Are you routinely re-engaging former gym members? If you’re not, you could be missing a trick – one that leads to a treat! Read on to find out how to approach re-engaging ex-members without scaring them off.

The Challenges Of Running A Gym Research* found that 75% of UK gyms face local competition. Likewise, the Leisure DB State Of The UK Fitness Industry Report 2025 reported that the number of privately-owned gyms rose by 4.7% in the last year.

Competition is intense. 58% of gym operators report members switching to competitors and/or find themselves targeting the same demographics*.

In this environment, you can’t afford to ignore former members. Re-engaging ex-members is one of the highest-return marketing activities you can spend time on.

Former members know your brand. They’ve used your facilities. And often even have an emotional connection with your community. All this results in faster conversions, lower acquisition costs, and higher potential lifetime value than brand-new prospects.

Get started (or fine-tune your approach) with this handy guide. It’ll give you a practical, repeatable approach to win-back campaigns.

Read on for:

  • How to approach win-back campaigns
  • Offer ideas that work
  • Ways to measure success
  • And more…

Let’s get stuck in!

Quick takeaways

Short on time? No sweat! Here are your quick takeaways:

  • Re-engaging former gym members is cheaper and faster than acquiring new ones. Mainly thanks to their existing trust and familiarity with your brand
  • Start with an audit of leaver data. Identify cancellation reasons, member value, and visit habits/activity preferences before launching campaigns
  • Prioritise members who left in the last 6–12 months. They’re easier to re-engage compared with members who left years ago
  • Segment ex-members by time since cancellation, reason for leaving, value, and preferences. So, you can tailor your messaging effectively
  • Keep win-back funnels simple. Remind members you exist (awareness), give a reason to return (motivate), and make it easy to re-join (simplify)
  • Go beyond discounts with offers like free passes, trainer check-ins, festive promotions, or highlighting new classes and facilities
  • Track key KPIs to measure campaign success. For example, email open rates, SMS responses, conversion rates, and cost per re-join
  • Avoid common mistakes. Like over-discounting, generic messaging, delayed follow-ups, and ignoring personal outreach or GDPR compliance

The value of focusing on former members

Before we get into the details, let’s look at why it’s worth focusing on winning back former members.

  1. Cheaper to reach and convert – Re-engaging ex-members often costs a fraction of the amount you’d spend attracting brand-new members. Why? Because most already trust your brand and you can normally use lower-cost marketing channels.
  2. Higher conversion rates – Similarly, former members are familiar with your facilities, workout options, staff, and community. Many cancellations are down to specific circumstances (moving house, injury, time-consuming life events, etc.). So, winning back these members is relatively easy.
  3. Speed to revenue – It’s typically faster to convert ex-members who already know and trust you. And that means you get paid faster. Plus, often, you can onboard returning members faster and with less effort.
  4. Valuable insights – Even if they don’t re-join, former members may choose to tell you where you failed or how you can improve. This gives you intel you can use to reduce future churn.

How to approach win-back campaigns

Take a methodical approach to re-engaging and winning back former gym members to maximise success.

Start with an audit (don’t dive in blind!)

This audit will inform your strategy for approaching ex-members. Firstly, use your gym management software to identify and create a list of former members.

Prioritise recent cancellations

Tip

Former members who left within the last 12 to 6 months are often low-hanging fruit. Less time has passed since they visited and heard from you.

When members leave, you should record a cancellation reason in your software. Common cancellation reasons include lack of use, relocation, and cleanliness issues. Make sure you can categorise ex-members by these reasons to choose the right messaging.

Send out detailed surveys to members who cancel? Run regular NPS surveys? Or capture gym member feedback and complaints in another way? Make sure you’ve fixed any poor experiences before re-engaging affected former members.

Identify high-value former members. For example, those who were high spenders, with you for a long time, and/or visited frequently. Consider treating these ex-members differently.

Understand which services and facilities former members preferred. Look at bookings data to see which classes they attended. Review visit data to find those who preferred solo gym sessions. And identify those who opted for personal training.

You could also try to work out which communications channel (or channels) former members preferred. Look at email opt-in and opens, SMS opt-ins, and app engagement. Prioritise popular comms channels.

