In order to grow your personal fitness business using the internet, you almost certainly need to use one or more forms of digital marketing, and one of the most effective is email marketing. Unfortunately, many business owners use email marketing in the wrong way by bombarding their email subscribers with promotions and as the digital marketing experts at www.slinkydigital.com.au advise, building a relationship with those subscribers should be the priority.
The words, ‘building a relationship’ can mean many different things to different people so let us first assure you that it does not mean having to divulge your personal details, sending them flowers, or buying them a pint at the local bar. Instead, it means using email to create a relationship where your subscribers look forward to receiving your emails, actively check their email account for them, and most important of all, follow the calls to action that are included in your emails.
We should point out that those calls to action must not be ‘Click This Link To Buy’ every single time. Doing that would be the quickest way to annoy those who have taken the time to subscribe to your email list, and also puts you at risk of being accused of spamming if one of your subscribers gets annoyed enough.
In terms of building a connection with your subscribers, that should start happening in the very first email you send. You should explain fully what they can expect to see from your emails, provide some background you and your personal fitness business, and most importantly, you want to invite them to respond to you with a question, a suggestion or to simply say ‘Hello’.
The connection you have with a subscriber is much stronger if the communication goes both ways, so it is critical that if a subscriber reaches out to you, either at the start or sometime after they have subscribed, that you give them a timely and complete reply. Too many business owners hide behind their autoresponder and believe that they do not need to reply to subscribers directly. How wrong they are.
Another way for the connection to grow between you and your subscribers is the most basic of all, and that is to ensure that the content you include in your email is high quality and worth reading. Within the field of personal fitness, you have so many avenues to pursue in terms of content that you should never be lost for what to write.
One great option is to have stories from your subscribers who may have used one of your products and who would like to tell their story of how it helped them. You could also invite other personal fitness experts you know as guest writers and get them to provide your subscribers with their own advice on personal fitness.
Another thing to try is to send a short email linking to a great video you have found on YouTube. This is particularly effective if it is a funny video or a video that makes people go ‘Wow!’. You can give your views on any development within the world of personal fitness, such as new advice on keeping fit, or some new type of fitness routine.
Finally, there are your own personal experiences, both in the past and the present. Tell your subscribers about any personal fitness struggles you may have had, any ‘Aha’ moments, any gurus, or heroes you follow, or simply what you are currently doing for your own personal fitness.