The topic of marketing tends to be painted with a broad brush, even when talking about semi-niche markets like fitness facilities. For many studios running their businesses in this industry, their problems often look identical to those of other similar business types at a top level. Still, a studio owner’s tools, execution methods, and even communication styles will typically differ from those of their gym—and facility-based counterparts. Even the topic of repeat business is nuanced when comparing personal training studio client retention methods to those of a gym.
We will dig into three main areas to help you make a splash with your limited time, energy, and resources as a personal training studio owner. We will focus on some straightforward ways to implement a professional and semi-automated email system, how to identify your target audience as well as their interests regarding content, and finally, some content ideas to help fortify your personal training studio’s client retention rate.
But before we splash around with this concept too much, this blog belongs to a four-blog series that covers gym email marketing ideas for:
- Gym Lead Nurturing
- Gym Member Engagement
- Personal Training Studio Client Retention
- Boosting Gym Referrals
Implementing Software for Fitness Studios: Email Automation
For owners of personal training studios, client retention is a critical metric to focus on from a profitability and sustainability standpoint. Reducing attrition rates by keeping the clients you’ve worked hard to attain can help offset additional advertising costs. Therefore, making the most of a budget, trainers, and time when discussing client retention for your training studio is essential. These time-saving efficiencies tend to come in the form of fitness studio software.
When talking about software for fitness facilities, many people immediately think of training studio payment software or gym member management software. However, today, we will focus on email platform software and some of the basic automation that can come with it. It’s also worth noting that some larger software solutions packages may include email as part of the offering.
To begin implementing an automated email system, you will need to research which platform you would like to use first. While the platforms’ offerings, capacities, features, and pricing may slightly differ, it’s wise to compare these based on your studio’s needs and make an educated choice. One point to consider is not to shop solely on price for email service providers (ESP) if you are new to email marketing. Sometimes, the lowest cost options deliver minimal (if any) customer service, lack tech help, and can result in unfavorable spam scores that could ultimately affect your email deliverability.
Once you have selected an option and moved forward with purchasing/subscribing, you must authenticate your domain with the email system. Authentication requires access to your website’s backend with your domain’s host/DNS panel. Unfortunately, this process will look very different based on which solution you pick and what domain hosting you are using. However, many software providers tend to include setup instructions in their customer sign-up process.
Identifying Your Target Audience and Their Content Interests
Before diving in too fast with your email campaign software, we emphasize understanding your fitness facility’s target audience. This recommendation is because much of the effort going forward revolves around reaching these ideal clients and making an impression, not just as a lead but as a long-term client as well. Once you have a strong foundational understanding of the values and interests of your audience, you can begin to craft your messaging.
The email content creation process typically requires some field learning. Email marketing involves crafting compelling messages and information on a medium you may have used less for marketing purposes. That said, starting with your best thoughts for content, layout, and wording and then making minor changes to subsequent emails can be a good start. This approach allows you to compare data on the ESP dashboard side, which would help you gauge success.
Metrics like open rates can be helpful but are often influenced by the sender, subject line, and even time of day/day of week. Interactions with your email, like time reading, number of opens, or even email forwards, can give you insights into the content and whether your audience finds it interesting or helpful. Clicks can also provide great insight into engagement and overall interest in your call to action. Conversely, no-open rates, spam, and unsubscribe rates deliver insights into what is not working with your audience.
A/B testing to optimize your email strategy and building in pre-made email automation options where you can are helpful tactics to implement. Additionally, checking in with your clients to see if they like your emails or what type of content they want to see in their inboxes is helpful. Sometimes, personal training studio owners forget this point – you can ask marketing questions directly to your target audience (aka clients you want more of), and it may even help drive your clients’ feelings of belonging to your studio.
Email Ideas to Help Boost Personal Training Studio Client Retention
- Studio Newsletters: While this might seem like a rudimentary suggestion, a well-aligned newsletter that gives information your clients find worthwhile can be a great way to get started.
- Events: Client retention for personal training studios is not just a “marketing” thing. Often, it requires building community, value, and loyalty into your business at its core. That said, running events and getting members to interact with your studio outside their typical routine can be a great way to drive engagement and community. Utilizing email to drum up attention and interest while expanding the message’s reach can be a helpful tool to drive success.
- Personalized Emails: When discussing personalized emails from a marketing (especially semi-automated) perspective, we aren’t referring to general person-to-person emails. Instead, we focus on building personalizations into your automated marketing system through email. Implementing email templates that include personal factor variables (usually tied and pulled from the CRM or database) can be one way to personalize automated emails. Additionally, building pre-set emails based on client information can be a way to up your personable email game. These opportunities can include birthday emails, membership anniversaries, milestones (100 classes, 3-week attendance streak, etc.), or even progress reports.
- Client Satisfaction Surveys: We recommend that fitness businesses survey their customers and clients semi-regularly. These market assessments not only help you run your business more effectively regarding alignment with your target audience, but they can also benefit clients. These client benefits can come in the form of feeling heard, experiencing positive changes within the studio, or even experiencing emotions of appreciation.
- Personalized Promotions: Building on the concept of personalized emails, you can build additional marketing value into those through personalized promotions. Building value into these types of emails is a great way to help enhance open and engagement rates and promote referrals and leads. For example, “To thank you for all your hard work, we wanted to give you a 50% off membership package for one of your friends or family”. By combining personalization, appreciation, and promotion, you can help enhance the success of multiple strategies.
- Motivational Messages: Who doesn’t love the random daily quote from a company they do business with showing up in the email inbox? A lot of people. Don’t do that, please! However, using strategic motivational messages and check-in emails as a marketing opportunity to help promote retention is a better plan. Designing a soft automated email to inspire and re-engage clients who may not have been coming for a certain period of time can help improve chances of retaining that client vs. them dropping off and out of your facility.
- Themed Months: Similar to newsletters, coming up with themes for a month and using content from that to help drive community, interaction, and engagement can be a fun opportunity for content. Additionally, this content can be easily reshared on other platforms for further reach and marketing opportunities.
Making A Splash
Personal training studio client retention can be a hot topic for owners looking to keep their bottom line healthy. When looking at the various elements that go into keeping clients happy, engaged, and returning, owners need to make it a priority when looking at their business plan, marketing initiatives, and tracked KPI metrics. That said, email is a strong and viable tool that many owners can implement with little cost, overhead, or technical experience. By leveraging automated features in their email marketing or gym membership management software, they can turn their emails into marketing efforts that help feed into their sales funnel and ongoing client retention strategy.
