How to Create an Engaging Fitness Newsletter

As a fitness business owner, you probably know how important it is to have repeat customers. Without constant patronage, your gym, coaching business, or other fitness industry enterprise will struggle to survive. For this reason, you need to stay in touch with your customers. While there are several ways to do it, a fitness newsletter can offer unrivaled benefits.

This article explains how to create a newsletter for your fitness business. Keep reading to learn what they are, how they can help you, and tips for creating an effective one.

5 tips for creating an effective fitness newsletter

Ready to create your fitness newsletter? The five tips that follow should help you make it effective and engaging:

1. Keep newsletter content focused

When creating your fitness newsletter, aim to put out content that’s focused and on-topic. 

Unlike a regular newsletter, a fitness newsletter doesn’t give you the luxury of being experimental. Your newsletter subscribers signed up because they care about one thing only, namely maintaining or improving their physical health. If they don’t get what they’re looking for, they may stop reading your emails or, worse, unsubscribe.

Thus, rather than emailing about a wide range of disparate topics, you’ll need to narrow your content down to a handful. For example, if your business offers personal training services, your newsletter’s content should reflect that. If the focus of your business is fitness nutrition, it’d make sense to send your readers delicious recipes (that are hopefully low-cal).

The main takeaway is to put more thought into the content you send your subscribers. It helps to remember why you created a newsletter in the first place: to cultivate a relationship with your future customers. If the content you produce doesn’t help you reach that goal, set it aside for something that will.

2. Maintain ‘balanced’ text and visuals

If valuable content holds a reader’s attention, the content’s presentation is what catches their attention in the first place. Thus, your newsletter design needs to be engaging. You can achieve attention-grabbing results by maintaining a good “balance” between text and visuals.

How do you do that?

During the design process, use a combination of high-quality images and text to wow your subscribers. Shoot for a design with a ratio of 60% text and 40% percent images. Adhering to this 60/40 rule will ensure your newsletter grabs attention without overwhelming or boring your readers.

Make sure to keep visual hierarchy in mind when working on the newsletter’s copy. The text you want to emphasize (e.g., headlines or discount percentages) should be more prominent than their counterparts.

Also, don’t forget about readability. When positioning elements on the web page, pay attention to the space between them. If your text is too close together, the design may come out cluttered and off-putting.

Finally, make sure your call-to-action buttons stand out from the rest of the email’s text. Make the button’s color bright to catch the reader’s eye and keep the anchor text short and to the point.

3. Segment your audiences

Adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to your fitness newsletter isn’t going to cut it. Your audience isn’t a monolith, which means that content one set finds relevant may not resonate with a different set of subscribers.

To ensure that you meet your audience members’ unique needs, consider segmenting them.

Audience segmentation involves categorizing your audience into groups. An email marketing platform and a good gym CRM solution can help you do this. You can segment subscribers based on shared traits like their age, gender, interest, and geographical location. It’s even possible to segment subscribers based on their behavior (e.g., whether they open your emails).

You can read about how to find a good CRM solution here.

The main benefit of segmenting your audience is that it helps you tailor your content to their needs. For instance, you can cater to a group that’s interested in gym equipment without alienating high-intensity interval training enthusiasts (and vice versa). 

Segmentation also applies to fitness levels: a subscriber who is joining a gym for the first time would have different content needs compared to a veteran’s.

Finally, segmentation is excellent for customer engagement. According to a study by Mailchimp, segmented emails have a 14.31% higher open rate than non-segmented ones.

4. Share success stories

Our next tip involves sending your fitness newsletter subscribers motivational stories. These stories can take the form of testimonial videos or transformation comparison photographs.

Sharing success stories is an excellent way for your business to leverage social proof. When you ask your gym members or personal training clients to share their success stories, they essentially lend your business credibility. Prospective customers will see that the fitness routines you espouse produce results, motivating them to stay in your fitness community.

Also, success stories can be helpful when you run low on fresh ideas for content. Since you’ll be soliciting stories from your audience members, you don’t have to do too much work. These people can talk about their favorite workouts, the healthy recipes that produced the results, and more. They’ll even supply the before-and-after pictures.

Of course, you’ll need these audience members’ consent when sharing their stories with the rest of your community. They also need to be comfortable with the idea of other people viewing their transformation pictures, vital statistics, and other personal data.

5. Give promotions and special offers

Remember how we mentioned that fitness newsletters are useful for driving revenue? This tip lets you do just that.

After earning your subscribers’ trust through engaging content, encourage them to patronize your business by giving them promotions and exclusive offers.

Let’s say you run a gym: a common way to attract reluctant subscribers is to offer a limited-time discount on the membership fee. Meanwhile, if you’re a fitness professional, you could offer free one-on-one virtual coaching sessions.

