How to Create a Fitness Newsletter to Grow Your Business

These days, having an awesome exercise program or a comfortable gym center isn’t enough to run a successful fitness business. You need to consistently demonstrate your expertise in order to engage your members and attract new clients, and the fastest and most effective way to do this is with a fitness newsletter. 

There are many reasons to add a newsletter to your marketing techniques. As of 2021, there are 4.03 billion email users around the world, giving you an enormous market to target. Additionally, 72% of people prefer to receive critical business information in their emails instead of through social media or other channels. 

In essence, if you’re not using an email newsletter for your fitness business, you might be missing out on some great opportunities to connect with your target audience and build your brand.

In this article, we’ll look at how to get your fitness newsletter started, including templates and content ideas. But first, let’s look at the ways you can benefit from a fitness newsletter.    

In a world where people spend most of their time on social media, you might wonder if sticking to the old-school targeted email marketing method will produce any results for your fitness business. 

To give you a bit of clarity, here are some of the benefits of email newsletters for your gym or health club:

As a fitness coach or personal trainer, you probably get dozens of questions from clients every day. You may even be answering the same question countless times for different people, which can be frustrating and time-consuming. Email marketing is the perfect solution for such a situation. 

Fitness newsletters offer a priceless opportunity to reach your clients and educate them about the challenges they may be facing. If you notice you’re getting asked the same question over and over again, you can address it in one of your newsletters and educate multiple clients at once. 

In addition to helping you effectively educate your prospects and clients, an email newsletter is effective for building your brand. 

Creating and sending educational, high-value fitness newsletters can help you build a sustainable brand personality and become an authority in your niche. It also helps you stand out in a crowded inbox and get more opens. 

Email marketing is the lynchpin behind most successful businesses today, and rightly so. In fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you’d get a whopping $42 in return. 

So, when you want to promote a course or sell new products, an email newsletter is the perfect tool to use to engage with your community, build brand familiarity and encourage subscribers to buy from you.  

Now that you know the benefits, let’s go over some key tactics to create a targeted and successful fitness newsletter. 

While email marketing promises a good return on investment, sending irrelevant, dull, or random emails can lead to your email lurking in their spam folders. People receive dozens of emails daily—around 121 emails per day on average—so you’ll need to provide helpful, actionable tips that make them eager to receive your emails. 

So, how are you supposed to know what to send? The answer: research. 

Start by getting to know your audience. Talk to current clients and potential customers. Pay attention to the communities they live in and any other places they hang out. Take note of the questions they are asking. Know what their fitness goals are and what challenges they face. Don’t be generic in your approach; specialize and stay on topic. 

Taking this step not only helps you increase open rates, but also establishes you as an authority in your field. 

After identifying topics that pique your audience’s interest, you need to decide on the frequency of your newsletter. This helps to ensure consistency and reduce the risk of your emails landing in the spam folder. 

When deciding how often to send your email newsletter, it’s helpful to identify your goals for sending the email in the first place. Are you going to give fitness advice? Are you trying to increase the download rates of your ebooks or exercise plans? Do you want them to read your weekly fitness articles? 

The frequency of your emails depends mostly on your goal(s). If you are trying to educate your subscribers about their new equipment, for instance, you may want to send two or three emails weekly since the topic benefits them. On the other hand, if you’re promoting a course, it’s best to reduce the number of emails so you don’t come off as salesy.

While there are no hard and fast rules regarding how often to send emails, 61% of subscribers would like to receive brand emails every week.  

Without an email marketing tool in your tool shed, it’s nearly impossible to send a targeted email to your subscribers. But you need to choose the right one that will meet all your needs. When selecting your email marketing platform, consider the following factors:

Once you’ve chosen your email marketing tools, it’s time to start creating your newsletter. 

When you’re just getting started, it helps to get clear on the type of content you want to send to your subscribers. You’ve already identified who your audience is and what their needs are, so start off by addressing their biggest challenges. Do they need information on healthy eating? Sample workout plans?

Later, once you’ve established your readership base, you can branch out to other topics. 

To further appeal to your readers, choose a template that is simple, captivating, and mobile optimized. In addition, make sure your subject line and body copy are action-driven and without fluff. 

If the idea of designing a newsletter is intimidating to you, Flodesk has the answer. You can easily create captivating fitness newsletters with our drag-and-drop building block design functionality. Our intuitive automation features also help you eliminate many of the tedious steps that come with manually creating and sending your newsletter. 

In today’s world where we are surrounded by constant stimulation, people have brief attention spans. This means you can’t rely on text alone to drive results. By using GIFs and videos, you can add some action to your newsletter and improve your results. 

You can use GIFs to show your subscribers who you and your staff are by adding an element of humor to your newsletter. You can also use them to tell customer fitness stories and show subscribers the services you offer. 

If you need help finding GIFs to use in your marketing emails, Flodesk’s Unsplash and Giphy integrations can help you find and use the most relevant ones. What’s more? It all happens inside the Flodesk email builder, so you don’t have to go to another platform to download files to use in your emails.

