Everything You Need to Know to Create the Best Fitness Email Newsletter

There are 3.9 billion daily email users, and many marketers believe that email marketing increases customer retention. With 73% of millennials preferring email communication from businesses over other channels, it’s time to take a look at your email marketing strategy. 

An email newsletter is a perfect medium to deliver additional value to your members, make them feel important, and keep them updated with offers or any business changes. This article talks about five best practices for your fitness email newsletter and 11 ideas for your next campaign. 

• Why Your Business Needs an Email Marketing Strategy
• 5 Best Practices for Your Fitness Email Newsletter
• 11 Creative Ideas for Your Next Fitness Email Newsletter

Why Your Business Needs an Email Marketing Strategy 

Today’s marketers have a tough challenge. They need to deliver a highly personalized experience to connect with their audience while sticking to a budget. Email marketing has a kind of longevity that other communication channels struggle to keep up with. It remains a powerful marketing channel for the modern marketer to engage with existing members and reach out to new clients. 

Interestingly, it appears that global email growth has not peaked yet. It’s predicted that the number of email users will reach 4.48 billion in 2024. Email is moving away from ‘batch-and-blast’ techniques and heading towards hyper-personalization.  

Email is a relatively affordable and easy way to reach a broad audience. It’s an important channel when you’re trying to get a message delivered to a specific person. Although it can be very effective with social media marketing, you don’t know if your message has reached a particular person. When it comes to getting your message in front of your desired audience, email is a powerful marketing tool.

Your email marketing strategy can help you to not only make a great first impression but add value to your existing members. It’s an excellent opportunity to educate and inform your readers while positioning your business as an authority in the fitness space. Email can form part of an effective communication strategy alongside other elements such as your social media plan. 

The Built to Grow Fitness Business Podcast has a great episode on 10 tactics to improve your email marketing. The quick 26-minute episode runs down the top ways to boost your strategy, provide value, and sell to your customers.  

5 Best Practices for Your Fitness Email Newsletter 

While your newsletter content can vary depending on your target audience and timing, certain factors should remain the same. To consistently deliver high-quality email newsletters, here are five best practices to stick to. 

1. Use Short, Snappy, and Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines 

Your subject line should be short and snappy. Your audience should know what the email will contain and not be deceiving in any way to encourage a click. Make it super relevant and try to get creative. The subject line should grab the readers’ attention without pushing a hard sell. If you open up with a hard sell, it may hurt your open rates. Think engaging and captivating. 

2. Write Engaging Email Copy 

Your fitness newsletter copy should be consistent with your branding and messaging. It should align with your brand voice so that the reader knows exactly who is talking to them. Your email should be personal to leave a good impression and encourage more interaction with your business. It’s a good idea to have a reasonable image to text ratio, and don’t forget to include your website and social media links in the footer of all of your emails. 

3. Offer an Unsubscribe Option 

Although it may seem a little backward to encourage readers to leave your email list, it’s far worse if you don’t have a unsubscribe option at all. While it doesn’t fill you with joy to see members leave your list, it does indicate how your newsletter is being received. If you’re finding lots of subscribers are unfollowing, maybe you need to address the type of content you’re pushing and how you’re engaging with readers.  

4. Nail Your Timing 

Just like your social media strategy, and when you post content on Facebook or Instagram, you need to get your timing right with email. For example, if your members work a 9-5 job, sending emails at around 10 am is useful. This is because people are already online and working, so they are more likely to be checking their emails throughout the day. However, if you send emails during leisure time, it’s more likely that your email might get lost in the inbox. 

5. Optimize for Mobile 

Email is read more on mobile than any other device. Approximately 81% of people use a smartphone to check their emails regularly. Optimizing email for mobile is no longer a choice; it’s a necessity. It’s important to execute email marketing campaigns for both desktop and mobile successfully. A mobile-friendly email newsletter is integral to your overall email marketing success. Make the most out of buttons and incentivize easy call-to-actions and think about limiting the amount of text you include. 

By considering these elements, you can create a master email newsletter template. This helps you to consistently use the same branding, design, and layout in every email. Although your text to image ratio may change at times, or perhaps you want to focus on a video instead of text, the overall email template should be consistent and entirely on brand. For a more detailed run-through of fitness email best practice, check out this blog post.

11 Creative Ideas for Your Next Fitness Email Newsletter 

As a fitness business, there’s a lot of information you can share in an email newsletter. It allows you to add value and provide helpful and relevant information to your members. At the same time, it will enable you to showcase upcoming special offers that are perfectly suited to your customers. Here are 11 creative ideas for your next fitness email newsletter. 

