Gym Email Marketing Tips for Getting Stronger Results

Gym Email Marketing Tips for Getting Stronger Results 

From expensive television ads and billboards to guerilla tactics like prowling parking lots and leaving flyers on car windshields, there has never been a shortage of ways to market a gym. But the million-dollar question will always be: What is my return on investment?

In other words, are your marketing tactics having the desired effect on your audience? And how much money will these tactics bring to your business compared to the expense?

This guide focuses on email marketing, which is one of the most effective and affordable marketing channels available to gyms. You’ll learn how to create a gym marketing plan that increases memberships and drives retention. And you’ll see how fitness emails marketing can be automated in a way that saves you time and effort.

What is gym email marketing?

What exactly do we mean when we talk about email marketing? It’s the practice of sending targeted emails to specific groups of current or future customers. Each message is tailored to the needs, pain points, motivations, or preferences of the recipients.

Email marketing is ideal for the fitness industry thanks to its relationship-building abilities. Want to connect with more customers? Check. Need to keep current customers engaged? Check. Hoping to build the kind of loyalty that lasts for years? Check.

It also doesn’t hurt that email marketing is one of the most affordable channels at your disposal. The upfront costs are much lower than channels like PPC and display, and email marketing delivers even more on the back end with an average return of $36 for every dollar you put in.

Your emails provide an opportunity to provide extra value to your members. Most of the time in life, you simply get what you pay for. But if your gym can offer more than the minimum required through basic transactions, you’ll separate yourself from the competition.

Keeping in contact and providing value also builds trust with your customers. They’ll look to you more as an ally than just another business looking for money. When you reach this enviable level with customers, email engagement hits new highs and a wide range of other benefits naturally follows.

Creating successful gym marketing campaigns starts with a plan

Before you can quibble over whether a display ad will perform better than a promoted social post, you need to have a plan in place. Just as a map helps your chart your way to a destination and measure your progress along the way, your gym marketing plan will help steer your efforts in the best direction. And with everyone working from the same page, alignment comes easier and goals are hit faster.

Every marketing plan is different, but most follow these basic steps:

Assemble the framework

You can begin gathering essential details for your plan by answering these questions like these:

• What are we trying to accomplish here?

• What do we need to be successful?

• Which audiences are we targeting?

• Which channels are most effective for these audiences?

• How will we measure the campaign’s success?

By seeking input from your team members to answer these questions, you’ll get everybody on board with the eventual plan.

Choose your key metrics

To ensure that your fitness email ideas are living up to their full potential, you’ll need to have metrics in place to measure progress and optimize your strategies in real time.

Here are some email metrics to consider:

• Open rate

• Click-through rate

• Conversion rate

• Bounce rate

• List growth rate

• Overall ROI

• Revenue per email

• Revenue per subscriber

With everyone using these same metrics, your team is able to collaborate better and reach the best results possible.

Select channels to support your emails: While emails will be the focus of the campaign, you’ll want other complementary channels to support the messaging. Social media is a must, as are any other channels that your members prefer. Think of these cross-channel opportunities as cardio for your marketing plan, as they help your campaign to continue working at a high level in order to get optimal results.

In addition to these three steps, throw in any other tasks you feel are necessary to get your plan up and running. If you ever feel unsure about next steps, refer back to the questions you answered at the beginning. What matters is that you have your ducks in a row before you start creating content and clicking “send.”

Build up your gym email marketing lists

Once your plan is complete, you’re ready to bring it to life with email marketing. Federal law (and common decency) requires you to obtain permission from each person before you send them any messages. Thus, list building is a top priority. People used to give out their email addresses without much thought, but modern customers are more concerned with keeping their inbox from overflowing with random marketing messages.

If you want people to opt-in to your email list, be prepared to provide some value in return. For your gym members, providing their email address during the registration process ensures that they’ll get updates and also have access to exclusive content you send out. Resources that get attention include:

• Instructional videos from your top trainers

• Downloadable workout plans

• Downloadable training schedules

• Discounts on new gym memberships

• Recipes for the perfect recovery smoothie

These resources can also serve as lead magnets to attract new customers. You can promote your lead magnet through other channels such as social media, display ads, and your website. In order to receive it, individuals will enter their name and email address into a form.

It’s a true win-win. You’ll increase the contacts in your email list with new additions who are fitness minded (they sought out your fitness-related lead magnet, after all). And the new lead gets a helpful resource at no charge.

Email marketing for gyms requires segmentation

There are lots of helpful gym email templates out there that can reduce the effort required for your campaigns. While the word “template” sometimes conjures up images of super generic content, that’s not the case at all. Modern email platforms like Twilio SendGrid provide professional-grade email templates that make it look like you have a talented in-house team of designers.

The secret to making your messages feel personalized and relevant is to segment your email lists. It’s a concept that’s familiar to anyone in the fitness world. You’d never walk into a gym and do a quick workout on every machine in the building, because that generic approach would yield no worthwhile results. Instead, you focus on specific muscle groups or training categories.

Likewise, a segmented list allows you to spend effort where it matters most. For example, you could create a series of emails personalized to your new members. It would share tips for those just getting used to your gym, answer common questions, and let them know how much you value their patronage.

Another example might be geographically targeted toward members who live more than 15 miles from your gym. Since it might be harder for these individuals to get to your gym because of the distance, you could share public transportation information, create a carpool group, or let them know that you’ve extended your evening hours to make it easier for people to come in after traffic has died down.

Other segmentation examples include:

• Age

• Preferences

• Gym attendance

• Fitness goals

• Engagement level

Personalizing your messaging will lower your unsubscribes, increase engagement, and build actual relationships with your gym members. And when your lists are well managed, targeted marketing doesn’t even require much extra effort.

Don’t forget to automate

Automation tools make email marketing one of the most user-friendly parts of your job. For example, Twilio SendGrid’s drag-and-drop email templates let you put together compelling messages in no time. Then you just enter the recipients and schedule, and let technology do the rest.

Of course, Twilio SendGrid is more than just something to build and send messages. It offers holistic support for the entire process. Build signup forms to gather leads, then import data for each contact. Clean your email lists to set your campaigns up for optimal performance, then track all the key metrics in real time.

Our platform empowers the entire process, freeing up precious time so that you can dedicate it to other parts of your business. Because we know there’s always more to do when you’re building your gym’s brand into something truly special.

To get started with Twilio Sendgrid, create a free account today. You’ll get immediate access to our fitness email marketing tools and other helpful resources.