Summary:
A) 26 percent increase in the nine-month retention rate
B) 64 percent reduction in attrition rate - from 56.0 per thousand per month to 20.1 per thousand per month.
C) Two week increase in median length of stay, from 13.2 months to 13.7 months.

Fitness by Design Retention Report
Data preparation
Data represent 733 members with join dates between 11 Jan 2004 to 17 Aug 2006. Nineteen records were dropped for members who had joined with the last 30 days (proir to 17 Aug 2006) who had yet had an opportunity to cancel. One further member was dropped who had a termination date prior to the join date. Of the remaining 713 members, 371 cancelled their membership during 26 months of follow up.

Retention
The date set for the start of The Retention People work was 29 Oct 2005. This was the first time activity data are shown to be recorded in the system. Figure 2 shows the retention rate for memebers who joined proir to this date and members who joined on or after it. It is the first 6 months of follow up where the numbers of records are sufficient for robust observations. It can clearly be seen that fewer members joining since The Retention People system was installed have quit during the first 6 months of their membership.



Attrition rate and longevity
The rate of cancellation is shown in Table 1. The attrition or "churn" rate is an average of 51 members per thousand per month. The average length of membership is 13.7 months (range = 1 to 26)

	Attrition rate (per thousand/month)	Median length of stay
Overall	50.9	13.7
Pre-The Retention People Post-The Retention People	56.0 20.1	13.2 N/A