Despite inbox overload, email is still a great way to stay in touch with current fitness clients, market new programs and show your value outside of training. But with social media being so easy and prevalent, why should you care?

• Not surprisingly, 56 percent of millennials prefer using mobile—emails are the easiest way to get directly in front of these people, who usually have email notifications on. Unlike a social media post, they’re alerted to your content in their inbox.
• Of the U.S. online shoppers polled by Nielsen, 28 percent subscribe to store or product emails to stay informed—not just to receive discounts and offers.
• It’s inexpensive and everyone knows it. In fact, 85 percent of U.S. retailers said they consider email marketing to be one of their most effective customer acquisition tactics.

Luckily, there are many ways to use email marketing with your personal training business.

Use these ideas to make email marketing an important part of your lead and customer retention strategy.

Offer Exclusive Discounts

Consumers subscribe to emails for a variety of reasons. Far and beyond the most popular reason is to receive discounts, according to the latest study by Adestra. As a personal trainer, there are many ways you can take advantage of this to keep current clients interested and get new clients into your sales funnel.

To start, offer seasonal discounts every few months. Some fun ideas to try are:

• Summer Slimdown Clearance Sale
• Fall Into Fitness—3 intro sessions for $99
• Beat the Winter Blues 6-Week Program

You could also offer discounts for current clients who refer people for personal training or get friends to join them for small group training sessions.

Provide Value Outside of Sessions

You’re a personal trainer, so you likely shine most when face-to- face with clients, helping them get healthier and stronger. However, you can offer more than that to clients—especially if you have specialty certifications in weight loss, mental health or nutrition.

Use email as a way to bring this knowledge to your clients. Show them that you can offer more than training, because you never know what other services they, or someone they know, might need help with. This can also help with retention, giving current clients a reason to stick with you past their current package.

Give Content More Life

If you maintain a blog, you know how time-consuming it can be to find ideas, and then write, publish and market your blog posts. Weekly emails provide you with an easy way to share your content, continuing to provide further value as a trainer, but also getting more from your work as a fitness writer.

Consider sending one email a month as your content digest. Use this as a chance to highlight your favorite articles from the month, along with other content pieces you found valuable that were published on other websites.

Create a template for this email so each month you can simply drop the current articles in and schedule for sending in less than an hour.

Keep Lines of Communication Open

Email is a great way to check in with clients on a regular basis to see what they need, what they like about training with you, and much more, without having to send individual emails every single week.

To solicit feedback and stay in the know with current clients, use questions like:

• “What training styles would you like to see me do more of?”
• “Would you be interested in small group training? Sign up here!”
• “What health-specific things are you struggling with most this week? I’d like to help you out!”

You can have clients send their reply via email, or link to a Google Form, where all of their responses are automatically organized and easy to read.

Announce New Programs

If you keep current and past clients on your email list, you have a great audience for announcing new programs. While current clients may be in the middle of a program with you, they could forward your email on to friends and family.

In addition, past clients may be convinced to come back on board with the new program you’re offering.

You can offer a special discount on new programs as well. Something like “20 percent off for the first five clients who respond” will garner more interest quickly.

Email is a cheap and easy way to stay in touch with clients and get people into your sales funnel. Use these ideas to get started quickly and easily while getting the most out of every email you send.