Now the foundations of your strategy are in place, it’s time to start writing your emails and planning when to send them to ensure they are effective. As with all marketing, the content of your emails should be closely aligned to the needs of your audience to ensure you gain the attention and interest necessary to get them to follow through with your desired action (your goal). Writing an effective email for your member depends heavily on the goal you are aiming to achieve and the audience you are targeting. If your goal is to achieve conversions from your email (e.g. turning prospects into new members), then the way you craft its content will be significantly different than it would be than if you were focussing on informing members as to how they can best use your facility. Highly relevant content is much more likely to gain the attention, interest, desire and action from your members to follow through and complete your intended goal. For content to be relevant you need to ensure that it is timely, accurate, interesting and most importantly it should be specific to the audience and their needs. For example, content which new members might find useful and relevant will greatly deviate from that of long-term members as they have their own unique problems and needs which must be met. New members are trying to fit their new workout regime at your club into their daily or weekly routines. Your email content for this audience should focus on making this process of incorporating your club into their routine as easy as possible. There are five key components to an email which need to be tailored to these goals and audience needs, each with their own best practices - these sections are: The Subject Line, Email Body, Call to Action, Signature, Footer (optional).
Subject Line
The subject line is arguably the most important component of any email. This, along with the first line of text is usually all that the recipient is able to see from their inbox - that means you have about two lines of text to grab their attention and entice them to click and read further before they ignore or delete it. For a good subject line, ensure you keep it short (try for under 50 characters) because people are using mobile phones for opening their emails more now than ever and these devices have limited real estate and will cut off a long subject. The subject should be used to gain their interest, incorporate content sparking urgency, curiosity or include a promotional offer to gain higher open rates. For the best results your subject should be accurate and informative to what content is actually inside the email. Many gyms test a number of subject lines for their emails on sections of their email list before sending to the entire audience to get the best possible results.
Email Body
The body is where the real content and value for your audience lies within your email. In this section you will want to focus on: Make sure the content is personalised for audience and ensure the content is relevant to them. For example, try to incorporate the name of the member in your email, especially in the top few lines as this is also visible from your recipient’s inbox. You can use GymMaster’s insert fields to give your email an added personal touch without having to tailor each one individually. The body of your email should be informative, but make sure it’s not too long. Always remember a large portion of the recipients are likely to view it from their mobile device and if you let it get too long it may result in a lot of scrolling or un-read emails.
Call to Action
If your email is conversion focussed or is aiming to drive some sort of action (as opposed to informative emails), whether it be to increase new members, encourage members to book classes or to refer a friend - adding a compelling call to action to your email is a must. These are usually links in your email which will take the recipient to a page where they can follow the desired action for your goal. To ensure you are getting the most results from your email reader you need to have a call to action which uses “action packed” text. This means it should be using verbs or “doing words” to encourage action. Here’s some examples of good call to actions you might include in your email: E.g.
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- For more class attendees: “Reserve your sport”.
- To get more members: “Sign up now”.
Sender & Signature
To make your communication to appear more authoritative and to increase the credibility and trustworthiness required for clients to convert you may find it beneficial to include a professional signature and footer at the end of your email (as opposed to sending it as regular text). To boost trust and credibility consider adding a contact phone number, your full name and if possible even an image of yourself at the end of your email. Along with these, you should ensure you are sending the email from a familiar sender name your audience will recognise - where possible use real staff email addresses to send the email as this gives a more personal touch and improves customer relationships. Also, ensure you avoid the no-reply email address at all costs, you want to make the client feel like they can respond and give feedback to ensure the email maintains its personalized feel and your client feels valued. Want to learn how to use GymMaster to run an automated email for marketing your gym? Click here
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