10 Hacks for Writing Engaging Fitness Email Subject Lines

Every year, email is questioned as a marketing channel. Is it still relevant? The answer is yes. The numbers are stronger than ever with 89% of marketers using email as the primary channel for generating leads. 72% of customers prefer email as the main way for businesses to communicate, and it’s a medium that continues to grow and evolve.

The email subject line is essential to the success of any email marketing campaign. The best subject line communicates the value inside the email and creates a call to action. In this article, we look at what makes a great email, and 10 email subject line hacks you can use to boost your open rates. Skip ahead to:

• Email Marketing in 2021
• Top Qualities of a Great Email
• 10 Fitness Email Subject Line Hacks to Boost Open Rates

Email Marketing in 2021

Email continues to play a big role in nurturing and acquiring new customers and communicating with your existing ones. Over the past year, many parts of our work and personal lives have had to adapt. Email marketers have also had to adapt and undergo transformations to innovate and inspire this year and in the future. 

During the coronavirus crisis, email became one of the main channels for businesses to communicate with their customers. From updated working hours to gym closures and new digital fitness announcements, email is a key marketing channel. In the fitness industry, you can use email to inform, inspire, and motivate to take action. 

Effective Digital Marketing Tool 

With the right marketing strategy in place, email can be an effective digital marketing tool to grow your fitness business. It can do wonders for both member retention and acquisition. Today’s marketers need to connect with audiences in a highly personalized way, all while sticking to a budget. Email is a cost-effective marketing tool proven time and time again to deliver ROI back to the business. 

Email drives conversions and gets your message to your target audience. When it comes to marketing and communication, you must spend your time and money in the right place to get the most benefit. Email performs multiple roles; it can engage your existing members, upsell your digital fitness platform, and re-engage members who have recently left. By creating the right email strategy and combing several elements, you can develop a great email template that drives your business forward. 

Focus on Privacy 

In recent times, there has been a growing focus on privacy. Data privacy with email marketing and communication remains a hot topic that will continue to expand. Being thoughtful and considerate to your email subscriber list is important. Providing an option to unsubscribe from mailing lists ensures your list stays fresh and your message is well received. Focus on your email list who want to receive your messages and find new creative ways to motivate and inspire. Trends such as data privacy and personal information will continue to be a key factor in email marketing. 

Top Qualities of a Great Email 

So you know that email is a cost-effective way to get your message across, but it takes a lot more work than just pressing send. A great email consists of a combination of elements. It’s about more than the copy in the email but a deep understanding of your target audience. Here are some of the top qualities of a great email. 

Personal and Authentic 

Hyper-personalization is essential to a great email. No one wants to read an email addressed to sir/madam. Readers want to see their name and feel like you are speaking to them as a person, not just a number on a list. Authenticity is key to building trust, retaining loyal members, and creating deeper connections with your target audience.  

Great Email Subject Line 

The first thing readers see is your email subject line. These are the words that can make or break an email campaign. No one will open the body of the email unless your subject line encourages a click. That’s why it’s so important that you spend time thinking about your subject line. Consider how it will boost your open rate and encourage readers to open your email. 

Relevant and Easy to Read

Sending only relevant information is crucial to retaining your email list. If you are constantly pushing irrelevant information, you will find several people unsubscribing from your emails. It’s one thing to send an email and another to have it opened. By sending only relevant and easy to read emails, members will not only engage with your emails but look forward to reading them. When you add value and send emails at a good time, your email campaign is much more likely to be successful. 

Mobile-Friendly 

There are about 3.9 billion unique mobile users, and 85% of users open emails on their phones. Every day, you probably receive and send dozens of emails. It’s more important than ever that your emails work on various devices, including mobile, tablets, and desktops. Nowadays, many people open emails on mobile phones. Mobile-friendly emails are necessary for email marketing success. 

10 Fitness Email Subject Line Hacks to Boost Open Rates 

Catchy email subject lines are a major component of effective email marketing. You can send as many emails as you like, but if your open rate is low, not enough people are opening your email. A great subject line can mean the difference between a click and getting lost in an inbox. Here are 10 hacks to help you write a captivating subject line for your fitness emails. 

1. Show Positive or Negative Result 

Whenever you write emails, it’s important to consider how relevant it is to the reader. A great place to start is to show the result, either positive or negative. When talking about a benefit to the reader, you want to entice them in with a real specific benefit. This doesn’t mean just offering 50% off your digital fitness platform in a promotional email. The benefit needs to be real and tangible. You want to show a positive result without giving the whole story away. 

