Now more than ever, it’s critical for your fitness business to communicate consistently and effectively with your customers – both new and old. As the fitness industry evolves, there’s both opportunity and challenge in engaging with customers in our new, increasingly virtual world.
Email marketing can be a game-changing tool in attracting and retaining your customers during the ongoing uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus crisis – and will have lasting value and impact into the future.
Punchpass, as always, is innovating to bring you the simple, effective tools that you need to provide excellent customer care and, ultimately, grow your fitness studio.
Our new integration with email marketing platform, Mailchimp opens exciting new possibilities for growing and nurturing your community.
When you activate this new feature, every time you add a new student to your Punchpass fitness business software, their contact information is automatically added to your designated list inside Mailchimp. If you don’t currently have a Mailchimp account, basic plans are free for the first 2,000 contacts, and super easy to set up.
When you first set up the Punchpass-Mailchimp sync, your list of active customers is automatically added to your Mailchimp audience.
Here’s a few pro tips on setting up an email marketing program for your fitness business using Punchpass:
Give New Customers a Warm – Automated – Welcome
Once you’ve activated the Mailchimp integration inside your Punchpass account, you can set up an automatic welcome email to go out to every new contact using Mailchimp’s email automation feature.
This email is a place to greet new students with the same friendliness and enthusiasm you would shower them with when they walked into their first class. You’re just doing it digitally. So be sure to write your email with lots of personality and care.
Include information and links to supportive content that will help new customers know about your culture, how to connect with fellow community members and staff and how to get updates on your class schedule, updated pricing and packages, studio and class policies and all your amazing new online class content!
Pro tip: If you are going to set up a new student welcome email or email series, we recommend that you upload your existing customer contacts to Mailchimp first, before you turn on the automated email campaigns. This will help ensure that your existing customers don’t get “welcome new student” emails when they are added.
Nurture Your Contacts with Lots of Digital Love
A great way to retain new students and re-energize existing members who may have disengaged, is to set up a series of automated emails that Mailchimp automatically sends out after certain “trigger” events that you set up.
For example, once your customer list is fully uploaded to Mailchimp, and Punchpass is automatically adding all your new students, you can create a series of emails that are sent on a specific schedule that you set up. This will save you a ton of time if you invest a little effort up front.
Image a series of encouraging emails with motivational tips, workouts of the day, links to your Punchpass content library, your class schedule, social media accounts and announcements about community-building events or contests. Simply load this content once into one of Mailchimp’s email templates, set up your automated campaign to send out each email once a day, once a week or once a month, and the system does the work for you.
Create a Win-Back Campaign
Inside Mailchimp, you can create different email lists based on your various “audience segments.” This can be especially helpful with sending specific messaging to groups with different needs and behaviors.
Right now, retention is extra important. You can create an email or series of emails to send to customers on your list who haven’t been to class – online or in-person – for awhile and get them back in action.
These messages let disengaged customers know that you value them, miss them and care enough to reach out and let them know. These types of emails are perfect for sending out a special offer to intense students back to class – think a 15 percent off promotional code (you can set this up in Punchpass) or a free weekly pass to try out online classes.
Deliver Special Online Programs
You can now use the combined power of Punchpass and Mailchimp to up the polish and professionalism of your online fitness programming. What better delivery method than a beautifully designed email to support you in running special training or workshop programming.
For example, embed your on-demand video class and workshop content into a pre-scheduled and automated Mailchimp campaign with a trigger set for each new customer sign up.
For a six-week personal training series, when a new student is added to your program email list inside Mailchimp, the platform will automatically email them their “workout of the day” and any supplemental content you include – like links to videos and PDFs – for the duration of your program. All you have to do is set it up once, and engage directly with your students when and how you wish.
These types of digital programs can lay a potentially lucrative foundation for upselling customers into in-person private or small group training sessions.
The key to building your fitness business through email is to get creative, be the fun and caring leader that you are, be willing to experiment, and be open to your best customers’ feedback and suggestions.
