As we kick off the new year, it’s critical to have your gym’s 2023 fitness marketing plan in place—or, at least in the works—as well as your updated fitness content calendar.
While creating your annual fitness marketing plan is no easy feat—it’s worth investing the time upfront to really think through and develop a comprehensive plan of action to serve as the roadmap to guide all of your marketing efforts for the year ahead and keep everyone on the same page.
When utilized correctly, fitness newsletters have the ability to transform leads into paying customers, upsell your current customers, and to re-engage lapsed members—all while simultaneously building up brand authority and improving brand loyalty
A newsletter also helps you build a brand personality and familiarity, making you instantly recognizable in a crowded inbox. By creating and sending regular newsletters, you are keeping your fitness brand at the top of your customer’s minds. You’re building a relationship that other brands aren’t.
So, no matter what type of fitness business you run, let’s jump into how you can craft the perfect fitness newsletter for your audience.
Do I really need a fitness newsletter?
In the age of social media, you may be wondering if you really need to bother with fitness newsletters anymore? The short answer is, yes.
While some marketers may think email is dead—the statistics prove otherwise.
Don’t let contemporary communication methods distract you from one of the oldest, yet most effective strategies—email marketing. In fact, email marketing boasts the highest ROI of any marketing channel.
Here are some other staggering email marketing statistics for you to consider:
- For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can anticipate an average return of $36
- Email marketing is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined
- 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month
- Nearly 22% of all email campaigns are opened within the first hour of sending
- 59% of respondents say that marketing emails have influenced their purchases
Another huge benefit to using email to communicate with members is nearly everyone uses email—in fact, 92% of the U.S. digital population use email, with 61% using it on an average day.
So, yes–regardless of the size of your gym or fitness facility, you should absolutely have an email marketing plan in place and you should be utilizing gym newsletters correctly and effectively.
Best practices for fitness newsletters
To create an effective fitness newsletter, there are some best practices and key considerations to keep in mind.
Define your goals & objectives
Starting with a clear understanding of your goals and objectives is critical to the success of your email campaigns.
You’ll want to define the specific goal of each fitness newsletter you send as that will drive the content and design, as well as the relevancy to your recipients.
Identify your target audience
If you want to engage your audience, you need to know about them—for example, their likes, interests and other demographic data. By understanding who you’re talking to, you can create tailored content to pique interest and maximize engagement.
Segment your email lists
Segmenting your email lists can take some time, but it’s necessary to ensure the right content is going to the right people.
Segmentation places subscribers into more specific lists based on their interests, whereas personalization entails using the recipient’s name, or reaching out to them on their birthday or to celebrate other milestones.
Sometimes general information newsletters are appropriate to send to your entire distribution list, but you’ll want to proceed with caution. If you send too many emails that aren’t relevant to the recipients, you risk getting blocked or even reported for spam.
Determine distribution frequency
After you’ve defined your goals and identified your target audience, you’ll want to create a distribution plan that outlines the emails you plan to send, what you plan to include, and when you plan to send them.
Consistency is key, so outlining your dates and topics in advance will help you avoid the last-minute scramble.
It’s important to be realistic with the goals you set, so if you’re just starting out, consider sending one or two emails per month—you can always increase the frequency later.
Design your templates
To make things a bit easier on yourself, consider creating several templates to use for different audiences and purposes. The templates and features available to you will vary by your service provider.
Keep in mind that the templates you create will be the foundation of your email marketing campaigns, so it’s important to ensure your branding and tone is consistent in order to build trust and familiarity with your audience.
How to write an effective fitness newsletter
The primary purpose of a fitness newsletter is to keep your members informed, connected and engaged with your facility—but to do so, you’ll have to catch their attention first, and then keep them engaged.
Write snappy, attention-grabbing headlines
The subject line is one of the most important parts of your email. We’re all busy people, and most recipients will make a snap judgment whether or not to read your email based on the headline alone. To entice readers to open your email, your headline should be a balance between being informative and intriguing.
Include high quality, captivating visuals
Visuals are the first thing we look for, so the reader’s eye will be immediately drawn to whatever visuals you include. Using rich imagery is a great way to highlight an essential point and keep your readers engaged. But it’s important to find the right balance between text and imagery, because using too many images will increase your load times and risk losing the reader’s interest.
Make your text scannable
The simplicity of your fitness newsletters is key to their readability. The majority of your subscribers will open your emails on their mobile devices, and long blocks of text can quickly cause readers to lose interest. Break up your content into shorter, more digestible chunks.