The same applies to the negative results. Pick a pain point that aligns with your target audience. The aim is to capture attention by showing the reader a negative result and preventing this from happening to them. 

2. Make Readers Curious 

Your email subject line should make readers curious. You want to tease the subject of the email without giving away the whole thing. This doesn’t mean tricking your readers into reading your email with a false subject. That could ruin trust and leave you in the spam box for the future. 

You want to create curiosity with your subject line but satisfy that curiosity with your email’s content. Keep it personal, and authentic but write something intriguing. You don’t need to write every email this way. But by mixing up the way your write subject lines and keeping it fresh, you can engage your readers. 

3. Keep it Short and Concise  

When it comes to word count, you can find supporting statistics for every possible number. But, what’s most important is that you captivate your readers’ attention. A good email subject line is short, concise, and gets to the point. Some of the best subject lines are funny, simple, and even controversial. 

One thing to keep in mind is that those reading on a mobile device will only see a certain number of characters. For this reason, it’s a good idea not to exceed more than 60 characters. Try to limit punctuation and keep it concise. 

4. Be Honest and Deliver on Promises 

If you make a promise in your subject line, be sure to deliver on the promise in your email. Whether you promise a quick workout or advice that will help members shift those last few pounds, deliver on your promise. 

Being honest and transparent is a part of creating an authentic experience. It takes a long time to build trust and practically no time at all to damage it. 

5. Drop a Hint 

You can use this technique across several subjects. Whether you’re sharing your home fitness secret or upselling your brand new digital fitness challenge, drop a hint in the subject line. By spending time on the perfect subject line, the aim is to create a clickable and compelling sentence that entices your reader to take action. 

Your email is just one drop in the ocean of emails in your subscriber’s inbox. How will you captivate and compel users to open your email? A combination of techniques may be the answer. For the right audience, a clever hint to a topic they have previously shown interest in may be just what you need. 

6. Write a Unique Subject Line 

Every email you write deserves a unique subject line. If readers start to receive your weekly newsletter with the same title, it can get boring. If your aim is to position your business as an authority in the health and wellness industry, your subject line should reflect your knowledge and expertise in the body of the email. 

If you’re promoting free trials, new classes, or a new live-stream workout, emphasize the unique subject of each email. Similar subject lines can feel impersonal and lack any emotive connection. 

7. Track Your Open Rates 

One of the great things about email is that you can track everything. Keep a close eye on your numbers. Track your open rates and reflect on the data regularly. When are you seeing higher rates, and when is it starting to dip? 

Look at your subject, content, themes, and timing to track your open rates. The more information you have available, the better decisions you can make. This means your email marketing will be more effective because you are targeting the right people with the right message at the right time, based entirely on data. 

8. Use a Controversial Topic 

Depending on your brand, you may love to be a bit controversial, or you may shy away from it. Controversial topics can be captivating and extremely clickable. Just be prepared to back up your opinion if it’s controversial. 

A controversial topic in the fitness industry could be something to do with a traditional fat loss strategy, or perhaps you have a new fitness technique that is more effective than another. Take a controversial view, call something out, and show your readers where you stand. 

9. Call Out Your Target Audience 

Your understanding of your target audience will help you create the best email subject line. Even the most well-written subject line can’t encourage an open if it is completely irrelevant to your target audience. 

The combination of great wording and relevancy is key to success. It’s not enough to craft a great line; you need to send it to the right person who is most likely to take action. Every time you send an email, think about how it adds value to your reader. When the email is relevant and adds value, you have the best opportunity to increase your open rate. 

10. Test Your Ideas 

If you have one idea and your head of marketing has a different idea, test them. You can A/B test email components the same way you would social media elements. Platforms like MailChimp make it easy to test subject lines by sending one subject line to half of your email list. You can then send an alternative subject line to a different audience. After a week or two, you can look at the open rate and determine which one worked the best for your business. 

In Summary 

Creating a curiosity-provoking and intriguing subject line is the first step to increasing your open rate. Poor email subject lines get lost in the inbox. Your subject line only makes sense when your audience cares about what you have to say. The key to crafting a good subject line is knowing your audience. Inspire and encourage readers to take action with catchy subject lines so that they can gain value from your content.