1. Announce Time-Limited Deals and Special Offers 

Use email as a way to announce time-limited deals and offers that are suitable for your target audience. Perhaps you could launch a time-limited refer a friend reward that builds on your current referral program. For example, during the next three days, you could offer an exclusive invite to a premium fitness class stream on your digital platform. Whatever you choose to offer, make it time-sensitive to create a sense of urgency and super relevant to your target audience. 

2. Healthy Recipe Series 

Your email newsletter is a great place to add value to your members. Healthy eating and fitness intertwine easily. It’s often challenging to hit a fitness goal because members may be struggling to eat healthy meals consistently. A healthy recipe series delivers a weekly set of recipes that hit all the important food groups. This is a good time to use image-heavy emails with links to the full recipes and video on your website. 

3. Fitness Instructor of the Month 

Similar to the employee of the month, celebrate your fitness instructors or personal trainers in your monthly newsletter. Use the opportunity to showcase your instructor’s qualifications and expertise while emphasizing the reason for their success. You can include success stories of members who have worked with that particular instructor to show your target audience how a class or type of exercise could benefit them. 

4. Communicate COVID-19 Updates 

It’s essential that you update and engage with your community during the coronavirus pandemic. Email is a key communication tool for keeping your members fully up-to-date with ongoing changes to your business. Now is the time to overcommunicate, and your email strategy will form an integral part of your COVID-19 crisis communication plan. 

5. Mindfulness Email Campaign 

Many people work out not only for their physical health but for their mental well-being. With worry and anxiety at an all-time high, a mindfulness email campaign promotes relaxation and a way to manage stress levels. Create a weekly mindfulness series over a set number of weeks. When a mindfulness campaign has a set time with regular weekly encouragement, it holds readers more accountable. A gentle reminder to take 10 minutes of self-care each day could benefit members massively, driving value. 

6. Lockdown Workout Series 

With cities worldwide experiencing lockdowns and restrictions, a lockdown workout series continues to support your members from a distance. The workout series should include exercises suitable for home fitness. For example, using simple objects from home for equipment and bodyweight exercises. That way, anyone can take part in and benefit from more movement during lockdown. 

7. How to Stay Active at Home Newsletter 

A lot of people are struggling to stay active at home. As more people are working from home and the lines between home and work blur, it’s important for members to stay active throughout the day. Deliver quick fitness advice and tips to members’ inboxes on how to incorporate more movement at home. For example, exercises you can do from your desk stretches to release back and shoulder tension from sitting all day, or how to involve children in staying active at home. 

8. Promote Your Digital Fitness Platform 

With an increase in restrictions and another lockdown on the horizon, it’s essential that you leverage your digital fitness platform. That way, if you’re forced to close your gym or fitness studio, you can continue to support your members and generate income. Use your email list to reach out to existing members at your physical studio. Make sure that all existing members know your digital fitness platform is there to support them. You can then reach out to your further email list to spread the news.  

9. Share Community Success Stories 

Your fitness newsletter is an ideal place to share community success stories. Showcase how one of your members has reached a goal and feels the best they have ever felt. Perhaps they used your unique training method and nutritional coaching to change their mindset. Maybe one of your personal training sessions kept them accountable and motivated to keep going. Either way, emphasize how relatable the person is and how you helped them achieve their goals.  

10. Celebrate Holidays 

Holidays are a fantastic opportunity to slide into an inbox. Whether it’s Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Thanksgiving, use the seasons to start a conversation. You may want to combine a special time-sensitive offer with the holidays to make it all the more exciting. You can apply this messaging across your entire marketing strategy. Your Christmas email newsletter, for example, will fit in with your wider social media and marketing plan to underpin your current goals. 

11. Nutrition Tips and Healthy Shopping Lists 

On top of delivering a healthy eating recipe series, simple nutrition tips and shopping lists are helpful. Sometimes, the hardest part of improving your fitness is buying the right foods at the grocery store. Create easy to follow shopping lists that explain simple health swaps members can make. Helping members take control of their nutrition adds to your authority in the health and fitness space. Quick and straightforward nutrition tips can be a gentle reminder to stick to a fitness regime throughout the month. Although you’re not selling a product with a measurable reward, adding value to your members is priceless. 

In Summary 

The best fitness newsletter is simple but strong. By crafting a short and engaging email, you can continue to build brand loyalty and drive more action. 

As fitness email marketing continues to evolve and innovate, marketers will have to adapt to stay relevant. Interactive emails, hyper-personalization, and text-only emails look set to increase in the future. Whether it’s a mindfulness campaign, a healthy shopping list, or a lockdown workout series, an email newsletter can deliver your message to your target audience and keep them engaged.