Build a successful festive fitness marketing campaign

December is a busy time for many. There’s lots going on with parties, entertaining family & friends, buying last minute gifts, and more!  

How do you cut through the noise and build a successful festive fitness marketing campaign to support your gym business? 

You need to show your prospects and members that the gym is a valuable place to spend time and money during the festive period. 

The right gym marketing approach will help you capture attention and persuade new and existing members to prioritise time with you during December and into the new year. Start with email. 

5 steps to a successful festive fitness email campaign 

Email marketing is highly effective. You have direct access to your audience, who’ve chosen to hear from you, using a channel that you own. 

Lack time and resource for marketing? No problem! Get 10 ready-to-use email marketing templates your gym needs this festive season. 

Here are 5 steps to take to make sure your gym email marketing cuts through the noise this festive season. 

#1: Set a clear goal  

A starting point of any successful campaign is deciding what you want to achieve with your email. What do you want your audience to do once they receive it?  

Common goals include increasing brand awareness, driving sales, signing up new members, and engaging existing members. Over the festive period you’ll want a mix of emails to drive sales and engage existing members. 

Focus on your whole offer – beyond the January peak to come – and the lifelong benefits that investing in health and fitness brings. 

#2: Target specific groups 

No matter what type of fitness club you run, you will have different types of customers – each with their own unique characteristics, interests, and needs. Segmenting your database into specific target groups will make your campaigns more relevant.  

Your gym management software should make it simple to create target lists – segmented by age, gender, interests, preferences, visit patterns and more. 

This makes it simple to create inclusive festive campaigns that tailor to each prospect or member. 

#3: Use personalisation  

Enhance your targeting by using personalisation in your festive campaigns. Personalisation is essential if you want to get more people to open and act on your email campaign. 

Research from Deloitte found that adding a name to your email marketing can boost open rates by 5.2%. And further personalisation could increase open rates by anything from 11% to 55%.  

Beyond boosting open rates, personalising messages has even been found to result in 5.7 times higher campaign revenue according to Rich Relevance. Your gym management software should make personalising emails at any time of year simple. 

#4: Hit the right tone 

There’s a lot of noise to cut through in the run up to Christmas and the New Year – particularly in email inboxes. Hitting the right tone will help your messages stand out.  

Remember to be human! Keep emails conversational and light. Imagine you’re speaking directly to a member in person and write like that. 

Humans are wired to react in specific ways. Use emotional triggers to direct readers to your goal. For example, create a sense of fear of missing out with limited time offers. 

#5: Choose the right time to send 

You know what you want to achieve, who you’re going to target, and you’ve created a personalised message that hits the right notes. Now all you need to do is choose when to hit send. 

Timing matters. Get it right to increase the open and read rate of your festive fitness marketing emails.  

Litmus research found that in the UK an email sent at 9am is most likely to be opened. 7.1% of all opens happen between 9am and 10am. A further 7% happen between 10am and 11am.  

Use your gym marketing software to schedule sending for around 9am to make sure your message gets the attention it deserves. 

Take the hard work out of festive fitness marketing 

It’s a busy time of year and your team’s time is limited. To make life easier for you, we’ve created the Ultimate Guide to Festive Gym Email Campaigns to Boost Business.  

This free guide will help you finish the year strong with the emails you need to increase new sign ups and engage existing members. Pick and choose from a selection of effective Christmas gym promotion ideas and ready-to-use templates – get your copy.