Incase you prefer reading – here’s the video transcript…
Hi, I’m Jaimee Maree from www.thefitnessentourage.com and in today’s video I want to quickly talk to you about the importance of email marketing. I’m going to show you how incredibly valuable it can be to help you generate more leads and clients and ultimately help you generate more profits in your business.
Now, if you’re not building an email list, then you’re making a HUGE mistake. Whether you’re a personal trainer, yoga instructor, health coach or in any niche in the fitness industry you need to start building a list. To be honest, it’s really difficult to have a viable business without an email list. It doesn’t need to be big, but it’s a really important part of getting new leads and clients on a consistent basis, to building relationships and to differentiate yourself from your competitors. I can tell you a lot of fitness professionals aren’t doing this and it is costing them clients.
The truth is, when I first got into building my business, the idea of email marketing scared me. I don’t really know why, maybe it was because I didn’t understand the technical side of things, or I didn’t know what to do once I had people sign up to my list, I don’t really remember what it was but I didn’t start collecting emails for a long time and it’s one of the things I wish I had of done from the start.
I wish someone had just showed me how easy it was to do and how easy it was to generate new clients once you started to build an email list. Today… I’m going to show you how to do it. I’m going to show you how to create an email marketing account for free, how to write your first email, and how to create your emails to get people to take action and sign up to your product or service.
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So first up. Email marketing is a simple marketing technique that involves sending emails to an email list – generally your clients or potential clients, it’s really as simple as that. The only tricky part is knowing how to write these emails to make sure people open them and how to get people to take action on what you want them to do. I’ll show you how to do that in a moment.
First we need to make sure you have an email marketing account. If you’ve seen any of my videos before you will have heard me talk about mail chimp. Mail chimp is a free email marketing service provider that allows you to manage your contacts, send emails and track results. There are also some other great companies you can use like aWeber, SendPepper, Infustionsoft and Office Autopilot now known as ontraport. These are incredibly good email marketing platforms. They generally cost between $30 – $350 a month, so, if you’ve got a big budget then definitely check them out, but if you’re just getting started with email marketing then simply head over to mailchimp.com. Once you’ve created an account you’ll be able to get started straight away. You’ll be able to create an email list, create your emails, create sign up forms for people to sign up to and finally send those emails. It’s actually pretty simple.
Now that you know how to create your account, lets take a look at how to structure your emails. This is a massive topic, so I really just want to go over the basics with you. The most important thing when it comes to email marketing is to make sure your emails are useful and informative and you want to stick to the rule “What’s in it for me” also known as the WIIFM Factor. This means that every time someone opens your email, the first thing they’ll think about is “what’s in it for me”. They’re not really interested in hearing about your business, and so unless they can quickly identify what’s in the email to help them, then they’re unlikely to read your entire email or to take action on what you want them to do.
If you think about this when you’re creating all of your emails then you’re much more likely to build up your client base.
So, when you’re creating your emails I want you to go through the following steps
1. Make a list of everything your clients could want and any problems they might be experiencing.
2. Go through the products and services you offer and match up those with what you wrote down in step one. So for the problems your clients are having, match that up to a service you provide that helps them overcome that problem.
3. Okay now that you have your new list, when you’re crafting your emails, start helping your clients to overcome some of these problems and create emails which offer immense value.
Just remember to put yourself in your recipients shoes and make sure you’re answering the question ‘what’s in it for me’.
4. Seeing as you’ve aligned your clients problems with you as a solution and you’ve started providing them with immense value and solving their problems now you can start to talk about what you offer.
If you’re trying to sell something then you want to make sure you make it really subtle and keep the salesy stuff to a minimum. Even though you’ve started helping people solve the problems their having we both know for people to truly reach their goals, they’re likely to need a mentor and a coach, and because they now know you and likely trust you – you’ll be the person they come to.
Some people often ask how do you make money out of email marketing if you have to keep the salesy stuff to a minimum. The reason email marketing is so powerful is because it allows you to build a relationship with people, it allows you to demonstrate how valuable your services are and to show why you’re a hundred times better than your competitor down the street. If you continually provide value to your email list then they’ll start to see you as an expert and they’ll start coming to you for help. They’ll start to know you and trust you, and we both know that people buy from people they know and trust.
One thing to remember is that not everyone will need to hire a personal trainer, sign up to a yoga class or hire a health coach or whatever it is that you provide, straight away, but it’s likely at some point they will need to. If you’ve been providing them with immense value and building your relationship with them, you’ll be the first person they come to when they need help. Even if people aren’t ready for you straight away, it’s highly likely they will be as some point, and you’ll be top of mind when they do need help and it will help you attract a heck of a lot more clients long term.
As I said email marketing is a massive topic and I realise this is a lot to take in. Always remember if you need guidance we help fitness professionals every day learn how to generate new leads and clients online. We’re just about to open up a limited number of places in our coaching program, so if you’ve got the passion and the desire to grow your fitness business and simply need guidance on how to market yourself online, then head over to the www.fitnessentourage.com/coaching, fill in an application form and we’ll see if we would make a good match!
That’s it for this video. As always, if you liked this video make sure you share it with your friends – it just might help them too. Thanks for watching and I hope you have an incredible day. See you soon!