Crunch Fitness started as one gym in New York’s Greenwich Village, and had some 25 locations when it turned to UpSwell for direct mail expertise. Since then we’ve helped them grow to over 300 locations and expanded our involvement to virtually every aspect of direct marketing. That includes all manner of mailers, social media ads, Mail2Mobile, email marketing, digital display ads and even grassroots print flyers.

When Crunch entered the Alabama market, they were facing well-established competition from Planet Fitness. They needed to quickly and efficiently build brand awareness and boost membership pre-sales. And they knew they could count on UpSwell to get it done.

We worked collaboratively with the club owners and one of the other health club marketing companies they sometimes call on. Even though that firm offers social support, Crunch asked us to formulate and lead the crucial social media effort.

We counseled the client on what’s been proven to work for membership pre-sales. Then we created a social strategy specific to this new club. We guided the messaging for the creative being developed by the other firm and mounted a six-week campaign to run on both Instagram and Facebook. We ran ads for both platforms, managed page content, and answered hundreds of comments and messages daily. Then, for “topspin,” we added in a grassroots outreach, via printed flyers.