When it comes to your gym’s digital presence, you’ve already got the basics covered with Wix Fit: online classes, a professional website and a way to accept bookings and payments. Next up? A fitness newsletter.
What is a fitness newsletter?
A fitness or gym newsletter can be a major component of your email marketing strategy, one that allows you to grow your fitness community, share information, update members on promotions and announce schedule changes and social events. You can also highlight members of the month or week, link to other resources (like stretches that complement a particular class) and introduce new trainers. Read more about fitness marketing strategies.
Ultimately, a regular (weekly, bi-weekly or monthly) newsletter will motivate, inspire and educate your clients, while keeping them engaged with your facility and promoting your brand. Email is especially important if you aren’t seeing clients face-to-face.
For more ways to grow your fitness business, check out Wix Learn.
How to write your fitness newsletter
There's nothing more daunting than a blank page. But writing a fitness newsletter is easier than you think, with these tips.
Use your voice
Are you a tough-as-nails bootcamp coach? Or a reassuring yoga teacher? Whatever your fitness newsletter voice is, make sure it’s authentic to your brand and consistent with the other content on your fitness website.
You also want your readers to know—and trust—you, so consider signing off with your credentials and experience. Example: "Matt is an ISSA-certified trainer with eight years of experience coaching over 500 clients. He specializes in building strength and endurance through high-intensity interval training." (Not certified yet? Find the best personal training certification for your needs.)
Write to engage
No one will know how awesome your newsletter is if they never open it. Aim for a specific and immediately relevant subject line. Think: “3 Ways to Nail Your Next Rowing Workout” as opposed to something general, like “Rowing Advice.” Always ask yourself, would I click on this? If the answer is no, try again.
At the end, include a call-to-action, or a concrete step the reader can take to stay engaged, like following your social accounts, signing up for an upcoming fitness challenge or registering for a new class. (Here are some fitness challenge ideas to drive engagement.)
Always format your newsletter for both desktop and mobile to ensure the best possible experience for your clients, and send yourself a test email to make sure your fitness email is properly formatted for all platforms. You can use these email marketing tools to create professional and cohesive email campaigns for your fitness newsletter.
Know your audience
You can’t be everything to everyone, and the more you try, the more generic (and forgettable) your advice will be. Define your audience as specifically as possible, keeping a few things in mind.
Experience level: Are your readers still trying to master an air squat, or do they already know the difference between a hang power snatch and a muscle snatch from the floor?
Age: Are you the go-to gym for high school athletes in your area, or do you attract a more mature crowd? Referencing your favorite TikTok video may play better with the former than the latter.
Goals: Do most of your readers want to lose weight? Get stronger? Bulk up? And what do their calendars look like? If a lot of your athletes are collegiate swimmers, when does their season start and end?
Stay consistent
Build expectations around your fitness newsletter. Maybe you send it on Wednesday mornings, and it always has a short at-home workout, a mobility drill and a piece of fitness trivia. If readers know exactly what to expect, they’re more likely to open it and plan their workouts around it.
For that reason, it’s important that your voice stays consistent (see above), especially if multiple coaches are contributing to the newsletter. This may be difficult at first, so give yourself enough time to edit everyone’s submissions before hitting Send.
Be realistic
As enthusiastic as you may be about your gym newsletter at the beginning, it may be difficult to maintain momentum. So, be honest about how much time and energy you’re willing to invest in your newsletter, especially if you aren’t getting paid (directly) for content creation.
If you want to send a daily newsletter, consider recycling content that you’re already creating for your members, like a workout with a few short tips on how to approach it. Then, once a week you can do a deeper dive, featuring...
An interview with a coach or member
The truth about a popular fitness trend
A how-to demonstrating a difficult technique
Build community
A gym newsletter makes it easy to speak to your members, but how will they speak to you? Include an email address where they can reach out with questions and success stories—and feature the answers and profiles in a future email. You can also use your fitness newsletter to spread the word about gym events and to solicit questions that your members may be too embarrassed to ask you in person.
This is a two-way street. If you only remember one thing about writing a fitness newsletter make it this: Email is another way to truly connect with your clients. Do not spam them.