A growing health club brand focused on engagement
Fit Factory is a health club chain headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts with locations in North Attleboro, Foxboro, Braintree, and Kingston, MA. The brand began in 2015 in Braintree after two founders who grew up in the area decided to buy and improve an existing health club.
With strong management and a high‑value price point that includes unlimited group fitness classes and other perks, Fit Factory has been able to grow and is planning to scale its facilities even further.
Sharilynn’s role: pre‑sale strategy and member experience
When we connected with Sharilynn Brown, Marketing Manager at Fit Factory, she described her role as “a little bit of everything.” She started as an Administrative Assistant and quickly transitioned into the marketing department, where she now works with a team of five.
Sharilynn is especially passionate about creating unique pre‑sale objectives to drive leads and contribute to the overall success of each new club opening. She also focuses on clever messaging angles and offerings that improve the experience for existing members.
Implementing SMS for existing members
There’s a common belief in the fitness industry that it can be difficult to onboard existing clients into a text marketing program. Fit Factory’s experience was different.
Their membership agreements already included a clause opting members into communication from Fit Factory. That meant implementation was mostly about adding value, not starting from scratch.
“Implementation was easy! Our membership agreements had already included a clause opting members into communication from Fit Factory. That said, it was really just a value add for them with things like happy birthday texts and free personal training sessions!”
Implementation for prospects: simple, convenient, and measurable
For prospects, Fit Factory leans on simple text‑in workflows to make engagement easy on both sides.
Instead of long forms or time‑consuming content, the team can simply ask someone to text a keyword to a short code, like FFGARLAND to 52236. It’s quick for staff to promote and just as easy for prospects to act on.
“Text message marketing is easy and convenient both for my team, and for our prospects. It’s just as simple to tell someone to text FFGARLAND to 52236 as it is for them to do so. It’s much more time‑efficient than blogging, for example, and we have a much higher success rate actually generating leads using SMS.”
Turning a billboard into a lead machine
Fit Factory took keyword and short‑code marketing to the next level by featuring one of their keywords on a billboard off the interstate in Garland, Texas. Traditionally, billboard ROI can be hard to measure because the main metric is impressions.
By weaving their keyword into the creative, the team could see exactly how many people texted in — and therefore how many leads the billboard generated.
“ROI can be difficult to track with something like a billboard since the only metric to work with is viewership. With this in mind we decided to incorporate the keyword into our creative to see how many opt‑ins we could collect. This in turn continually provides us with measurables such as cost per lead, helping us better analyze our return on investment.”
Result: 102 keyword opt‑ins generated in the first 15 days with the Garland club’s pre‑sale keyword.
Favorite feature: mobile scratch cards
Sharilynn’s favorite part of Textmunication’s mobile engagement platform is the mobile scratch card feature.
When someone texts in with one of Fit Factory’s pre‑sale keywords, the auto‑response includes a link to a digital scratch card. Prospects can “scratch” the card on their phone to see if they’ve won a prize like a free year of membership.
This gamified experience helps capture attention, rewards participation, and strengthens the connection between prospect and club before they ever walk through the door.
Mission: making fitness accessible to everyone
Beyond numbers and campaigns, Fit Factory keeps its mission at the center of every engagement strategy.
“Fit Factory’s mission is to help members to Live Beyond Boundaries by providing immense value for an affordable price point to make fitness accessible to everyone.”
Textmunication’s SMS tools help Fit Factory consistently communicate that mission — whether they’re sending birthday messages, offering free sessions, or welcoming prospects who just texted in from a billboard. Together, we turn everyday interactions into long‑term member relationships.