A list of client (and potential client) emails is one of the most valuable assets in the world of marketing. Not only does this allow you to contact people via email, but it can be used in social media advertising (specifically the Facebook group of apps) to create custom Facebook audiences for paid Facebook advertising.

Here, we’ll cover how we teach Range of Motion Business Mentoring clients to use of this asset (an email list) specifically for email marketing.

As with social media content, we’re primarily looking to deliver value through emails. Sure, there’s a place to make sales and announce upcoming products and services, but the vast majority of all emails your clients (and potential clients) receive from you should be adding value. And just like social media content, the material should be constructed to solve the problems of your avatars.

Let’s begin with where to find your email list. We can broadly categorise your email list into two sections. The first will be your current active clients (this can double as a Customer Relationship Manager) or CRM. The second database will include all your active clients, all your previous clients, anyone who’s subscribed to your newsletter (you should have the functionality on your website for people to subscribe to your newsletter), in fact, anyone who’s ever interacted with your business.

At a minimum you should send two different email newsletters.

The first email will go to your active clients only. The primary purpose of this is to build culture. Read through your Core Values and ensure that the content all acts to build this culture and demonstrate your Core Values. For example, one of Range of Motion’s Core Values is ‘Pursue and Celebrate Growth and Achievement’. To demonstrate this Core Value in our internal newsletter (which we call ‘Inside ROM’ – emphasising the ‘fun’, ‘not so serious’ nature of this publication), we share all the recent achievements of Range of Motion clients and feature anyone who’s achieved a goal. Another example is our Core Value, ‘Forge Meaningful and Significant Relationships’. We share major events in the lives of our clients to help live this value. If your culture is fun and lighthearted, this should be reflected in the newsletter. If it’s more serious and clinical, this is the tone you should go for. In this newsletter you can also let your clients know about upcoming events. You can also include a small amount of marketing – but it’s important that’s it’s framed as an added service you’re offering – not as a hard sale. Because the recipients of this email are already ‘fans’ of your business, it shouldn’t need to be a hard sale. They’re already sold on the benefits of the services you offer, so frame it more as providing them information about what you do. Don’t give a hard call to action, if they’re interested they know how to contact you. If this becomes primarily a direct sales tool, they’ll stop opening the email.

The second email goes to everyone whose email you have. The focus here is the same as your focus for content marketing on social media, Position yourself as an expert in your field. Position yourself as the authority figure. Work out what the problems are that your potential clients are facing (you should have a series of client avatars to help with this) and deliver content that solves these problems. The content creation here is simple. All you’re doing is leveraging content from what you’ve already created. Once you’ve got a basic newsletter template set up, it becomes a simple matter of copy and pasting links, images and text from your ‘already created’ content. The newsletter therefore acts as a central hub for people to be distributed to your most popular content, be it blogs, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, or any other form of media. Again, the key point here is that you’re looking to provide value by solving the problems of your avatars. There is the option to also include some marketing in this newsletter. Some will be direct (i.e. giving info on your services), but it should primarily be through embedded links in the text which give the people the option to learn more if they choose to.

Scheduling these newsletters a every six weeks each is a good minimum frequency. They should be offset, so your current clients will receive the internal ‘culture’ newsletter, then, three weeks later, the ‘content’ heavy newsletter. This is often enough that you’re providing constant value, but not so often that the open rates will drop (and it also gives you enough time to create the content as part of your regular content creation schedule).

There are numerous services available for email newsletter and marketing, with MailChimp and Campaign Monitor being amongst the most popular, and options like Infusionsoft offering higher levels of functionality (which may not be necessary for most fitness businesses). These services also offer the ability to set up automated email campaigns which are an integral part of the new client initiation process.

As an exception to the rule, you can occasionally use your email lists for a pure sales emails, but for this to be effective, this has to happen very irregularly – with any more than two sales emails a year verging on excessive. Too many sales emails provide two major downfalls, firstly, people will stop opening the ‘non-sales’ emails (meaning you’re limiting the value you can provide), and secondly, the perceived importance of the really important announcements (of major new services etc) will be reduced.

Email marketing (remember not all marketing is sales – marketing also encompasses providing through educational content) is an effective method of creating and developing your brand. Be consistent with your branding, and above all else, don’t forget to overdeliver on the value you’re providing. Give more than you take.