and the corporate information on their site is minimal. I counted at least 14 in Toronto. Wikipedia says they are the largest health club franchise in Canada with 275 locations.
How much do you want to bet that people who continually renew their memberships work out at least six times a month?
Let’s be very conservative and estimate that each club has, oh, 500 members. Using myself as an example of how engaged people are — I’ve never gotten around to entering and I do go to the gym at least six times a month —let’s say 200 people enter the contest each month.
So 200 people x 275 clubs = 55,000 people who are more likely to renew. Consider that a basic membership like mine runs about $800 a year, which means you could conceivably help to retain $4.4 million in membership fees by running a contest like this.
Weight that against the 12 people who are going to win $1,000 in a month, and $12,000 a year is a pretty cheap investment if it keeps a quarter or a third of your national members more likely to renew with you.
Well played, Goodlife. Your contest is a clever way to encourage your consumers to do something that will keep them more engaged with the company and its brand, regardless of what it may also be doing for their waistlines.