Fitness newsletter examples

Need content ideas for your fitness newsletter? We’ve curated four inspiring examples you can build on when designing your fitness email campaigns.

Newsletter Tempo

In the newsletter communication below, AI-powered home gym application, Tempo, combines imagery and text to stunning effect: 

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The company uses visual hierarchy to highlight text in two ways: through color (used to emphasize the word “transform” in the headline) and size (“Save up to 46%. Witness your transformation.”)

Gainful

Gainful uses ensures a good balance of text and visuals in its email, giving it a minimalistic and clean aesthetic:

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The email uses bolding to highlight portions of text and color. The goal is to draw the reader’s eye to two call-to-action buttons. It also uses spacing to prevent clutter. Also, Gainful uses a discount to encourage spending, offering 25% off the subscriber’s first purchase.

REP

In the email below, fitness company REP employs striking imagery when marketing its kettlebells to its newsletter subscribers:

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The main image, which features a model working out, lets potential customers see the product in action. REP also provides a call-to-action button action with anchor text that encourages curious subscribers to “Learn More.”

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal curates a collection of fitness articles that provide advice on nutrition:

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Its email is a perfect example of focused content, as it never deviates from food-related topics. The newsletter also includes multiple call-to-action buttons that all stand out from the rest of the text.

Blogilates

The Blogilates email below is the perfect example of audience segmentation and social proof done right:

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The email spotlights existing customers’ progress while putting the Blogilates brand front and center. Notice how all the highlighted members are female? That isn’t by accident. We can bet that the company sent a separate email to its male subscribers (featuring an all-male cast).

Conclusion

Creating a fitness newsletter is easier than you think. Once you understand your customers’ needs, all you have to do is fulfill them consistently. 

To start, keep your content focused and uncluttered. When designing the newsletter’s presentation, maintain a decent balance between design and text. 

Also, consider segmenting your audience. Segmentation ensures that you send groups of audience members content that’s tailor made to their needs. Try sharing your audience members’ success stories. Not only can this technique be motivational, but it also lets you leverage social proof. Finally, offer promotions to encourage sales. 

Follow these tips and you’ll set your fitness newsletter up for success.

FAQ

What is a fitness newsletter?

A fitness newsletter is a series of emails that discuss all things physical fitness. These ongoing communications aim to keep your health-inclined email subscribers engaged, ensuring that your business/brand remains at the top of their minds. While the type of content included in the newsletter can vary, it typically aims to:

• accompany subscribers on their fitness journey and help them reach their fitness goals
• promote upcoming events, products, or special offers
• share tips, nutrition advice, and fitness trends
• keep subscribers abreast of what your business is up to; or all of the above

Its target audience comprises fitness enthusiasts, gym members, fitness clients, and consumers.

Your fitness newsletter can take numerous forms. You can create a weekly newsletter that curates fitness content from around the web, send monthly updates about your business, or make quarterly announcements about fitness events. We’ll review some inspirational examples later in the article.

Why do you need a fitness gym newsletter?

Ecommerce stores always engage their audiences through regular newsletters. Meanwhile, email marketing is one of the top digital marketing strategies used by gyms today. 

So, why do all these businesses have a newsletter?

For starters, email marketing remains the top digital marketing channel in terms of return on investment (ROI). As of 2020, the channel provided a return of $36 for every dollar spent. But that’s not the only reason. Creating a newsletter for your fitness business provides several other benefits, including:

• Direct contact with customers – Whether you’re a gym owner, personal trainer, or fitness equipment company, fitness newsletters give you a direct line of contact with your customers. Unlike other digital marketing strategies (e.g., social media), you aren’t at the mercy of platform algorithms. Your email list gives you near-unfettered access to your potential customers.
• Building trust and authority – A fitness newsletter offers the perfect opportunity for brand building. You can use content marketing to position yourself or your business as a go-to source for fitness advice. You can use it to educate your customers on a variety of exercises and workout routines, offer advice on healthy habits, nutrition tips, and more. With a consistent content strategy, you’ll build trust in the long run.
• Securing relationships – Email is one of the most secure marketing channels. Social media platforms may come and go, but your email list remains yours through it all. Thus, a newsletter provides a secure way to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.
• Driving revenue – Fitness email marketing can be profitable when done right. Once you win a subscriber’s trust through a consistent output of relevant content, it’ll be easier to convince them to purchase from you. If your fitness email list has thousands of subscribers, you could drive impressive revenue numbers.
• Enhancing other marketing channels – You can use a fitness newsletter to drive traffic to your other marketing channels and vice versa. For example, you can send your subscribers to your website to read blog posts, provide a link to a landing page, or encourage them to follow your social media handles. 

The above benefits make running fitness newsletter campaigns a must for fitness brands, and professionals.