The first time I heard someone speak about email marketing, I thought I must have stepped back in time 10 years. That was in 2015. My brain momentarily turned off and I started questioning if the next hour of my time was worth it.
After all, I’m a millennial. Social media is where it’s at when it comes to marketing. Email is old news.
Or is it?
Despite my hesitation, I started researching the value of email marketing. I started looking at my own emails a bit more carefully and seeing if any of it would have actually caught my attention.
You know what I found?
My email box was filled with things every day from stores and restaurants I actually shopped at. Old Navy, Kohls, Chilis…I liked them all, and I regularly went there. So, I started thinking – why didn’t I unsubscribe to these places? I may not open their emails very often, but I also never had taken the time to hit unsubscribe.
Then it hit me.
If the right offer had come along in my email box, it would have caught my eye and I would have opened it. Here’s an example:
“Your Kohl’s cash expires in 2 days.”
“Free chips and salsa next time you’re here!”
“60% off all sweaters.”
All three of those might catch my eye. (Yes, I know we talked about discounts yesterday…but discounts in retail are a bit different. Come to conference and we can chat more about it in my sales session!)
In fact, whether I ever open those emails or not, the one thing I realized is that perhaps I was frequenting those places because they were on my mind in the first place. Maybe I was thinking about lunch at Chilis because I had subconsciously seen Chilis come through my emails twice a week for a few weeks.
When the right offer came through, I was likely going to hop on it.
So, I started learning how to use email marketing in my own gym. I was skeptical, but I followed the process. I found a few experts in email marketing and bought their courses and watched their youtube videos. I taught myself how to use Active Campaign email marketing platform and we started building our lists of prospects.
Over the next three years, we saw tremendous growth. I was paying for Active Campaign, so I was committed to using it to grow my gym. It took some time to learn the platform and figure out what worked for us. Today, we can send an email and get several registrations within 24 hours. Why?
Email marketing works.
When we started Next Gen, I didn’t want others to reinvent the wheel, so we created a training course for our Academy members where they could also learn to do email marketing and use Active Campaign. That course is now available to our second-level of Academy members who are taking their business to the next level.
I hear successes with email marketing every single day. It takes a bit of creativity to build campaigns that capture our prospects’ attention, but it’s worth every minute. Gyms are growing through the use of an email marketing system.
Here are a few tips if you’re looking to build your marketing through email:
- Make sure you’re legally obtaining your list of prospects. Opt ins on websites works best. There are federal laws regulating email marketing, and the last thing you want is to be emailing someone who is going to turn you in or be really unhappy to receive your email.
- Learn how to build great subject lines to get them to open the email. If you can’t capture their attention, they can’t see the great things you have to offer.
- Provide a call to action on every single email. Make it easy to click so they can see exactly what you want them to do and they don’t have to read every word to get the idea. I actually have a background in journalism and the #1 thing they taught us in our college classes is that people don’t read – they skim, so put the important info in the beginning and make your CTA clear!
- Find out the best times to send emails. When are people checking them? Most people start at the top of their inbox clearing it out. By the time they get to the bottom, their attention is lost. Make sure you can be at the top for the majority of your audience.
- Be consistent and look at your stats. Figure out what works. It’s hard to do that if you’re inconsistent in your email marketing.
If you’d like to learn more about email marketing, register for the NG Conference in Las Vegas on Jan. 7-8. While we won’t have a live session for it, you WILL get access to our six virtual conference videos from our Reno conference where Dan taught a fantastic session on email marketing. You’ll get that $179 value for FREE just by registering. Visit ngconferences.com to view the class schedule and get registered today.
