The Complete Fitness Email Marketing Strategy Guide [2024]

The world we live in has changed drastically and gym owners, personal trainers as well as fitness professionals can now leverage the power of fitness email marketing to educate and engage with prospective and existing customers better than ever before!

While for most people social media is the go-to strategy for the fitness industry, email marketing also offers tangible benefits if you integrate it into your overall marketing strategy.

In this blog post, we’ll explore:

• the benefits of email marketing for fitness
• how to implement an email marketing strategy for your business

So, let’s start by seeing how email marketing can benefit fitness businesses.

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Why Is Email Marketing Important For Fitness Businesses?

Email marketing is tremendously important for the fitness industry because it allows businesses and individuals to develop and maintain strong customer relationships. Fitness professionals rely on having loyal customers that also spread the word about their business.

Implementing email marketing into your overall digital marketing strategy will help you:

• nurture your target audience: email marketing campaigns are an effective way to educate people on how to reach their fitness goals.
• retain more customers: the success of your fitness business is based not only on acquiring new customers but also on retaining existing ones. Promoting specialized fitness programs and sharing the latest membership news will most probably keep your customers happy.
• build trust: the email is a highly personalized marketing channel that consumers themselves seem to prefer. Sending professional-looking emails will increase consumers’ trust in your brand.

Moreover, email marketing is a cost-effective channel to communicate with your audience while it’s also easy to manage, compared to PPC ads for example. All you need is a user-friendly tool and lots of creativity!

But enough with the theory. Below you’ll find the ultimate guide on how to form an email marketing strategy for your fitness business!

How To Implement An Email Marketing Strategy For Your Fitness Business

From setting your goals to crafting your email marketing campaigns, here’s everything you need to establish your fitness email marketing strategy:

1. Set Your Fitness Email Marketing Goals

Setting clear goals regarding what you aim to achieve through your email marketing efforts is the fundamental step in your strategy.

For your fitness email marketing strategy, some of the goals you might aim to achieve include:

• attracting and acquiring new customers
• promoting your fitness studio/programs/diets etc.
• increasing brand awareness
• educating people on different training styles (e.g personal training, group training, etc)

Establishing your goals will also help you in deciding what type of emails you are going to send later on.

2. Select A Trustworthy Email Marketing Service

To set your fitness email marketing in motion, you’ll need an email marketing software that can create, automate and send your email campaigns to your target audience.

You also need an online form builder tool to capture the email addresses of your webpage’s visitors. Fortunately, some of the best email marketing services in the market have form-building capabilities, so you can essentially kill two birds with one stone!

Since the market is saturated with such tools, finding the one that suits your needs can be time-consuming.

Here is what you should be looking for:

• user-friendly email newsletter builder: a drag-and-drop editor allows you to create converting campaigns without any technical skills. Add countdown timers, GIFs, and dynamic content to stun your audience!
• responsive email templates: save time and effort by utilizing your ESP’s pre-made email newsletter templates.
• segmentation and personalization options: group subscribers into smaller segments to target them more effectively and send personalized emails that improve their customer experience.
• landing pages and subscription forms: acquire new subscribers and promote your services more effectively through these marketing tools.
• marketing automation: set up automated workflows that deliver the right message at the right time.

If you’re looking for a straightforward, all-in-one service with advanced functionalities to cater to all your fitness email marketing needs, you can give Moosend a go and try its features.

3. Build Your Fitness Email List

The next step in your email marketing strategy for your fitness business is to get more subscribers that you can inspire and turn into loyal followers.

The best way to acquire your visitors’ contact information is by placing an opt-in form on your website. Opt-in forms can range from pop-ups and floating bars to sticky forms.

All of them are equally effective in attracting new members to your mailing list. On one condition, though! You need to offer a great incentive that your visitors won’t be able to resist!

Here is an example from Chris Hemsworths’ fitness brand Centr:

The benefit for users is immediately clear (hacks to get in shape), while the segmentation through sex means that the company can deliver personalized email experiences.

For fitness businesses, some great incentives that your customers will value are:

• downloadable diet plans, training schedules, PDF workout plans, etc
• first month off of their new gym membership
• video tutorials on how to perform exercises properly
• access to exclusive giveaways, online training seminars, and special events

You can also grow your email list in smart ways. For example, if you have a physical location, you can have your customers provide their email addresses by using an iPad. This is an excellent strategy beneficial for the retention of clients.

