The email marketing workout plan for gyms & personal trainers

Even better, email marketing doesn’t have to drain your time or energy. With automations, ready-made templates and drag-and-drop tools, you can create high-impact emails in less time than it takes to finish one of your workouts.

In this guide, we’ll break down what works and share practical tips you can start using today.

Email marketing plays a specific role in your business's marketing strategy. 

While channels like paid ads and social media marketing spread awareness, email is an effective way to turn interested leads into customers and maximize the value of each person who buys. 

Plus, gym email marketing is extremely cost-effective, since you don’t need to pay to reach people once you have their email address. 

You can onboard new customers

Email marketing helps you provide new members with all the information they need in the days and weeks after they join. 

Helping them learn more about your gym, classes and products increases the chances that they’ll find value and become a loyal customer. 

You can retain customers for longer

Fitness businesses make more money when customers stick around for a long time. But, 63% of gym customers will stop going within just 3 months! That's a lot of lost revenue.

Email marketing lets you send content that keeps them engaged. You’ll stay top-of-mind and provide tons of value, making customers more likely to keep using and paying for your services.   

You can sell new classes and products

Launching new classes, services or products is much easier when you have an email list full of potential buyers to promote the product to. 

Plus, if you use groups and segments, you can send relevant classes to people based on their interests, location or fitness goals, making them even more likely to buy. Read the article below to find out more about segmentation.

You can generate new customers

Email marketing can also be used as part of your nurture process to turn prospects into buyers. 

Grow your email list with lead magnets, ads or referral programs, and send information and offers to convert new subscribers into customers. 

You can re-engage old customers

All gym owners have customers who used their product for a while but stopped when their motivation ran out. 

Send these people re-engagement emails, such as discounts, motivational content or new product information, to get them excited about their fitness again. 

Great news for fitness businesses: People love reading your emails! Our benchmark data shows that with a median open rate of 48.9%, companies in the health and fitness space outperform the average, which is 42.35%. 

Click rate metrics are slightly lower than the median across all datasets. Fitness businesses have a click rate of 1.74% and a click-to-open rate of 4.27%, compared to 2% and 5.63% overall. 

Before you can wow people with your email marketing, you need someone to send emails to. Step one? Get those subscribers! Here are 5 simple ways to grow your list.

1. Create a lead magnet

All the list growth strategies below will be more effective when you create a lead magnet that gives people a reason to hand over their email addresses. 

This can be anything that will appeal to your target audience. Consider offering:

• A discount

• Free workout plan

• PDF fitness guide

• Meal plans or nutrition tips

• Trial sessions or classes

For more inspiration, look at other businesses and influencers in your industry. And if you’re stuck for ideas, discounts and freebies often work well. 

2. Collect email addresses when someone becomes a customer

Ask for customers’ email addresses during the sign-up process so you can send more information about your business. 

This is effective because it’s much easier to sell to an existing customer than to a new one. You can earn a lot of revenue by promoting relevant offers to your existing customers. 

3. Add opt-in forms on your website 

If you have a website with traffic, add newsletter signup forms and pop-ups to turn browsers into buyers. MailerLite makes it easy to add high-converting pop-ups and forms to your site. 

Don’t have a website yet? Then use MailerLite’s no-code website builder to quickly create one for your brand. 

4. Collect email addresses on social

Social media is an effective way to grow your audience. Turning these followers into email subscribers allows you to nurture them into customers.

Promote your lead magnet on social media by adding it to your link in bio, creating dedicated posts and shorts, and mentioning it in your other posts.

You’ll also need to create a landing page you can use to promote your offer and collect email addresses. 

MailerLite has several link-in-bio templates you can use. Alternatively, create your own page from scratch or using our AI landing page generators. 

5. Collect email addresses at events

If you attend events, use them as an opportunity to collect email addresses. Be sure to adjust your lead magnet based on the interests of the event you’re attending. 

If you’re a running coach attending a 5k fun run, consider something that will help people take their next steps. The same coach attending an elite race should create a lead magnet to help people optimize their performance. 

You can use the MailerLite iPad app to collect subscribers anywhere and have them sync to your account. 

Once you start growing your list, be sure to keep your subscribers organized so you can send them relevant content. Here are some groups and segments you can create based on engagement and customer status. 

In MailerLite, groups are static lists that you can add subscribers to either manually, when someone fills a form, or via an automation. Segments are dynamic lists that update automatically. Watch this video to learn more about how to create groups and segments in MailerLite.

New prospects

Create a group for people who have joined your list but have yet to buy. Send offers and content designed to get them to sign up. 

New customers 

These are people who have recently bought from you for the first time. Send content that helps them understand and gain value from your business. 

Membership tier

Grouping people by membership tier allows you to upsell them to more expensive plans. For example, you could promote your annual plans to someone paying for your services on a monthly basis. 

Interest based

Gym members with the goal of losing weight and those who want to build muscle will respond to different types of content, products and offers. 

Collect data about the types of things subscribers are interested in and then send content and offers to help. 

You can use the products they’ve bought, the emails they’ve opened, or the links they’ve clicked on to gather this information. Alternatively, ask in surveys or sign-up forms.

Other data points

The above points are just a selection of the data points you can use to organize your subscribers. 

It could also be:

• Level of expertise: Beginners vs. elite-level athletes

• Brand engagement: How often they open and click on your emails

• Location: Where they are based, useful if you have multiple locations

Or any other data point that you can use to send more relevant content.

You’ve attracted subscribers. You’ve created your groups. Now it’s time to send emails! Here are some content ideas and examples to get you started.

1. The welcome email

Welcome emails are automated messages that go out when someone joins your email list. They’re your opportunity to set expectations and make a strong first impression.

Consider welcoming the new subscriber and including the most important information about your business. 

