“The Super Bowl of our Brand”How Anytime Fitness Used Attendify

at their Annual Conference

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

THE BACKSTORY

Anytime Fitness is a health and fitness club with 3,000 franchised locations in 20 countries.

Voted the top global franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine for two years in a row, Anytime

Fitness prides itself on the strength of its community of franchise owners.

The company’s annual conference is a key way to bring this community together and energize

them for the coming year. All franchise owners attend, and many even bring their staff and

personal trainers — and it has been running for over 10 years since its debut in 2005.

In 2015, Anytime Fitness planned to hold the event in Nashville, Tennessee. They rented

out multiple venues around town for the conference, along with honky tonks for nighttime

events that included performances by famous country bands. Additionally, for the first time

a"er 10 years of printing a conference program, Anytime Fitness decided to go digital.

. “It’s like the Super Bowl of our brand and a big driving force behind the

organization as a whole. We use it to educate, reinvigorate, and inspire

our franchisees, and give them a way to connect with one another.”

Emily Lo!oomVendor Relations Coordinator in Anytime Fitness

Anytime Fitness is a health and fitness club with 3,000

franchised locations in 20 countries.

INDUSTRY

Fitness

GLOBAL PRESENCE

20+ Countries

200+

EMPLOYEE COUNT

3 million+

GYM MEMBERS

Customer Success Story

THE GOAL

Anytime Fitness looked for an event app to meet two goals that printed programs could

not. The first was to facilitate engagement among attendees, from in-person interactions

to community connection via social media. The second goal was to relay timely, ever-

changing event information with a dynamic platform.

However, there was one thing that printed programs did really well: creative branding. The

team had historically gone “all out” on the printed programs, with themes, custom

photoshoots, and special print materials to convey character.

As a result, the event app had one more hard-and-fast requirement:

to reinforce the Anytime brand and give people a memorable

experience. “It was a very big deal for us to switch from a printed

format to a digital format,” said Lo!oom.

Connect franchisees, convey logistical event information, and bring the brand to life

THE SOLUTION

The team chose Attendify, and the Anytime Fitness event app became the

backbone of the Nashville conference.

Connection

A favorite feature among attendees was the news feed, which added an extra layer of

connectivity. “It was like our own private little Facebook news feed — a secret means of

communication with only the people at the event,” said Lo!oom. People could post photos

and messages, and also cross-post to the real Facebook for more social media presence.

The app also spurred more 1:1 connections among attendees through features like private

instant messaging and profile search with tags. For example, a person could search the

attendee roster for all profiles of “Minnesota club owners” to see colleagues in their area and

decide who to meet up with.

An app that helped attendees meet one another and take full advantage of the setting and sessions.

THE SOLUTION

Relaying event information

The app schedule kept things running smoothly. It showed two conference tracks:

one for the main programming of Anytime Fitness and one for its sister company.

Users could browse the schedule, click on an event, read the description, and check

out the speaker’s profile.

The conference team could send a push notification to attendees if the time of an event

changed. (And this also came in handy if someone lost their phone.)

The event organizers wanted to take advantage of their unique Nashville setting, so they

loaded the Attendify interactive area map with pins highlighting “must-see” points of interest

around town. They used another map to show the locations of exhibits at their big trade show.

The analytics were great as well, because they helped us see which events the

franchisees attended, which sessions they found most valuable.”

Emily Lo!oomVendor Relations Coordinator in Anytime Fitness

THE SOLUTION

Lively branding

“Attendify helped me transfer key elements from the printed program to the app, so

that we weren’t losing any of the event’s feeling,” said Lo!oom. When attendees

started using the conference app, they were greeted with a warm welcome letter from

the founders and the Anytime Fitness logo.

The app also supported sponsor branding for their three sponsors. In the past, they

would have had a full page ad in a printed program, but now sponsors were promoted

with strategically-placed banners in the app. “We worked with Attendify to determine

which times of the day the app would be most utilized, and then posted our sponsor

banners during those times for maximum viewing.”

They also used the app to increase signups for their affiliated charity, Heart First,

where franchisees could sign up to be a “Heart First club” and donate a percentage of

their monthly revenue to charity. During a particular session of the conference, an

award was presented to the beneficiaries of the charity. “A#er that presentation, we

were able to say, ‘go to conference app right now if you’d like to sign up to be a Heart

First club.’ We capitalized on that live energy and emotion of the presentation.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Continued app engagement and next year’s conference

“I got a lot of feedback that attendees loved the app; that the features were

awesome and it was easy to connect with others. The app definitely did what we

wanted it to do, which was to increase connection and excitement about the

event.”

Emily Lo!oomVendor Relations Coordinator in Anytime Fitness

In fact, attendees continued to post in the event app up to half a year a!er the conference

was over, posting selfies and connecting with the community socially.

Anytime Fitness is planning for their next conference with the event app, and looking

forward to reenergizing their franchisees for another year.

“The app definitely did what we wanted it to do, which was to increase connection and excitement

about the event.”

Emily Lo!oom, Vendor Relations Coordinator in Anytime Fitness

+1 866 944 8678, 2225 East Bayshore Road, Suite 100, Palo Alto, CA 94303© 2016 Attendify. All rights reserved.

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