Videos are powerful, too; they improve open rates and click-throughs, making it the perfect addition to your marketing tactics. 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after seeing a video of it. The best way to include video in your emails is to include a thumbnail image that links back to the video on your site, YouTube or Vimeo channels.

To maximize your newsletter success, you need to monitor the results of your campaign. Through this, you can gain insights into how your subscribers respond to your content and figure out what you need to tweak to get more impressive results. Some key metrics to look out for include: 

Read next: the best sales funnels for coaches!

Now that you know how to get started with your newsletter, here are some ideas of fitness newsletters you can create for your audience. 

While achieving your training goals is important, so is attending to your physical and mental health. By sharing the best health practices in your newsletter, you can help your subscribers improve their lives and get the most out of their workouts. You can share these healthy life tips directly in your newsletters or add links to blog posts where you share them—like the example below.

Another idea to explore for your newsletter is content roundups. These are a collection of tools, techniques, workout tips or books that can help your client achieve their goals. For example, a round-up email might include a list of your blog posts that walk readers through specific exercises, like this one below:

Also, if you have a large audience, be sure to make use of email segmentation so you send the best resources to the right audience. 

As a fitness expert, it’s your job to inform your clients and subscribers about the latest research around health and fitness. Your newsletter is the perfect place to share this news.

For instance, you can inform your clients about fad diets, new exercise programs and food flip-flopping from good to bad. Furthermore, you can help them sort through this information and find out what they actually need to know. 

As mentioned earlier, having videos in your newsletters drives more engagement than ordinary text. Therefore, sharing videos of workout techniques is a perfect way to improve your click-through rates. You don’t need to be overly technical—for example, you can break down the basic forms for common exercises such as squats and bicep curls.

Other ideas include sharing teasers for fitness classes or inspiring your subscribers with testimonial videos. 

Feedback is a great way to measure success and improve your training, but it can be difficult and scary to ask your client about how you’re doing face to face. Instead, use your newsletter to solicit feedback so you can stay in the know. Include a survey in your newsletter or add links to online polls on new initiatives. Would they be interested in small group training? What fitness challenges would they like you to help them solve? 

Special offers can be used to entice potential clients to try out your services and reward current clients for their loyalty. If you run classes, you may want to consider promoting a specific class each week and offering a discount on that class in your newsletter. This helps your subscribers learn about your other classes and drives more people to your business. 

If you’re looking for ideas on what your “special offer email” should look like, here’s an example you can use for inspiration: 

Since most people prefer receiving important information in their emails, your newsletter is also the perfect place to share exciting announcements and new developments happening in your gym or health club. 

You should also use your newsletter to introduce new staff members. Customers are more likely to trust your brand when they know the people behind it, so give your members an opportunity to learn more about your staff members. Ask the staff about how they got started, their favorite workout, and what keeps them going. 

Nothing inspires us more than seeing others achieve what we are struggling with. Keep your audience motivated by including stories of people who have achieved excellent results in the past weeks. Make sure to include people from all walks of life so that each member has a chance to see themselves in the stories you share. 

You may also consider sharing before-and-after images of clients who have reached their fitness goals as well as the process they went through to achieve such results. 

If you’re like most fitness professionals, you’re probably wondering how to get people to subscribe to your list and what topics you need to cover. 

First off, you need a lead magnet—a valuable freebie you offer in exchange for someone’s email address. To do this, think about your potential client’s problem and provide a solution. 

For instance, if you specialize in the weight loss niche, you can create a guide detailing how to cut calories. Then, you can ask for the email addresses of anyone who attempts to download this information. Put these freebies on your website, forums, social media platforms and any other place your target customer hangs out.  

As mentioned earlier, the best way to ensure success with your fitness newsletter is to identify the goals you’re trying to achieve and stick to them. When you know the specific purpose of your newsletter, it’s easier for you to decide what content to include. 

For example, if you are trying to drive traffic to your website, you can leverage content round-ups and videos for better website conversions.  

Knowing your newsletter’s purpose also helps you keep your tone and communications consistent. You’ll want to pick a writing style that matches your brand identity and goals—a more formal tone conveys a sense of authority, while a more conversational tone may help your clients connect with your brand.

Now you have your email list at the ready and you’ve figured out your goal, it’s time to build a template for your fitness newsletter. This is a chance to really showcase your branding— who you are and what your business stands for.  

When creating your template, it’s essential to ensure consistency to make your email instantly recognizable for subscribers. You’ll want to include sections, such as ‘Club News’ and ‘Insider Fitness Knowledge’, that can be updated with new information while maintaining the same format.

Once you have your template, the rest is a breeze! Just add in the new content each week and send it out to your list. You can even schedule posts in advance to make this process easier.

The tips and steps shared in this article equip you with just about everything you need to build an effective and attractive fitness newsletter. However, you also need a great email marketing platform to make this process as seamless as possible. 

With Flodesk’s curated gallery and intuitive email builder, you can easily create and customize your email newsletter to your specific business needs. Also, our captivating and innovative design elements help engage subscribers and improve conversion rates.  

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