A Health Club Email Marketing Case Study: $600,000 In 9 Months

Looking for a masterclass in health club email marketing strategy? We’ve got a corker from Life Time Fitness who used email to generate over $600,000 in just nine months!

In this article – we outline an email marketing case study featuring highly effective strategies that other health clubs and gyms can use too.

When Life Time Fitness introduced email automation into their gym’s marketing strategy, they saw profits directly increase as a result. Here’s an overview of exactly what they did, and how you can apply similar strategies in your own business…

We’re a specialist fitness marketing agency with 15+ years of industry experience, so we know first-hand what works (and what doesn’t!). We’ve helped health clubs, gyms, and fitness studios to successfully promote their businesses, so our digital marketing strategies are tried and tested.

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How This Health Club Chain Approached Email

Life Time’s goal was to connect each prospect or member in a one-to-one relationship. For a business of their size and scale, that’s a big undertaking.

So, they decided to use fitness email marketing to achieve it.

Individual profiles were created for each health club member, which recorded all of their personal info and preferences. They then developed personalised emails with tailored messaging, based on their members’ interests, goals, and situation.

This approach helped them to communicate more relevant and meaningful messages to their gym members, as well as stand out in busy inboxes.

Taking a personalised approach in your gym emails is one way you can differentiate your health club from low-cost operators. They often struggle to develop individual relationships with all their members, since they don’t have many staff to interact.

This is also a way that health clubs can remain competitive against smaller boutique studios (like CrossFit and Soul Cycle), who find it much easier to develop these connections and communities.

Or if you run a small studio yourself, then this is definitely something you can use to your advantage…

You might also like… How we grew our gym email list of over 15,000 engaged subscribers.

Here are two examples of how this email personalisation worked in practice…

• Member #1 – visits the club with their kids which gets recorded on their profile. They then receive an email with a 10% discount off the spa, whilst the child attends Life Time’s on-site kids’ programme. This offer is tailored to their precise situation and need, so is more likely to be taken up.
• Member #2 – mentions that they’re training for a triathlon during induction, which gets recorded on their profile. They then receive reminders via the Life Time mobile app to record and track their workout. This helps ensure that they stay on track and train in the right way.

Each of these people is on a unique fitness journey and therefore needs different information in order to succeed. But how exactly did these personalised emails generate profit?

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Health Club Email Marketing Results

There are several ways that email marketing contributed to an increase in their health club profits. Firstly it increased staff productivity which saved money. Then it also improved member acquisition and engagement which increased revenue…

More Efficiency + More Engagement = More Profit

More Efficiency

Life Time send over 7 million emails each month. Their new process streamlined the management of their communications by automating much of the work.

This reduced the amount of time and money spent on managing marketing, which increased efficiency. It also improved productivity in comparison to the old system they had been using.

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More Engagement

Email open rates almost doubled, going from 40% to 70% (which is incredibly high). To put it into perspective, the average email open rate for the health and fitness industry is 22%.

They also saw the open rate of lead generation emails, new membership services, and offer emails increase by 40%. Their customised mailings increased the number of new memberships, and conversions to full paying memberships.

They also created additional cross-channel selling opportunities which further increased revenue.

By personalising communications before, during, and after sign-up, they boosted email engagement too. This also created opportunities for targeted follow-up mailings to drive even more revenue.

In less than 9 months, the new process has generated a benefit equivalent to $608,297.

But best of all, results show that members are now more engaged around their health objectives, athletic aspirations, and fitness goals.

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Health Club Email Marketing Strategies & Takeaways

So, how can you use health club email marketing strategies in your own fitness business? Here are the top takeaways and practical actions that you can replicate…

• Start gathering useful data on your health club members (like their fitness goals) and recording this in a database or email platform.
• Create segments of email subscribers based on the data you have so that you’re able to communicate with these groups within your list (instead of mass-emailing everyone at once).
• Develop customised email campaigns for your key segments that address their specific needs and challenges.
• Use a combination of lead generation emails, new member welcome emails, special offer emails, and regular fitness newsletters.
• Include emails designed to increase conversions into full paying memberships as part of your strategy.
• Identify additional cross-channel selling opportunities (such as personal training or fitness supplements) to increase revenue even more.

By implementing these health club email marketing strategies, you can increase engagement, click-throughs, and revenue too. You can learn more about creating a fitness email marketing strategy from scratch here.

Health Club Email Marketing Templates & More

Our ready-made templates include pre-written emails for health clubs and gyms to use for welcome sequences and member on-boarding. Templates make it quicker, cheaper, and easier to promote your fitness business and keep customers loyal.

50 Fitness Marketing Templates

Whether you run a health club, gym, or boutique fitness studio, these templates will save you time and effort. They’ll help you to plan and organize your promotional activities so that you generate more revenue. You’ll get 50+ templates covering social media, content marketing, advertising, and more.