How to Jumpstart Your
New Club Openings
with a Successful Presale
2025 Issue 3 | GearedUp
Presales are a great way to introduce a new Planet Fitness ® location to the local community before the club’ s doors even open. A successful presale ensures that your club already has members even before the club is officially operating, setting your club up for success. But what makes a successful presale? We interviewed several subject-matter experts on the topic to get a clear understanding of how one can coordinate a successful presale.
Successful Presales
A successful presale can be driven by the location of a club or many other factors. Director of Marketing at Pinnacle Service Brands Murphee Pellman sees certain factors that are often good predictors for how a presale will go.
“ Population density and the competitive landscape are definitely key predictors, as are the demographics – all of which come from Tango. We recommend that whatever one’ s process is, that a post-mortem is executed at the end of every presale,” said Pellman.
In smaller towns, a new Planet Fitness can generate a lot of excitement by offering another fitness option for residents, which can have a huge impact on how a presale goes.
“ Our most successful presale to date was the opening of our Smyrna, Delaware, location. This success can be attributed, in part, to the clear need for a Planet Fitness in the area. The next closest club was more than 25 minutes away. By introducing a convenient and affordable fitness option in Smyrna, we were able to meet an unmet demand in the community,” said Director of Local Marketing with National Fitness Partners Vanni Nguyen.“ The club opened with more than 2,000 members, a join BC % of 81.0 %, and a total BC % of 82.3 %. By opening day, we had captured
3.83 % of the total population in the Smyrna area – an exceptional performance and the strongest presale result in National Fitness Partners’ portfolio.”
While location helped the club’ s presale, Nguyen added that she believes the strategic involvement of NFP’ s operations team contributed to the opening’ s outcome. The team took a highly targeted approach by Julia Sanders to outreach, choosing specific audiences for each week, which ranged from first responders to local schools, colleges, and both large and small businesses. The team also hosted a three-day construction preview event a few weeks prior to the club opening, which Nguyen explained,“… gave members and prospects the opportunity to meet our team and experience the new club before it officially opened. The event was promoted through email marketing and boosted via Meta, which helped drive awareness and attendance. Altogether, these strategic and community-focused efforts created strong momentum that translated into a highly successful presale.”
At Pinnacle Service Brands, the State Street, Illinois, PF ® club performed well in presale. It believes the success was a mix of good location, timing, the $ 19.99 Black Card offer, presale tactics and the operations team being heavily involved with local efforts. What has also helped the franchise group find success is restructuring its internal teams for better flow and communication.
“ Similar to PFCSC, we re-aligned our structure with development now aligned with operations. This had led to a better coordinated and connected process, and finally, we have an outstanding
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