Email Marketing is an important practice for businesses to build a relationship with customers. It is a great way to create a stronger bond with your customers by sending out helpful information, promotions, or giveaways. Emails are a powerful tool to stay in contact with your customers.
In most situations, a customer will come to your website, or visit your gym just once to try out a class. After that initial contact point, they could be gone forever. Email marketing is a great way to keep the conversation going. It can help to get them to come back to your gym rather than forgetting about you forever.
Retaining customers is 5 times cheaper than finding new ones. Rather than doing all of that work each time to get a new signup it is best to keep the customers that do come in to maximize your return on your investment.
How To Do Email Marketing?
Email marketing can be difficult to start but it is well worth the initial effort. The strategy of email marketing is simple, but it can be applied in thousands of ways to help build your business. Below we will cover how to get started generating real results with email marketing.
1) Set Up Your Email Marketing Software
Your email marketing software or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will be your greatest tool in email marketing. They allow you to, track interactions, analyze data, and send thousands of emails with just one click. Without a CRM email marketing is a daunting and complex mess
Where to Get Your CRM Software?
There are many different options for different software and each has its pros and cons.
For affordability and scaling, we would recommend Mailchimp as it starts with a free option until you reach a certain amount of email subscribers.
This makes it so that you will not have to pay anything for email marketing until you are already rolling and seeing a return. Sounds pretty great, right?
Click here here to sign up for Mailchimp and set up a new account.
Some other great Email solutions include:
The rest of this guide is based on setting up MailChimp. However, many other email marketing software work in similar ways.
Once your account is created you can start to create your introduction email. This email will be sent to customers as soon as they sign up for your email marketing list. It will be a simple introduction of what you will offer them and what they can expect from being on your gym’s email list.
Below are some email templates we have created that you are welcome to use. Feel free to use these templates as they are, or modify them to your specific situation.
Our various email templates can be found here.
2) Integrating Onto Your Website
Once you have your email marketing software set up you will need to connect it to your website as they will work together to gather emails. The website offers the motivation to get people to sign up for your email contact list and the CRM automates email messages and customer relations.
Each website works differently so each one will have a different process to connect your email marketing. In most cases, it will break down into two situations.
Website to CRM Integration
In this method, you can use your website’s settings to connect your email marketing software. This setting is found in different places on each website builder tool. Here are some solutions for the most common tools:
- Guide to Setting Up Mailchimp on WordPress
- How to Set Up Mailchimp on Wix
- Guide to Setting Up Mailchimp on SquareSpace
- How To Integrating Other Tools with Mailchimp
CRM to Website Integration
This option is perfect if your website does not offer any integration with Mailchimp or other CRMs. If this is the situation it can be much easier to create your sign-up form in Mailchimp rather than on your website. Once you have the form created, you can export it and upload it to your website.
This method works to bypass many websites that might not be set up to work with your email marketing software.
You can create a form on Mailchimp by clicking on “Create” in the top left-hand corner.
Then click on “Signup Form” and you can start creating. The form for your website.
When you are done making your form you can copy the code that was generated and paste it into your website.
Then once your form is uploaded to your website you will only be able to edit it through your MailChimp. Now you will be able to collect contact information and have it automatically added to your email marketing software.
3) Email Marketing Strategy and Audiences
Now that we have all of the fundamentals, the next step will be to create a marketing strategy for your gymnastics center. Next, ask yourself some of the most important questions.
How many emails do you want to send a month?
It is a good idea to plan on sending at least one email per month. The best would probably be one email every week or every other week. This way you can keep your customers updated on what is happening in the gym without bombarding them with emails.
How many different email audiences do you want to make?
Email audiences are a way to differentiate different groups of customers from one another. This way you do not accidentally send incorrect information to your customers.
Email marketing audiences can be as complex or as simple as you would like to make them for your gym. If you would like to keep it simple then you can stay with only one email list and send out general updates to your whole email list.
If you would like to send more specific emails we would recommend adding lists to segment your team and rec programs as they will usually receive very different information. You can even go one step further and segment each of your major gym programs such as rec, preschool, team, excel, and any other specialty classes. This can be a great way to go that extra mile to specifically communicate with your customers.