Include a clear call-to-action
If you want recipients to take specific action after reading your email, tell them. Guide your readers to a clear call-to-action button so they understand the purpose of your newsletter, and make it easy for them to do what you’d like.
Optimize for mobile devices
The vast majority of your subscribers will likely be reading your fitness newsletters on their phones or other mobile devices. For this reason, you want to make sure your template is optimized for mobile use to provide a seamless user experience.
Include important links
Don’t forget to tell subscribers where you need them to go (and make sure the link works)!
Something as simple as a missing, broken or easily overlooked link can make a huge difference.
Content ideas for your gym newsletter
When defining your email marketing content strategy, it’s important to plan and map out content ideas that will be timely, relevant and important to members throughout the year.
Try to limit your e-newsletter content to two or three topics, with about 200 words of descriptive text per topic.
Here are some email marketing content ideas to get you started:
Facility news
Your gym newsletter is the perfect opportunity to share facility news and updates, exciting announcements, and other general news or developments with your members.
Help keep members in the loop and informed about new classes, class schedules, staff changes, and anything else that may help them feel connected.
Showcase staff members
People relate to people. You can help build trust, comfortability, and nurture relationships by showcasing staff members in your fitness newsletters.
Interview different staff members and ask them to share the story of their personal journey, what keeps them motivated, their favourite workouts, and other information your members may find relatable.
Diet & nutrition tips
Nutrition is probably the most crucial thing for balanced health and fitness—because staying fit and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is not easy.
Ask your personal trainers, nutritionists, or health coaches to lend their expertise and to share some of their favourite tips, tricks, or links to their favourite healthy recipes.
Special offers & promotions
Are you running a promotion on personal training services? Do you have a membership drive coming up?
Don’t forget to let your customers know!
Class schedules & registration links
Do your classes change from week to week? How often do you add new options?
Keep members in the loop by providing a detailed class schedule. Make it easy for members to access up-to-date class schedules and registration links.
Scheduling information is especially important for gyms that rely on drop-in attendance or class punch cards, as members may need to be reminded of classes to keep attendance up.
Upcoming events
Promote upcoming events by including a brief event overview and link to the social media pages, or the website registration page.
You can also share a post-event recap that includes a brief summary, list of noteworthy attendees or sponsors, and a few select photos.
Client success stories & customer testimonials
Help keep motivation high by sharing member success stories—include before and after pictures, discuss their weight loss journey, and provide additional information to help your readers believe they can achieve their fitness goals, too.
This is also a perfect opportunity to work in some testimonial marketing by asking readers to submit their own success stories, provide feedback, or leave a review.
Customer reviews and testimonials are a powerful way to showcase results, build trust, demonstrate your ability to deliver an exceptional member experience, and offer social proof that you’re able to help clients achieve their goals.
Fitness industry news & events
Share the latest industry news, events, videos and happenings with your subscribers.
Not only is this a great way to keep your content relevant and timely, it also helps establish your credibility.
Motivational quotes & images
Who doesn’t love ‘em?
Keep things light and help members stay motivated by including some of your favorite motivational quotes or imagery.
Multi-Channel Outreach
Reach current and prospective members with multi-channel messaging. Use email to schedule informative branded content. Employ text messaging to deliver quick, relevant information within seconds.
Template Library
Save time on design to focus on high-quality messaging. Choose from 500+ customizable email templates to kick-start your outreach. Select, edit, and apply templates to automated campaigns.
Advanced Messaging
Create advanced email campaigns to develop new customer relationships or nurture leads throughout the buying process. With instant sending options you can ensure delivery when contacts are most likely to engage.
Targeted Campaigns
Increase the efficiency of your email and text messaging campaigns with targeted marketing. Send emails and messages to all contacts or apply filters to create specific cohorts.
In-Depth Reporting
Use in-depth reporting to track, measure, and optimize campaign performance. Report on client referrals, lead conversions, promotion engagement, bounced emails, and more.
Optimize Lead Touch Points
Boost sales with increased lead touchpoints. Meet your prospects with the messaging they need at just the right time. Create more opportunities for inquiries and engagement with calls-to-action that move contacts through your funnel.
Conclusion
When utilized effectively, a fitness newsletter can be one of the most useful, efficient and cost-effective marketing tools at your disposal.
Did you know EZFacility can help automate and improve your email marketing campaigns from one intuitive, responsive platform?
EZFacility’s full suite of marketing tools makes it easy to customize and send advanced email marketing campaigns to develop new customer relationships or nurture leads throughout the buying process.
With automated email and text message functionality—you can ensure your clients receive the right information at the most opportune time.
Want to learn more? Schedule a free, no commitment demo and product tour today.