Segment former members (message the person, not the spreadsheet!)

Armed with the findings of your audit, next start segmenting former members into smaller target groups. So, you can take a tailored, personalised approach for each segment.

Segment by:

  • Time elapsed since cancellation – for example, 0-6 months, 6-12 months, 12+ months, etc.
  • Cancellation reason – for example, cost, relocation, lack of use, injury, etc.
  • Member value – for example, high-value, mid-value, low-value, etc.
  • Service/facility preferences – for example, group fitness attendees, gym only, personal training customers, etc.

Each segment/group will need a tailored hook to attract them back. Why? Someone who left due to a lack of use will need a different incentive to someone who left due to price.

Deep space tip box

Which cancellation reasons are most actionable?

Go deeper

Find out which reasons offer the greatest potential for success when trying to win members back over.

Get stuck in!

Keep it simple with a three-step win-back funnel

When designing your campaign to win-back former gym members, keep it simple with a short marketing funnel. Try to drive prospects through each stage:

Awareness ➡️ Motivate ➡️ Simplify

  1. Awareness – Remind ex-members that you exist. Keep it friendly and avoid hard-sell. Spark curiosity. Lean into nostalgia and fear of missing out (FOMO).
  2. Motivate – Give them an incentive or reason to return to your club. Think limited-time offer, new class, or freebie.
  3. Simplify – Make coming back as effortless as possible. For example, send them straight into your joining journey online/in-app or give a code for free access or day passes.

Avoid over-complicating things. Keep campaigns linear and timely. A staggered sequence of touches across channels usually converts better than a one-off blast.

Choose the right channel mix and orchestration

Where you can, opt for channels that members preferred previously. Here’s an example of a multi-touch sequence for a 3-week win-back campaign:

  • Day 0 (Email) – Friendly hello, clearly highlight a reason to return
  • Day 3 (SMS) – Short follow-up with an urgent offer (i.e. expires in 5–7 days)
  • Day 7 (Retargeted social ad) – Quick testimonial video or class highlight leading to a rejoining landing page
  • Day 10 (Phone call) – Personal call from a manager (reserve for high-value lapsed members if resource is limited)
  • Day 14 (Email final) – Last-chance message emphasising the deal and giving simple call-to-action

You don’t necessarily need all channels for every segment. For low-value former members, email might be enough. Reserve higher cost social ads for mid-to-high value lapsed members. And if your team is small, only call very high-value ex-members.

Respect marketing preferences

Tip

Make sure you follow the requirements of GDPR and don’t contact any ex-members who aren’t opted into marketing communications. If in doubt, seek legal advice.

11 win-back campaign offers that work (and aren’t just discounts!)

So, we’ve covered how to approach winning back former gym members, next let’s look at offer ideas that actually work. Remember, using the intelligence you’ve gathered, choose offers that will appeal to each segmented target group.

The danger of discounts

Tip

Discounts can work. But over-reliance on discounts trains members to leave for offers. Mix financial incentives with offers tied to experience and personal value.

Experience-first offers

  1. Free 7-day returners pass – Offer a complimentary week pass giving full access to club facilities and classes. You could also choose to let them book an orientation session with a personal trainer.
  2. Complimentary goal-reset session – Give a free 30-minite session with one of your personal trainers to map new goals. Make sure the trainer can clearly signpost them to the right services and programming without resorting to heavy sell.
  3. Class bundle – Entice former class-goers back with a competitively priced class bundle (for example, 3 classes for £10). Alternatively offer them a free class.

Time-limited reactivations

  1. ‘Back from the dead’ Halloween pass – Get creative and offer a 2-week pass that can be redeemed anytime before Halloween. Lean into the theme with your copy and creative, but make sure you give a clear incentive to take up the offer.
  2. ‘12 days of fitness’ Christmas offer – Give 12 days for free if they activate before Christmas Eve and use a special discount code. Wrap the messaging with festive cheer and keep the hook clear – limited time, limited availability.
  3. ‘Back-to-school’ pass – Offer a 14-day pass to help former members reset their routines as kids head back school in September. Position it as a fresh start for parents and students alike.

