Email Marketing Can Still Save Your Fitness Business

If you're like many gym owners right now, your hair's on fire. If you're lucky enough to be open for workouts, you're working tirelessly to stave off churn. Welcome to 2020 if you’re just waking up, Mr. Winkle.

The whole thing might feel like a losing battle. Arguably, the whole year might feel like a losing battle at this point. You might be wondering how many members can I lose, even as you post pictures on Instagram of the newest member that you've enrolled.

While you labor to solve the digital divide and figure out how your business can work in an online space, there are some simple steps that you should be taking with email marketing steps that'll help you stay connected with your members and your prospects in ways that social media just can't do.

You can reach your members and your prospects with email marketing, even if you don't have a good email marketing strategy in place right now. And you can do that starting right now.

Get organized
Invite the right people to join
Follow your actual plan
Stay calm

In addition to the good work that you're already doing on social media emails will reach your audience in a more personal way. I know I always talk about this, but I talk about it all the time because it's true.

The fact that your message is reaching into someone's inbox is what makes it personal. You can take that personalization much further, but that's not the point of this video.

#1 Organize your list and your plan

First, find every email address that you've ever collected through your business portal and especially any that haven't asked to unsubscribe. Get them into one place. If you don't have an ESP set up, this would be a good time to do that.

Get all those email addresses in one idiot-proof lists. And what I mean by “idiot-proof,” is that you should name it with a date in the title and assume that you're never going to remember what that file is when you find it later. Name it for your poor future self, who has to figure it out.

Once you have your list organized, you're going to want to organize or put together an email that you're going to send that list.

#2 Invite your list

The point is to re-invite them to join you. If you haven't talked to them in a while, and if this is your first time, you're simply going to be inviting them to join you and confirm that they want to receive emails.

The message should be from you. The graphics on the emails should be minimal, if any, at all. It should look like the sort of email that you might receive from friend or a family member with a bit of a business sound to it. So casual, but not too casual. Keep it short and get to the point.

Here's a little copy. I put together as just a rough, oftentimes off my head bit of email that you might send.

Hi [person],

It's Damon. I know it might seem out of the blue, but it's not, we're in a crisis and I want to stay connected and be a support. Even if you don't want to come into the gym right now, I want what you want, but to do this, I need to know how you want to hear from me.

Here's what I'm going to start doing…

And then this is the part of the email where you would outline what you're going to commit to them.

This is great to establish upfront like a newsletter would be a simple and smart solution and kind of ideal in that you could send out information on changes to government policies or what's happening with the facility.

You could also discuss any online businesses that you’re building related to your gym, how they could help support the gym, and you could even mention casual get-togethers with other members.

That newsletter opens you up for a lot of those opportunities.

#3 Follow that plan as closely as you can

Any deviation from the plan might upset your recipients. It might, it might not just try to avoid that, but know that if you deviate too much, you risk losing subscribers.

Meanwhile, continue to develop your digital strategies and communicate those options via your newsletter. And the last thing is…

#4 Don't panic

It might get kind of quiet out there. You might ask people to respond to your newsletters or your emails, and they might not. Don't panic. Take a look at the metrics.

Are your emails being opened?
Are they clicking on any links that you might be sending them?

Those are better indicators of what's going on. If from time to time you hear from people. That's great, but to stay the course, stick to the plan.

Short and sweet today, but I hope you get the point. There's some great stuff you're doing with social media and you shouldn't stop doing that, but you should also be thinking about how you can reach your prospects and your members more personally, through email marketing efforts.

It doesn't have to be anything crazy. It just has to actually reach them in a way that matters.

If you have any questions about that, I'm always here to help you. Just shoot me a message. I'm on Instagram, on Facebook.

Damon