• by Jess Nelson , April 22, 2016

Life Time, a chain of fitness centers operating in the United States and Canada, boosted engagement and revenue with a data-driven marketing campaign powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud, boosting return on investment by 154% in less than a year.

The company partnered with Salesforce to create a personal experienced for its customers, driven by a scientific approach.

Within two years, Life Time saw email open rates grow 80% as unsubscribes dropped 15%. The company increased new membership services and offer email engagement by 40% by personalizing each customer’s with data to tailor marketing messaging.

“It’s not just standard personalization anymore,” saysSara Chapman, director of email and mobile communication at Life Time. “It has to be relevant based on what their needs and wants are. Putting a name in an email isn’t going to get you as far as it used to. Today’s consumers are bombarded by marketing via all channels and in order to be seen, your message needs to be relevant and viewed as important to them.”

Fitness can be an incredibly personal experience, and Life Time tailored unique experiences for every customer before, during and after they visited one of the company’s fitness facilities. 

By using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Life Time created a single data profile for every unique customer. By integrating previously siloed data, Life Time was then able to create a more personalized experience for customers with more relevant and targeted content.

“Journey Builder has been a game changer for us,” says Chapman.  “We’ve been able to build out behavior-based programs, which allow us to see the complete view of our members from the time they step in the club and their general purchase behavior. Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to pull in that data and slice and dice however we need to.”

Salesforce Marketing Cloud also enabled Life Time marketers to integrate content across channels, including email, mobile, social and the Web. 

The results added weight to Life Time’s piggy bank, as the company achieved a 154% ROI in less than nine months, according to a case study by Nucleus Research.