The idiots have done it again. They send their junk, their spam and they are ruining the entire concept of emailing for business. Email marketing is an unbelievable way for you to get your message to your customers and potential customers. However, it is getting harder and harder everyday. Thanks alot Spammers!

Look, we are all sick of spam and we all have way too many emails in our inbox. So how do we get people to not only read your emails but actually look forward to them.

Here are a couple tips for successful email marketing for personal trainers.

1. Be Honest - If you plan on emailing someone every day or every other day, tell them up front before they fill out the form. Of course you don’t want to say, “hey you don’t know me but im going to email you every day for the rest of your life for no good reason”.. What you can say is, “I would like to send you action packed fitness tips, workout routines, and other great resources, in our daily E-newsletter..

Also, if you say “fill out this form for a Great Free Report”, give them the free report. Don’t leave them hanging wondering what you are going to do with their email address.

2. Provide Real Value - I’m on everyone and their mother’s email list these days cause I like to see what people are up to. Some of them I open and read, the ones that get deleted right away are the ones that never have any real value. Trust me, if people benefit from the content of your email they will keep opening it and keep reading it.

3. Differentiate Yourself - What makes your newsletter so special? It’s probably just like all the other fitness / personal training newsletters out there. Stand out from the crowd.

4. Choose Words Wisely - Not only do you have to be careful which words you choose for the spam filters, but you also need to write subject lines that will make people have to open the email. This can be a challenge, watch out for words that trigger spam filters like free, weight loss, fat, etc.

5. Always offer a chance to unsubscribe - It will really tick people off if they want to unsubscribe and they can’t. You don’t have to make the unsubscribe link big bold and bright red, but it needs to be there.

There is much more to having a very successful email marketing campaign but this should be enough to get you started. If you have any questions, let me know..

Thanks,

Keith

Many of you are now on board with email marketing, building relationships with your customers via email. This is a must for anyone that is serious about growing their business. Well written, purpose driven emails are the easiest, most affordable way for you to gain trust and loyalty from your customers. If you are not regularly communicating with your customers, you are missing out big-time.

Here are just a few of the many benefits to email marketing.

It’s Easy - Though writing may be hard for some people, and there is definitely great skill involved, it sure beats traditional ways of keeping in contact with your people. A simple contact management software will sort your customers on lists, all you have to do is create a plan and take a few minutes to write an email once a week or so.

It’s Cheap - In the past, most businesses owners neglected to stay in contact with their customers because it was too expensive. Sending direct mail pieces can be expensive and who has the time to call of our customers (although, now a days a quick thank you call would work like gangbusters)Email management softwares like constancontact, or icontact are very affordable from ($0 - $20) per month. The cost varies on the size of your list.

It works - Turn on your tv on any given night and you will find at least one sleezy reality show. (Stay tuned for “Who Wants to Marry an Internet Geek?”) People love to watch other people live their lives, in fact… they spend more time watching then actually living their own lives. Your customers will like to hear from you (if you have something of value to say), they will listen to your stories about your children or what happened to you on the way to the office. As time goes on, they will “get to know you” and they just might like you (aka. buy from you)

Again, you can’t just send an email an expect people to fall in love with you. There are things you need to know:

People are bombarded with email, you need to make them look forward to your emails. Here a re a few tips.

• Provide Value - If they feel like they are learning from you, they will read your emails. If even one of them “seems like a waste of time” you will lose them.

• Use Great Subject Lines - Make them interesting but not misleading (I will create an entire post about subject lines later)
• Be frequent, but not too frequent - There are many schools of thought on this but I feel that more than 2-3 times per week is overkill. There’s only one person or company that emails me everyday and I still read it, and that is because there content is very good.

So if you aren’t using these email marketing techniques, you better start soon.

If you already are, you need to learn how to improve your techniques and strategies. It is an ever-evolving practice and you must stay ahead of the game.

Best of luck, please comment with any questions or points of interest.

Keith