Check out our list building guide to find all the essential email list building tactics!

4. Segment Your Audience

Segmentation unlocks the true power of email marketing since it allows you to send the right message to the right people. Moreover, creating customer segments will help you deliver highly-personalized content that will resonate with your subscribers.

The most common segments are based on demographics, location, preferences, and goals. Your segmentation could include for example:

• New subscribers: a welcome email or series will build trust with your new members and familiarize them with your brand.
• VIPs: people who open your emails regularly or engage with your offers.
• Gym enthusiasts: subscribers who have shown a serious interest in fitness or visit the gym very often.
• Preferences: segment your subscribers based on the preferences they have chosen during their signup.

Segmenting your audience has some very important benefits for your fitness business. First and foremost, you can deliver dedicated messages for each segment and provide solutions to them. Additionally, you can:

• gain a competitive advantage over other similar businesses that are sending email blasts.
• use effective email campaigns to convert subscribers into loyal advocates of your fitness brand.

The customer segments that you create will also be useful later on when the time comes to automate your email campaigns and apply personalization to your messages. So, it’s a good idea to try and collect all necessary information about your audience through your signup forms.

5. Plan Your Fitness Email Marketing Campaigns

Now that your list building and audience segmentation are in motion, it is time to start working on your fitness email campaigns!

Generally, fitness brands focus on welcome messages, educational content, promotional emails with special offers and success stories, and content that helps subscribers reach their fitness goals.

Without further ado, let’s see what types of email campaigns you can create!

Welcome Emails – Make a great first impression

Welcome emails are the most important email campaigns for a fitness business because they are a great opportunity to make a good first impression and show your appreciation. Moreover, these emails show that you are “legit” and care for your business.

These messages are generally automated and are delivered right after people join your mailing list. Upon joining subscribers are fully engaged, so it’s a good idea to get them to know your brand and set expectations (how often they are going to hear from you, etc).

In the above example, Frame uses its first email to welcome subscribers with a sweet surprise. A 20% off code for their first training session! Moreover, the email copy and call-to-action (CTA) are on point, since they lead readers towards completing their profile and booking their first class.

Educational Newsletter

A successful fitness email marketing strategy could not but include educational newsletters. These email campaigns provide real value to your subscribers through useful fitness tips and advice on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The content of these campaigns can vary to keep subscribers “hungry” for more and inspire them to improve their lifestyles. In this way, you can also boost your open rates since your content will always be relevant.

Let’s see an example from Fit Factory:

The brand emphasizes the value of their email straight from the subject line: “Tips to ditch your resolutions and create healthy habits!” Inside the email, subscribers can find a downloadable goal planner as well as tips to get back on track after the holiday period.

Promotion of Special Offers

Email marketing is a great channel to promote your special offers due to its inherent “personal” nature. Moreover, you can also leverage urgency to create an irresistible message that your subscribers won’t ignore easily.

There is a reason why they are called “special offers” so use countdown timers in your emails, craft clever but not cryptic subject lines (you can utilize a Subject Line Optimizer like Refine) and finally go for a clean and engaging email design that follows the inverted pyramid model.

Here is an example from Peloton:

In this example, Peloton leverages a simple yet effective email design to promote its New Year’s special offers. The color contrast makes the email easily skimmable, while the red CTAs stand out immediately.

The email follows the inverted pyramid model. Namely, we have a strong headline with a bigger font, a short but engaging supporting copy, and the CTAs. Ideally, you should aim to have one CTA to increase clicks.

Virtual Training Email Campaigns

The pandemic definitely changed our lives and apparently, we’re still dealing with it in 2022. However, gym owners and fitness professionals were quick to turn “digital” and start hosting virtual sessions.

While things have improved since the start of the pandemic, virtual training sessions are still a must since some people can’t join in person or they might prefer to stay fit at home.

Therefore, you need to promote your virtual training programs and educate people on how they can join them without hassle. Let’s take a look at an example:

Frame has crafted a beautiful email campaign that encourages people to join virtual training sessions. Apart from that, they give a detailed step-by-step guide on how to do it. In this way, the brand not only builds trust with its audience but also promotes its digital “side”.

Pro Tip: If you want to take things a step further, you can set up and send automated emails that reach subscribers when weather conditions are harsh and it would be difficult for people to get to the physical location.

This can be done easily by leveraging Moosend’s email automation and setting a trigger to filter your contacts by location and then deliver a personalized message suggesting them to join your training sessions online.

