Email is one of the most cost-effective fitness marketing strategies. It will help you to keep in touch with prospects and existing customers. Email can also help you to nurture leads and convert them into paying customers, which translates to steady revenue for your fitness business.
But, while the effectiveness of email marketing is unquestionable, most people struggle to get any noticeable results with it, meaning their email marketing ROIs remain disappointingly low.
The good news is, there are a couple of fitness email marketing strategies that you can implement, to boost the ROI of your fitness email marketing campaigns. In this article, we will provide you with 8 tips that will help to maximize your fitness email marketing ROI.
1. Segment Your Email List
You can have an impressive email copy, a catchy subject line and a powerful call-to-action. However, if you are sending your marketing emails to the wrong audience, then that won’t matter – regardless of the amount of time or effort spent.
Simply put, you need to ensure your fitness marketing emails are going to the right audience. And this is where email segmentation comes in. Segmenting your email lists will enable you to send the right message to the right person.
According to a survey conducted by Campaign Monitor, marketers who used segmented email campaigns realized a 760% increase in revenue. Hence, if you have not segmented your email lists, then your fitness business is missing out on serious revenues.
So, set aside some time and go through your email lists to see how you can segment them. You can segment your email lists into various categories like demographics, stage in the sales funnel, source, and engagement, just to name a few.
Once you’ve finished segmenting your email lists, you will then start sending emails that align with the specific group. And without a doubt, such emails will deliver better results, compared to sending untargeted emails.
2. Personalize Your Fitness Emails
Another strategy that you can implement to enhance the ROI of your fitness email marketing campaigns is to personalize the emails you are sending out.
Unlike generic emails, personalized fitness emails will stand out in the recipient’s inbox, thus increasing the chances of being opened and read. And as you may expect, opened emails will have a higher ROI, compared to non-opened emails.
And, you can personalize your emails in various ways. For instance, you can start with something as simple as addressing the recipient by their first name in your email greeting, as opposed to using generic greetings.
By personalizing your emails, you will enjoy a higher click-through rate, a higher conversion rate, a higher ROI and more revenues for your fitness business. So, if you haven’t been personalizing your emails, you need to start right away.
3. Improve Your Deliverability
Every email that goes undelivered is hurting your fitness email marketing ROI. Therefore, you will need to pay particular attention to the deliverability of your emails and come up with strategies that will help to boost this rate. Some of the methods that can help to improve the deliverability of your emails include:
3.1 Asking Your Email Subscribers to Whitelist
If your email subscribers whitelist your fitness emails, their internet service provider or ISP will automatically consider them credible. As a result, your sender reputation will increase. Consequently, the chances of your emails reaching the recipient’s inbox will be high.
On the other hand, if your subscribers have not whitelisted you, there’s always a chance that your emails will land in the recipient’s spam folder. And as you may expect, the chances of the recipient opening such an email will be close to zero.
3.2 Clean Your Email List Regularly
Another strategy that can help to boost the deliverability of your emails is by cleaning your email lists regularly. According to email marketing statistics, email databases decay by approximately 22.5% per year. And unless you re-engage or eliminate the inactive subscribers, you will be wasting your resources sending them emails.
So, every few months, go through your email list and get rid of dormant subscribers and hard bounces. By doing so, you will increase the deliverability of your emails and lower the number of spam complaints.
Also, cleaning your email lists regularly will help you to save money on email marketing, considering that the majority of email service providers (ESPs) usually charge according to the number of subscribers on the mailing list.
4. Send During the Best Times
The times that you send your emails have a considerable effect on their open rates. And ultimately, your ROI will also be affected. Ideally, you want to send your emails when a recipient has a likelihood of opening and reading them. And this begs the question, when is the best time to send fitness marketing emails?
Email marketing statistics show that the best time to send marketing emails is around 10 am to 11 am for the morning hours and between 3 pm and 4 pm for the afternoon hours.
Between 10 am to 11 am, most people have already settled at their workplaces, and they are trying to get things done. As you may expect, they will go through emails checking all the unread ones.
And between 3 pm to 4 pm, most people have finished most of the day’s tasks and they are now preparing to go home. But, they may decide to go through their emails once more before wrapping the day up.
However, these are mainly recommendations. The ideal times will vary from one fitness business to the other. The most effective way to determine the best times is by sending emails during different times and then monitoring the results. With this data, you will then be able to identify the optimal times that deliver the best engagement rate.
5. Craft Engaging Subject Lines
The effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns is highly dependent on your email subject lines. If the subject lines are compelling and engaging, there’s a high chance that the recipient will open your email.
On the other hand, if the subject line is bland, no one will bother engaging with your fitness emails. Hence, regardless of how great the body of the email may be, your efforts will go down the drain, if the subject lines are boring or not captivating.
The question is, how do you craft engaging subject lines? First, keep your email subject lines persona and concise. Leverage strong verbs and give the recipient a clear idea of what they will find inside the email.
Another strategy that you can use on your subject lines to entice the reader to open your emails is by creating a sense of urgency. With this approach, you can use words like “register now to enjoy a 40% discount on your gym membership.”
6. Keep Your Emails Brief and Concise
Your target audience has to go through dozens of emails every day. So, you need to make things easier for them by keeping your emails short and straight to the point. Most people will prefer concise and brief emails, as opposed to longwinded emails.
Therefore, if your emails are long, there’s a high chance that your recipients won’t bother reading them. And this means they won’t click on your offer. As a result, all the time and effort spent creating that email will go to waste.
In case your fitness emails have to be long, you should divide them into a series of emails. If sending a series of emails is not possible, then you should break up your copy using short paragraphs and other visual breaks. By doing this, you will make it easy for the reader to skim through up to the end.
7. Include a Call to Action
Your subscribers will only take a particular action if you tell them. Hence, make sure you include a call-to-action in your emails. Including a call-to-action will help to drive traffic to your preferred landing pages.
So, whether you want your subscribers to sign up for your fitness memberships or to purchase your health and wellness products, calls-to-action are a highly effective means of achieving that.
Make sure you place your call to action in a location where your subscribers can see it clearly and click on it.
You can also spread several call-to-action buttons across the email body. For instance, you can have one close to the top of the body, in the middle and at the end. Placing them strategically will make it easy for the reader to click on them without having to scroll through the entire copy.
8. Optimize for Mobile
Today, approximately 40% of emails are opened through mobile devices. And as more people continue using their mobile devices to access the web, you can expect this percentage to increase.
Hence, you need to ensure that your fitness marketing emails display well across all mobile devices, whether it’s a tablet or a smartphone. If your emails don’t display well across different mobile devices, you can rest assured that the recipient won’t bother reading the entire copy.
Also, they may decide to delete the email or even opt to unsubscribe from your mailing list. Again, you will have wasted all the resources spent crafting those emails, meaning you will not get a return on your investment.
Ensuring your emails are mobile responsive will help to increase the engagement rate and ROI of your email marketing campaigns while reducing the bounce rate.
9. Wrapping It Up
Despite its cost-effectiveness, most fitness entrepreneurs never realize the full potential of fitness email marketing. But with the help of the tips we’ve shared in this article, you can manage to make your fitness email marketing campaigns more effective and enjoy an impressive ROI.