This welcome email from Fitbit shares a quick reminder to get started using their features, along with testimonials from happy customers to get people inspired. 

2. The educational content email

Send subscribers useful fitness advice relating to your business. This could be tips on how to perform exercises properly, how to recover after the workout, safe weight loss advice, and what to eat to feel great. People will appreciate the advice, and you’ll showcase your expertise.

In this email, Adidas Runtastic uses the subject line “📛 Attention, please! 6 post-workout mistakes to steer clear of!” and shares pro tips on the best recovery methods and training styles. 

3. The success story email

Success stories are one of the best ways to show the impact of your fitness business. Send an email highlighting clients who have achieved their fitness goals with your help. 

When writing your story, include information about the challenge, the steps they (and you) took to get there, and how they feel now that they have achieved their goals. 

This email from Blogilates does a great job of sharing customer success stories, which is a nice motivator for people to keep going. 

4. The promotional content email

Email is a super-effective way to promote your business. Share promotional email content like trial class schedules, discounts and limited-time offers to get a welcome sales boost. 

In this email, New Heights Fitness announces its 6-week email subscriber package. Gym membership discounts like these give subscribers added value for being part of the email newsletter.

5. The video content email

You’re in the business of constant movement. Show your clients what that looks like through video content. 

Provide workout tutorials, show what a sample personal training session might look like, share teaser videos of fitness classes, or inspire them with testimonial videos. 

It’s easy to embed videos in newsletters, like this email from Gibney, which links to their latest video workouts. 

6. Class and event promotion

Pack out your classes and events by promoting them to your email list. Send a weekly newsletter with all the upcoming classes and events, and a call-to-action (CTA) that people can use to sign up. 

Send these messages to both your existing members and to people who aren’t yet customers. The right class could be all the motivation they need to sign up.

7. Referral program campaigns

Referral programs are an effective way to use your email list to get new customers. It works by incentivising your existing customers to promote your business to their friends. 

When someone makes a successful referral, they receive a free gift like a voucher or discount. 

Tools like Partnero will automate the running of your referral program, including tracking who makes referrals and then fulfilling the gifts you promised.  

You can promote your referral program by sending out an email with all the details to your list. 

8. Re-engagement workflows for inactive clients

Even the best gyms and fitness businesses have clients who stop using their services. While it’s disappointing that people leave your business, these are also some of the best people to target with new offers, since they have a proven history of shopping with your brand. 

The key is to send promotional emails to people on your list who aren’t customers. Include new business updates, success stories and offers designed to get them to join your business again. 

Click here to learn more about what to include in effective re-engagement emails.

One of the best things about email marketing is that you can automate much of your communication. This ensures that the right message goes out to the right customers at the right time. 

Here are some email automations you should consider setting up.

1. Nurture sequence

Nurture email sequences help turn people who join your list into customers. Use them to build trust and show how your business can help the customer by sending information about your brand, success stories, and offers. 

If you use lead magnets to get people to join your list, consider tailoring the content of your nurture sequence to the specific challenges mentioned in the sequence. 

Find out more about how to create a nurture sequence here.

2. Onboarding sequence

Create an automated email series that goes out when someone joins your gym or fitness center. Include all they need to have a successful start with your brand, such as information on classes and using equipment. 

You can also boost the value of the customer by highlighting extra programs or products they might buy. Also, consider tailoring the sequence to the recipient’s interests or goals. 

3. Birthday milestone emails

Make your customers feel special by collecting their birthdays and then sending them a special gift on the big day. The right offer can also help boost retention by encouraging people to make another purchase.

To do this, you’ll need to add their birthday to their MailerLite profile, ask for it in a form when the person signs up or use a survey to collect it during the onboarding sequence. You can then use the The anniversary of a date trigger to send the message.

Find out more about how to create effective birthday email automations here. Or get started right away with the automation template below. 

4. Renewal reminders

Create automations that remind customers that their current plan is ending and that they need to join for another year to keep using your service. 

Automate the process by triggering a message in the weeks before their membership expires, using The exact match of a date trigger.

Here are some of the biggest bang-for-your-buck best practices you can take to improve the performance of your campaigns—without breaking a sweat! 

Optimize your subject lines

Our email open rate data found that the most opened email campaigns were 45% more likely to have a subject line between 20 and 40 characters long, so keep your subject lines to this length. 

When writing your subject lines, tease what’s inside the email without being clickbait. Experiment with different types of messaging to see what your audience responds to. You can use A/B testing to send 2 different versions of a subject line and see which gets the most opens. 

Emojis can also make an impact, since subject lines with emojis are more likely to stand out in the inbox. We found that top-performing campaigns were 21% more likely to use an emoji. 

You can also use our email subject line tester to easily discover ways to improve your subject lines. 

Write a custom preheader

Preheader text is shown in the inbox below the subject line. It’s often automatically generated from the email content, but with MailerLite, you can choose what to display in this section. 

This can make a big difference to your open rates. Our research found that top-performing campaigns were 22.58% more likely to include a custom preheader. Find out more about how to write effective preheaders here. 

Use segmentation

Another great way to increase your open and click rate is to send targeted messages to specific groups or segments of subscribers. 

We found that targeted emails have average open and click-through rates (CTR) that are 36.69% and 267.21% higher than non-targeted campaigns.

By sending personalized emails to specific groups, you can tailor your subject lines and content to their goals and interests, making them more likely to interact with your message.

There are as many email marketing campaign tactics as there are exercises. As with physical fitness, the more you engage in email marketing, the stronger and better-equipped you’ll be. 

Start simple, stay consistent, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Whether you’re sending weekly workout tips, promoting limited-time offers, or sharing client success stories, every email is a chance to build trust and grow your sales.