Email marketing is, until this day, the best and cheapest way to digitally market your gym.
Paid ads, Instagram, and other social media might seem more effective, but email has withstood the test of time regarding cost and the ability to make sales.
We’ll explore the exact benefits of email marketing for BJJ gym owners next, but it’s important to understand that email is the low hanging fruit in your business, and should be the first system you establish upon opening a school.
You will contact and nurture new leads, provide value to and retain current members, and maintain vital communication with former, current, and future members all through email.
Email is essential to your business operations, and when done correctly, can be the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to grow your jiu-jitsu gym.
Here's why.
1. Email Is Basically Free
In today’s ever competitive online world, it’s harder and more expensive to get your message in front of the people you want.
To be seen on social media takes consistent effort, year after year.
To amplify your message and get it in front of the right audience, you’ll likely have to pay for it.
Paid advertising is very effective, but it can be costly, especially if you lack the knowledge to run ads, or have to pay someone to do it for you.
Most email service providers (ESPs) are reasonably priced below $50/month, with many free options available.
Once you have someone’s email address, you can message them virtually for free at any time.
When you combine paid advertising with email marketing, you leverage the power of both.
Paying to acquire someone’s email address through ads, then emailing them for free to nurture the relationship to eventually make a sale is a smart strategy.
But mastering email marketing will save you thousands of dollars, and is the smartest place to start when growing your gym.
2. Email Is Reliable
Growing a big social media following takes years of hard, consistent work. Even if you can build a following, there’s no guarantee that your posts will be seen by everyone who follows.
Social media requires timing and is unreliable when it comes to deliverability.
Plus, the algorithms are always changing and you never actually own your list of followers, the platform does.
When you have someone’s email address, you can guarantee your message will get to them. Email is a much more reliable way to deliver your message to your audience.
And you never have to worry about algorithm changes or starting from scratch on the next hot new platform.
Your email list stays with you forever regardless of what happens online.
3. Email Builds Value & Relationships
Marketing and growing a business comes down to building trust and providing value. Email allows you to do both.
First, let’s talk trust.
When someone gives you their email address, they are trusting you with their info. They trust that you can provide something they want or need, and thus in exchange, give you access to message them directly.
They trust you won’t spam them, sell their information, or bombard them with sales promotions.
Instead, effective email marketing can be used to build upon that trust by providing consistent value.
When you develop a smart email strategy that includes value-based content amongst promotions, news, and updates, you deepen your relationship with your prospect or member.
Messaging is also direct and personal on email, as opposed to general and broad on social media.
Essentially, email allows you to turn cold leads into warm and hot prospects, and new members into loyal patrons who remain for years.
Build trust and deepen relationships by providing consistent value through effective email marketing.
4. You Can Segment Your List
When building a BJJ gym there are 4 main types of contacts you will want to communicate with - current leads, current members, lost leads, and lost members.
There is specific messaging you will want to deliver to each of these groups.
Unlike social media, with email, you can segment each of these groups and message them specifically.
It’s easy to tag an email contact it most ESPs, and create lists of these members so you can blast email the entire group any time you want.
Segmenting allows you to build and nurture relationships better with the correct messaging to each segment.
Email also provides data that social media can’t, like open and click rates.
This data allows you see how effective your marketing is and who is engaging with your business. You can easily see who is engaged and a hot prospect, or what former members are still interested that you could potentially win back.
Segment your list and make data-driven decisions with smart email marketing.
5. You Can Automate Email
Finally, a lot of email marketing can be automated, freeing you up to work on other aspects of your business while still creating value and building relationships.
Drip campaigns will automatically send out pre-designed email sequences to specific segments.
So, once you tag a contact with “new lead” for example, they will automatically get your “new lead” sequence, which helps nurture that relationship to eventually make the sale, all without you having to do a thing.
Update that lead to “member” and they’ll instantly start your “member” sequence.
All it takes is a few minutes to set up, then will run automatically without any more effort on your part.
Of course, it’s smart to check in on your automations, but email can become your automatic marketing machine with the right strategy.
Final Thoughts
Email should be the foundation of communication at your gym. Everyone has email, and its effectiveness combined with low cost makes it an absolute must for gym owners.
Rarely, however, do BJJ gyms make effective use of email.
Just like any other part of your business, establishing a system takes the guess work out of the process.
Building an effective email marketing system will set your gym up for success, and serve your business year after year as you grow into a profitable BJJ gym.
Attract, retain, and grow your membership with effective email marketing.
To get more free info on marketing your BJJ gym, join the Tactical Tuesday newsletter here.
Comments