​​Email marketing has become indispensable for personal trainers looking to expand their reach, engage with clients, and boost their business.

With its ability to build a loyal audience, enable personalized communication, and deliver cost-effective marketing campaigns, email marketing has proven to be a game-changer in the fitness industry.

In this guide, we will explore the benefits of email marketing for personal trainers and provide valuable tips for building and nurturing your email list.

What are the Benefits of Email Marketing for Personal Trainers

Email marketing allows personal trainers to build a strong community of subscribers who, unlike other marketing activities, are genuinely interested in your services and content.

This is a great of showcasing your amazing content with an audience who want to hear from you and are more likely to engage with your content.

Another benefit is that it enables personal trainers to create and personalize content with the clients.

This could be based on a client anniversary, client goals, interests, or engagement of specific content.

This allows all personal trainers to establish a more substantial, long-lasting connection with their clients.

There are many reasons why email continues to besuch a popular marketing tool:

·      It is a relatively low-cost and straightforward option

·      It can help drive traffic to your website

·      It can help increase brand awareness and buildcustomer loyalty

·      It’s a direct, trusted method of communication (egconfirmations, onboarding)

·      It’s a tried and tested way of encouraging feedback(eg surveys, reviews)

See HubSpot’s article The ultimate list of email marketing stats that we think you should know for some useful insights, including these key facts:

·      87% of brands say that email marketing is criticalto business success

·      50% of people buy from marketing emails at leastonce per month

·      99% of email users check their inbox every day

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One of our favorite things is that email marketing is more cost-effective than other channels.

While the ability to reach a large number of clients, and potential clients at a low cost, means that email marketing is a must for your marketing plan.

It might seem obvious, but sending out regular, personalized emails with valuable content lets you increase engagement and, more importantly, conversions for their business.

How do you Build an Email List?

There are many strategies out there that will tell you exactly how to build your email list. We have put together some of our favorite ways.

But test these out and determine which ones are best for your business.

1. Creating valuable lead magnets:

Offer a free workout guide: Create a high-quality workout guide that provides valuable fitness tips, exercises, or training routines.

Promote it as a free resource in exchange for email sign-ups.

Provide a nutrition plan template: Develop a nutrition plan template that helps clients track their meals, calorie intake, or macronutrient distribution.

You will be able to promote this in exchange for an email address.

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2. Create opt-in forms on your website:

Pop-up forms: Use pop-up forms on your website to grab visitors' attention and encourage them to subscribe to your email list.

You may want to give them something for signing up, such as a discount or more exclusive content.

Sidebar forms: Add opt-in forms to the sidebar of your website or blog pages. This ensures that the form is consistently visible and accessible to visitors as they navigate your site.

Exit-intent forms: Not popular, but you may want to consider exit-intent pop-up forms that appear when a visitor is about to leave your website.

You could offer the same as you would in your pop-up forms.

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3. Let’s not forget social media:

Promoting lead magnets on social platforms: Share your lead magnets, such as workout guides or nutrition resources, on social media platforms.

Direct interested users to a landing page where they can sign up for your email list to access the content.

Running contests or giveaways to encourage sign-ups: Host contests or giveaways on social media platforms, requiring participants to enter with their email addresses.

Offer a valuable prize related to fitness or personal training to attract potential clients and grow your email list.

Nurturing Your Email List

By implementing these nurturing strategies, personal trainers can effectively engage and maintain a strong connection with their email subscribers.

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1. Segmenting your email list

Based on clients' goals and interests: Segment your email list based on clients' specific fitness goals, such as weight loss, muscle gain, or athletic performance.

Then, tailor your content and recommendations to their unique needs and preferences.

By engagement levels: Segment your list based on subscribers' engagement levels, such as open and click-through rates.

Then, identify your most active subscribers and create targeted campaigns to nurture their interest further and encourage continued engagement.

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2. Personalizing email content:

Using subscribers' names in the email: Personalize your email greetings and subject lines by addressing subscribers by their names.

This simple touch adds a personalized and friendly tone to your communications.

Sending targeted content based on their preferences: Leverage the information you have about your subscribers' preferences and interests. relevant content

‍Send them, recommendations, and promotions that align with their goals and needs.

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3. Providing valuable and educational content

Sharing workout tips and exercise routines: Regularly provide subscribers with valuable advice, exercises, and training techniques.

Help them stay motivated and provide guidance to reach their fitness goals.

Offering nutrition advice and recipes: Share nutritional advice, healthy recipes, and meal planning tips.

Help your subscribers make informed choices about their diet and provide them with practical solutions for healthy eating.

