3 Must-Haves Every Fitness Business's E-Mail Marketing
Guest Post by: Fitness Business Consultant, Catalina Zbar
E-mail marketing is the most cost-effective, trackable, and efficient way to grow your client base and maintain relationships.
In my experience working with fitness business owners, there are a few mistakes I see coming up time and time again:
Letting the e-mail feel very ‘automated’ by lack of personalization
Underselling (or not selling) their services
Taking too long to get to the point
Putting too much information in one e-mail
Lacking to address all subsets of their communities
Forgetting to leave a clear call to action in place
Not following up
Without a clear strategy in place, it’s easy to feel as though your e-mail campaigns aren’t growing your business, because they probably aren’t.
I want to give you 3 ‘must-haves’ for your e-mail campaigns that will make an immediate impact to your business.
#1 Be Brief
Did you know that an adult's average attention span is 8 seconds? 8 seconds - that is all that you get to attract your customer's attention. Now, think about the implication of this for your e-mail campaigns. In a nutshell, the short attention span means:
They probably won’t carefully read through your content;
Your content should be easy to read and skim through!
The only way to attract their attention is to give value and be authentic. Your focus should always be on building a mutually beneficial relationship. After all, if you don't give your customers any value, why should they care?
#2 Have a Clear Call-To-Action (CTA)
There should always be a reason for why you are reaching out to someone. And because you are wanting to improve their experience and ensure that they are happy customers, making it easy for them to behave in a certain way will only make life easier for everyone.
Let’s say you are reaching out to someone because they are new, and you want to check in and see if they have any questions or concerns. The CTA in this case would be: Let Us Know How You’re Doing by Clicking HERE.
Or, to take a less direct example, let’s say you are wanting to leave a little bit of value in their inbox, sprinkle a little wisdom in their direction. Ultimately, customers that are practicing regularly are going to ‘get hooked’, see results, build a habit and become brand ambassadors. The CTA in this case would be to ‘Book My Next Class’.
Pro Tip: ‘Book MY Next Class’ vs. ‘Book YOUR Next Class’ gets higher click rates!
#3 Communicate Often
Sometimes I hear: “but I don’t want to inundate my clients with e-mails!” or “I don’t think they’ll care!”. Well guess what? Your people want to hear from you. According to McKinsey, "96% of people ... would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with." Last time I checked 96 is pretty darn close to 100.
Another cool little stat, is that out of all of the e-mails studio owners send out to their clients, the most opened e-mail is the Welcome E-mail! With an average of over 80% open rate compared to the 20% we see across all other e-mails. This means that you need to take opportunity of this open rate to create a connection! This is your shot at that ‘first impression’, so don’t mess it up!
I know that considering all of the different ways in which we can communicate with the various cohorts within our communities can feel like a lot of work. You need to identify an objective, create a strategy, and then write a seamlessly not-too-salesy quick-to-absorb e-mail that will both feel personalized and lead to a sale. And this is what I’m here for, because I happen to LOVE e-mail marketing!
And, because any friend of Pixality’s is a friend of mine, I would be more than happy to speak with you about your e-mail marketing (and any other marketing questions you may have) over a 30 minute free call. You can e-mail me or book in my scheduler (www.calendly.com/catalinazbar) whenever your business is ready to experience never before seen results.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catalina Zbar is a business consultant for fitness studios and a Health & Wellness enthusiast. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter.
Catalina's consultancy, Telomere Consulting, provides strategic planning, business evaluation, and marketing services that enable growth and development. Catalina also coaches her clients on strategies for retention, pricing, sales, and the creation of new revenue streams.