Re-engagement Email Campaigns

One serious pain point of most fitness businesses is keeping their customers engaged and “loyal” to staying in shape. Inactive or disengaged customers could be the result of the fading of the initial excitement or moving past the “honeymoon” phase with your brand.

Email marketing is a great tool to combat this through clever messages that try to re-activate customers or get them to “interact” with your brand.

Sometimes it might be useful to offer an irresistible incentive that will “force” subscribers to give it a thought. This can be seen in the example below:

The above example focuses on a monetary offer and, according to our opinion, incentives should always be of monetary nature. Try playing around with a combination of free giveaways, such as being the first to hear of new offers or a “bring-a-friend” scheme. The results will surprise you.

Careful though! Even with a compelling offer, inactive subscribers may well stay like that. In this case, it’s wiser to delete them from your distribution lists. In this way, you’ll be focusing on a more engaged target group while maintaining good deliverability rates.

6. Leverage Email Automation

It’s one thing to craft and send email campaigns manually and another to leave the hard work to autoresponders (i.e., automated email messages).

These automated emails or email sequences are a killer strategy as they allow you to save crucial time instead of creating the same campaigns from scratch while nurturing your audience on autopilot.

If you’re starting out now, using a visual workflow editor will be much more comfortable compared to non-visual workflow editors like Mailchimp’s.

Some useful sequences you can create are:

• Welcome email series
• Lead nurturing sequence
• Re-engagement sequence
• Referral scheme sequence
• Special offer reminders

Now let’s move on to the next step!

7. Integrate Your Fitness Email Marketing with Social Media

When you get the hang of fitness email marketing, you can start planning how to maximize your results. The best way to reach that goal is to find other marketing channels to integrate it.

One of your best cards for the fitness industry is social media marketing! As you may have noticed, both big and small brands are already using social media accounts and more specifically Instagram, to promote their content and acquire more leads.

Instagram is also the land of stunning posts and, best of all, influencers! If you’re wondering how you can combine email marketing with social media, here’s your checklist:

• Add social media buttons at the bottom of your campaigns.
• Increase your signup rate by inviting your social media followers to join your newsletter.
• Encourage them to “swipe up” to subscribe to your newsletter via Instagram Stories.
• Leverage your Instagram bio and place a newsletter subscription link.
• Create social media-infused email campaigns showcasing your posts or user-generated content (UGC).
• Collaborate with influencers that have a nurtured audience and email list to promote your fitness brand effectively.

Additionally, you can create a dedicated landing page with powerful visuals and engaging copy to drive more subscriptions. For the best landing page builders out there, check out this post.

8. Track Campaign Performance & Optimize

The above steps will help you make email marketing an effective way of increasing the revenue of your fitness business. But you’re not done yet!

The last steps to a successful email marketing strategy for the fitness industry are to track the success of your campaigns and then begin optimizing them accordingly. You can measure your campaign performance through your email marketing platform’s reporting and analytics features.

Some key email marketing metrics that your fitness brand needs to monitor are:

• Subscribes and Unsubscribes
• Email open rate
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Non-opens

Platforms with rich analytics like Moosend and Constant Contact offer a dashboard with all the metrics you’ll need to track. Below you’ll find an example from Moosend’s reporting and analytics dashboard where you can track the performance of your campaigns:

Based on the data you collect, you can start A/B testing your messages. A/B testing is the process of trying out different element combinations compared to the original one and establishing which yields better results.

Ideally, you should opt to test:

• Your subject lines (and preheader text)
• Your headlines and supporting copy
• Placement of visuals
• Colors
• CTA button (color, placement, copy)

The winning combination shall be sent to the rest of your subscribers. This will also help you identify what works best for YOUR audience and adjust your overall strategy accordingly.

Build A Strong Fitness Email Marketing Strategy

A strong and effective email marketing strategy for your fitness business will help you capture, nurture, convert and retain more customers from this digital channel. Moreover, it will boost brand awareness and let you create a memorable experience for your customers.

Start by setting your objectives, grow your email list, plan your campaigns and continue optimizing your messages to see even better results.

Of course, there’s the phrase “a man is only as good as his tools.” So, do your research and find a user-friendly tool that will help you create and deliver high-converting email campaigns to your audience.

If you want a robust, all-in-one solution that’s fitness-friendly, sign up for a Moosend account today and see the “gains” for yourself!