Sending motivational stories and success stories: Inspire your subscribers by sharing your clients' motivational stories and success stories.

Highlight their achievements, transformations, and challenges overcome. This creates a sense of community and motivates others to stay committed.

Bonus: A/B testing Your Email Subject Lines

A/B testing simply means trying out two different versions of something and seeing which one works best against a particular goal.

It is particularly helpful when used to test a single variable that can be easily measured; in this case, the open rates of two batches of emails, sent to two different sample groups, using two different subject lines.

It’s a great way of experimenting with different types of messaging.

There are several benefits to carrying out A/B testing on your email subject lines:

• Testing whether questions work better than statements
• Testing whether it helps to add humor, intrigue or urgency
• Testing whether your audience responds well to emojis
• Testing whether personalization increases open rates
• Testing whether shorter subject lines work better than longer ones
• Testing whether it makes a difference adding certain keywords

Having chosen what you want to test, carefully craft your two different subject lines. Ensure your subject line accurately reflects the email content and is highly engaging and relevant to your target audience.

Craft the main email content, keep it consistent for both versions.

Use your email tool to send these versions to two different subsets of your mailing list, setting a fair test period for opens.

The winning version will then be sent automatically to the rest of your list.

Analyze open rates for insights; consider adjustments like adding humor, emojis, or concise lines based on preferences revealed by the results.

If you find A/B testing beneficial and wish to incorporate it more into your email marketing strategy, there are various other variables you can analyze.

Consider investigating the impact of personalized content within the email body, in addition to the subject line.

Experiment with testing the layout, design, tone, images, and wording of calls to action. You may also want to assess the response to different types of offers or promotions to determine which resonates better with your audience.

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7 tips for more effective email campaigns

1. Make a plan: A strategic, coordinated approach to email marketing helps you look professional, providing the right information at the right time.
   Start by identifying the most important types of email to focus on - you can always build on this.
   Make sure your email campaigns are incorporated into your overall digital marketing strategy.
2. Set clear objectives: Each email campaign should have a clear objective (eg to get signups for a workshop or generate reviews) and a clear target audience.
   Manage your contacts so that you can easily segment them and build bespoke mailing lists (eg by identifying clients who attended similar events).
3. Use a simple, branded design:  It’s easy to get carried away with using lots of different images, colors and fonts, but for maximum effect keep your design simple and well organised, and make sure it reflects your brand.
   Templates can really help with creating attractive, engaging emails.
4. Use the right tone: Write with your target audience in mind, and always use your authentic voice, aiming to strike a happy balance between friendly and professional.
   Take some time crafting your subject lines, in order to optimize open rates.
5. Include links and call to action: It may sound obvious, but always keep in mind what action you want people to take after reading your email, and make this very easy for them to do.
   Links and calls to action can be peppered through the main body of emails as well as at the end.
6. Consider personalization: Personalizing emails can be a very effective way of increasing engagement; this means things like including the recipient’s name int he subject line or using different images for different people
7. Test & monitor: Always double check your emails for typos as well as running tests to make sure they are displaying properly and all links are working.
   It’s also worth trying A/B testing to determine the most effective version of your email before sending it out more widely.
   Monitor the success of your email campaigns according to how well they meet the objectives you set.

Best Practices for Email Marketing

Now that we have spoken about getting set up and the strategies you can test out, let’s go into a bit more about the best practice for email marketing.

• ‍Write compelling subject lines: It is vital to keep your subject lines short, clear, and engaging. Always use action-orientated words to create a sense of urgency, encouraging people to read the email.
  Finally, use personalized subject lines to grab your client’s attention whenever possible.
• ‍Write engaging content: Always write your emails in a friendly and conversational tone. This could be done by addressing your customers by name. Add images, videos, or infographics to make your emails more engaging. Always have a clear message you would like to get across.
  This could be a fitness package you want to sell or a free nutrition guide. Make sure your customers know what you want them to do.
• ‍Monitor, test, repeat: Make sure you track everything you can, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Once you are confident with email marketing, consider running A/B tests to help you identify what works and what you can remove.
  Then, once you are happy with your emails, continue to track the data and test content to ensure you are always on top of what your users want.

Start email marketing today!

Email marketing is great for building a loyal audience and establishing personalized communication with clients. In addition, it is a cost-effective marketing strategy that can increase engagement and conversions.

By starting these strategies today, personal trainers can effectively connect with their audience, increase engagement, and ultimately achieve their goals of getting more clients and streamlining their business.

This post was originally published in May 2023 and has been updated to give you up-to-date information.