What will you send your customers?
There are thousands of things that you can send your customers depending on what your gym does and what it has to offer. The best thing to send your customers is whatever content will be the most helpful.
This might be information on upcoming team events, stretching tutorials, or helpful commentary about mental health in gymnastics, and everything in between. Try to send your customers whatever will help them the most and they will keep coming back for more.
What is the end goal of your campaign?
Each gym has a different goal for its marketing. It might be to retain current customers or to attract new customers to their gym. It could even be to upsell kids to higher levels of gymnastics.
Whatever the reason is, keep it in mind as you create your campaign. This will help to keep your goals on track.
Make sure to mention your goal in your emails. If you are trying to get more people into your gym then offer a free trial coupon for a friend. If you are trying to get people to sign up for the team, give them a discount for the next season.
4) The Value Offer
This is the most important step because it begins the whole process. This step is based on creating a valuable offer that your customers will want in exchange for their email information. Another name for this is a lead magnet. Every business will have different lead magnets, but they will all be irresistible to your customers. The lead magnet needs to answer a burning question or greatly help your customer in some way.
So How Do You Decide On What Lead Magnet To Create?
Ask yourself, what do your customers ask about every day? What do they all have in common and what information do they need to improve their lives? Here are some great examples of different lead magnets for different customers:
High-Level Rec Program Lead Magnet – A mini-course on how to condition and stretch in preparation for joining the team
Pre-School Lead Magnet – A quick guide to a circuit that you can set up at home to improve a toddler’s coordination and mobility.
Ninja Lead Magnet – 10 exercises you can do at home to improve your ninja skills
There are many different types of lead magnets that you could work with within your gym. It is all based on your own creativity and how much effort you put in. The better the lead magnet the better the results will be.
5) Get Your Lead Magnet Noticed
Once you have made your lead magnet the next step will be to market it to your potential customers. You could show it on your website, advertise it on social media, or through Google Adwords. The important part is that you get it out there in front of as many people as possible.
All of these methods work well to advertise your lead magnet. The one that we have had the most luck with has been pushing out your lead magnet through Facebook Ads. Click here to see our whole article on how to run your own Facebook Ads.
6) Capture Their Email And Provide A Lead Magnet
Once they have seen your lead magnet and clicked on your ad, or visited your URL you will need to get them to sign up. It is important to create a landing page that is optimized for conversion. It should show them everything that they need to know and reinforce their desire to sign up for your lead magnet and email marketing list. Create a trustworthy page that will make it easy for them to submit their email.
Once they have given their email it is important that you hold up your end of the deal and send them your lead magnet immediately. This will be the beginning of your relationship with your customer so don’t let them down. In this stage it is also important that you overdeliver, and give them the highest quality resource that you can make. This will help to build overall trust and it will make your customer feel more secure in a long-term relationship.
According to the CAN-SPAM Act, you need to make it clear that your customer is signing up to actually receive emails from you. You cannot use their email and assume their consent. Sending someone unsolicited emails is not only a good way to annoy them, but it can also end up getting you in some legal trouble.
7) Continue To Build Your Relationship Through Email Marketing
After you have sent your lead magnet you will know they are interested in what your business has to offer. Send them more helpful information that you think they might be interested in, always overdeliver and impress them. This will prove to your customers that you are trustworthy and care about their business.
Once you have built this trust it will be easy to further your relationship and earn their business. In contrast, if you are only hard-selling them constantly it can hurt your business and annoy your customers. When in doubt remember the famous rule from modern marketing, give much more than you ask for. You might have to give for a long time before you receive anything from your customers, but it will be worth it.
Key Takeaways
Now that you have created a valuable lead magnet, converted your customers, and collected their emails you can start to build a consistent email marketing list. A strong list of emails can be worth its weight in gold as emails have a great return on investment.
Email marketing can seem like a difficult process to begin. Once you are generating regular profits by just sending out a few mass emails it will be well worth the effort. If you are interested in getting started with email marketing and would like to partner with us contact us here.
For further information about how to best advertise your gym, we recommend you check out our comprehensive guide on the 16 best gymnastics marketing methods of 2023.
