A new year brings new energy and new expectations. Studio owners are heading into 2026 with a sharper focus on retention, lifetime value, and doing more with the clients they already have. Acquisition costs aren’t going down. Competition isn’t slowing. And“hope they come back” is no longer a growth strategy.
That’s why we’re excited to launch Loyalty, a powerful new way to reward the behaviors that actually drive revenue, retention, and long-term brand love. This isn’t a punch card or a one-off promo. It’s an always-on growth engine designed for modern boutique fitness brands.
We built Loyalty to help you turn engagement into measurable ROI and to give you a smarter system for keeping clients coming back, spending more, and staying longer in 2026 and beyond.
Why Loyalty Matters in Boutique Fitness
What we consistently see across the most profitable studios is a clear and repeatable pattern: they are just as disciplined about retention and engagement as they are about acquisition. Growth isn’t treated as a front-door problem alone—it’s sustained through ongoing connection, habit-building, and brand affinity.
This is exactly where loyalty becomes a revenue lever, not a marketing tactic.
When we look at platform-wide performance, brand loyalists punch far above their weight. They make up just 9% of the total customer base, yet they generate nearly 30% of total brand revenue. That’s not an incremental lift—that’s foundational revenue driven by your most engaged clients.
And the differences don’t stop there. Brand loyalists:
- Visit studios ~5x more frequently than other customers
- Spend 2.6x more per month
- Stay with a brand ~2x longer
- Are ~4x more likely to bring in guests, and those guests are ~2x more likely to convert
Loyalists don’t just show up more—they actively fuel growth by bringing in higher-quality prospects who already trust the brand.
This is why we invested so deeply in loyalty. The opportunity isn’t just to reward behavior—it’s to intentionally scale the behaviors that drive lifetime value. Frequency. Tenure. Advocacy. Spend. These outcomes don’t happen by accident, and they certainly don’t happen through discounts alone.
Our loyalty tools are designed to support what the best studios already do intuitively—and make it scalable across every location, every client, and every interaction. When loyalty is built into your operating system, retention stops being reactive and starts becoming predictable. And that’s when growth compounds.
Feature Spotlight: How Loyalty Works
Loyalty allows you to define the actions that matter most to your business—and reward them automatically.
With Loyalty, you can:
- Reward consistency (e.g., X visits per month)
- Encourage exploration (trying new class types or modalities)
- Incentivize upgrades (moving from class packs to memberships)
- Drive incremental spend (retail, add-ons, or special events)
- Celebrate milestones (50th class, anniversaries, streaks)
Clients earn points for completing these actions, which can then be redeemed for rewards you control—like free classes, retail credit, exclusive experiences, or member-only perks.
For multi-location brands, Loyalty is built to scale. HQ defines the rules once. Locations execute automatically. And performance is visible across the entire network. Mariana Tek customers can get started with Loyalty today.
The Guide: How to Run a High-Impact Loyalty Program
A well-designed loyalty program does more than give points—it shapes behavior, builds belonging, and rewards your most engaged clients in ways that feel intentional and motivating. The most successful programs share 3 things in common:
- They’re easy for clients to understand
- They’re simple for operators to manage
- They’re strategically designed to grow with your business
So how do you design a loyalty program that reflects your brand, supports your goals, and evolves as your studio scales?
- Design your points strategy. Clients earn points for each reservation check-in. When deciding how many points to award, keep three core principles in mind.
- Keep points easy to understand: Use clean, round numbers (like 10 or 20) so clients immediately grasp how they’re earning rewards without doing mental math.
- Plan for future flexibility: Starting with a higher base gives you room to introduce lower-value actions later—like referrals, reviews, or dollars spent—without rebuilding your program.
- Leverage the psychology of scale: Larger point values feel more motivating and meaningful, reinforcing the importance of showing up while increasing perceived reward value without increasing cost.
- Design 3–5 loyalty tiers that balance simplicity and aspiration. Most studios perform best with 3–4 tiers, while 5 tiers can work if the first is a no-points “starter” tier that enrolls clients automatically. Keep tiers easy to understand, name them in a way that reflects your brand (not generic labels), and design each level to represent a deeper relationship with your studio—rewarding the right behaviors while giving clients a clear, emotionally meaningful progression to aspire to.
- Design benefits that prioritize quality over quantity. The strongest rewards feel meaningful without straining margins, balancing recognition, exclusivity, and revenue generation instead of relying on small cash rewards or heavy discounts that underperform or erode profitability.
- Choose perks that feel special, not expensive: High-impact options like exclusive tier-only classes, early access to merch or promos, branded gear, or targeted limited-time discounts create excitement while driving incremental engagement and spend.
- Match benefits to client behavior: Align rewards to who actually sits in each tier—early tiers may respond best to upgrade incentives or guest passes, while top-tier members often value exclusivity, recognition, and VIP experiences more than additional discounts.
- Start simple, then evolve. It’s always easier to add benefits than to remove them. If you’re unsure, launch with a strong core set of rewards and expand as you learn what resonates most with your community. Loyalty programs are not static—they should evolve alongside your business, your offerings, and your clients’ motivations.
Loyalty That Pays Off
The power of the Loyalty is its flexibility. Your program should reflect what works best for your studio, your clients, and your brand.
Loyalty isn’t about giving things away. It’s about aligning incentives with the behaviors that grow your business.
When done right, loyalty increases visit frequency, strengthens emotional connection, and creates a system where your best clients feel seen—and rewarded—for showing up. That’s good for retention. Good for revenue. And good for building a brand people stick with.
As you plan for 2026, Loyalty gives you a new lever to pull—one that’s strategic, scalable, and designed for the realities of boutique fitness today.
by Christopher Lyon Group Product Lead
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First published: January 20 2026
Written by: Christopher Lyon