Relationship-building offers

  1. Bring a friend guest pass – Offer former members the chance to bring a friend for free for their first month back when re-joining. Training with a friend makes it easier to commit to showing up. Plus, you’ll give a new prospect a taste of what it’s like to be a member – excellent social proof!
  2. Trainer check-in – Less an offer, more a conversation. Where an ex-member had a specific pain point or complaint that you’ve now solved, have a familiar personal trainer or instructor give them a call or send a personal message. Frame it as a catch up and focus on letting them know about the actions that have been taken.
  3. ‘We miss you’ loyalty credit – Offer a gift of a small credit they can use in your café, on personal training, or day passes. Position this as a gift, not a discount. You could administer it using a voucher code.

Win-back with facility/service improvements

  1. New classes and/or facility upgrades – Highlight things that didn’t exist when a former member left. Make sure you focus on what’s relevant to them.
  2. Promote flexible options – Where you know a member left due to cost, promote lower cost membership options that would suit their usage patterns. Similarly, if an ex-member cancelled due to lack of use, promote pay-as-you-go or casual options to get them back in, no commitment necessary.

When a former member takes up an offer that doesn’t involve them signing up for a membership, make sure you automatically follow up again. Ask for feedback. Make it easy to sign up to a new membership.

How to measure success

If you want to systemise your approach to winning back former gym members, you need to make sure you focus your efforts on the right things. And that’s why paying attention to key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential.

KPIs to track (and target ranges to aim for):

  • Email open rates – Aim for 25-35%. The more recently the group you’re targeting cancelled, the higher you can expect open rates to be
  • Email click through rates – Aim for 3-8%. Focus your email content on a single call-to-action to drive higher click through rates
  • SMS reply / click rate – Aim for 10-30%. Again, the group your targeting will influence this, plus when you send the text message matters
  • Conversion rate – Aim for 5-15%. Recency of cancellation and your offer will have most impact on this

You could also look at:

  • Cost per re-joining – Where signing up for a new membership is the end goal of your win-back campaigns, calculate total campaign cost divided by the number of members who re-joined. Compare this to the cost of acquiring a brand-new member
  • Attendance within 30 days – Again, for ex-members who become current members, measure the number of visits within their first 30 days back with you. At a minimum aim for 4 visits, higher is better (within reason, a visit habit needs to be sustainable)

Common mistakes to avoid

There are some common mistakes which can hinder your ability to win-back former members:

  • Too much discounting – This can train members to cancel and wait for offers, ultimately hurting your bottom line. Prioritise trials, passes, and non-price incentives
  • One message for all – The same thing is unlikely to appeal to everyone. Segmentation matters; tailor the offer and your tone
  • Waiting around – The best time to win a former member back is shortly after they leave. Where appropriate, follow up fast
  • Skipping the human touch – Personal calls and outreach can win-back high-value members more effectively than automated flows alone. Be strategic to keep it manageable
  • Ignoring data privacy and consent – Keep scripts and touch points within the bounds of consent and reasonable expectation

Power up your business & stay in the know

The wrap up…

For most gym operators, running win-back campaigns targeting ex-members is a no-brainer. It’s cheaper than acquiring brand-new members, conversion rates are high, and revenue can come faster.

Start by auditing your leaver data. Identify trends and find groups you can target with a tailored approach and relevant offer.

Keep your re-engagement approach simple with a linear, staggered sequence of messages. Remind them you exist (awareness). Give them a reason to return (motivate). And make coming back as easy as possible (simplify).

Use discounts sparingly to avoid training members to leave and wait for an offer. A valuable freebie or relationship-focused outreach can be just as effective as a membership discount. Tailoring offers to individual preferences is the key.

Regularly measure success by tracking KPIs. Look to drive improvements over time, refining your approach and automating win-back efforts when you know what works.

See how Xplor Gym can help you run effective win-back campaigns targeting ex-members.

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*The Challenges Of Running A Gym Research was conducted by Xplor Gym via an online survey. The survey took place between 28 February and 21 March 2025. It was completed by 60 respondents from privately owned gym operators in the UK.

Joanna Ashton Profile Picture

by Joanna Ashton Content Marketing Manager, Xplor Gym

  • First published: 10 October 2025

    Written by: Joanna Ashton