Can you get more members on your forums through contests?

Contests are believed to help you in bringing traffic, users, as well as content on your site. Do you actually believe if you launch a contest you will have more members on your forums? Do you think your members will stay on your site even after the contest ends? Do you think contests are a sustainable way to build members and content?

Contests are a good way to be able to bring members to your forum and also ones that will be active as well but from past experience, usually once the contest is over you find that the members no longer come back and activity dies down.

Contests are fine once in a while but I would never rely on them for activity.