Why is an SMS strategy essential?
Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2024 5:48 am
Having an omnichannel strategy that includes SMS is now a must. SMS marketing campaigns are quite different from other marketing methods. The most important thing to know is that SMS marketing has a 98% open rate , 90% of which are read within 3 minutes, which puts it well above other more traditional methods of targeting subscribers.
Before you start
Marketers usually take the time to consider any negative impact on the way they reach their target market. This is because consumers are very critical of spamming and no organization wants its name associated with marketing spam. We receive a large number of marketing communications on a daily basis, through different channels. It is easy to get overwhelmed and your campaign can end up getting lost. This is the main reason why email marketing campaigns are 4 times less successful than SMS marketing campaigns.
SMS marketing feedback indicates that recipients prefer it over any other method of communication . Statistics show that 77% of consumers agree to receive coupons or be notified of offers and sales. 66% even said they redeemed a special offer via SMS within 7 days of receiving it. Perhaps this is why 64% of consumers believe that businesses should contact them more often through SMS marketing messages. We know that these statistics reflect the evolution of communication in recent years. Overall, people have little time to talk on the phone, have no time for long emails, and do not prioritize the messages that arrive in their inbox. Why would they? All the important stuff is on their smartphones.
Boost your subscriber list
Start growing your subscriber list quickly . Take a multi-pronged approach to inviting customers, subscribers, and potential leads to join your SMS database. Many people are hesitant about following gyms on social media. I say hesitantly because signing up for a gym can feel like a big commitment that can be difficult to follow through on. Use social media buy argentina number database channels like Instagram and Facebook to promote SMS signups. If you’re currently using email marketing, send SMS invites through that channel as well.
Alert existing customers at signup or through posters and offer a reward to everyone who signs up. Gym members are often incentivized by:
Discount codes
Free gifts (goodies, branded merchandise, etc.).
Free trial lessons
Priority booking
Good for inviting a friend
Free Fitness Advice
Launch your campaign
It's the beginning of March, and for many, fitness will be at the forefront of their minds to get ready for summer.
New year, new start, new you. Every year we reset, and for gyms, January-March is the most crucial time of the year. The problem is, every gym is doing it at the same time. SMS marketing can help you differentiate your gym and reach more people. What should you include in your SMS campaign?
Incentives
Just like when you’re trying to grow your membership, incentives play a big role in attracting new members to gyms. What makes your gym stand out from the rest? You can offer special sign-up discounts, free trials, free fitness assessments, or a personal coaching session.
Whatever offer you decide to extend to your new members, you can notify them via SMS and add links they can click to take direct action.
SMS Membership Forms
Streamline your signup process by using two-way SMS and trigger words that allow new customers to sign up via SMS. Send SMS invitations to your subscribers and prompt them to respond. You can direct people to different membership offers based on their responses. For example:
“Join Joe’s Fitness Center in January! We have memberships for every taste and you get 10% off any program if you sign up before January 30th. Let us know what type of membership would work best for you.”
Implement trigger words on your platform so your subscribers can receive automated responses or links to learn more about their needs.
Automatically send registration forms and related articles your members might need to read to register.
Learn from your new members
When signing up new members, take the opportunity to get to know them. Continue your SMS marketing outreach to build a profile of your customers. Find out what they’re looking for in a gym. Are they interested in classes, strength training, bodybuilding, socializing, or weight loss? By gathering this information, you can tailor their marketing experience and segment your subscribers into categories. Segmentation allows you to control the content of the SMS messages subscribers receive. This limits the amount of unwanted advertising they’re exposed to and reduces the risk that they’ll opt out of receiving SMS messages from you.
Membership Renewal Campaign
Don’t forget about your current members who may be ready to renew their membership. They may be looking for a new gym or looking to take advantage of a deal elsewhere. Often, businesses reward new customers while neglecting their existing customers.
Use what you already know about your past members to entice them to renew their membership for 2022. Personalization is key here, especially since many gyms create a sense of community among their members.
Remind them of the courses they have benefited from in the past year or the goals they have achieved with your trainer. If they have been working with you for several years, let them know that you are aware of this. For example:
“Amy, did you know that you celebrated your 3rd anniversary with Regal Gyms and Fitness Centers? We really hope to welcome you back for a 4th year and we want to give you 2 free passes for you and a friend to your favorite spin class in January when you renew your membership with us.”
To go even faster, you can also collect the payment online via SMS with a landing page like in our example opposite.
subscription-payment
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs can be especially effective at encouraging existing members to renew their membership. You can automatically add rewards to their account based on their length of service, giving them an incentive to stick around and receive more goodies.
Loyalty cards or apps can be used for all your gym activities. Customers can earn points and bonuses by taking classes, hiring a personal trainer, shopping in shops and cafes.
Most businesses use loyalty programs to collect data about their customers. This helps to profile members and tailor the SMS marketing experience. The information can be used to refine your marketing strategy.
How SMS Messages Help Gyms and Fitness Centers?
In addition to recruiting new members and renewing existing memberships, gyms and fitness centers that use SMS to communicate with their members can provide a better overall experience.
Benefits of SMS
Schedule and reservation management
All gyms have a schedule, even for drop-in sessions. Use SMS marketing to send your schedules to your clients, so they know what’s happening and when. Your members will be able to see the schedule for exercise sessions, personal training sessions, junior sessions, etc.
Text a link to your schedule and you can even add booking links for specific classes or events.
Confirmation of reservations and reminder of sessions
When a member has made a booking, whether via SMS, app, in person or over the phone, an automated booking confirmation SMS can be sent directly to their mobile phone.
SMS confirmations can be linked to personal calendars on phones and give the recipient a reference to refer to. This helps reduce no-shows and automatically establishes a chain of reminder texts to be sent to the recipient at different intervals, for example the day before a session and 30 minutes before, just like a medical appointment (see example opposite)
With smart segmentation, you can even configure your SMS platform to identify members who are session repeaters to remind them to book the session if they haven't already.
Program changes and important announcements
How do you inform a large number of people about a schedule change at once? With SMS messages of course. You can send a message to specific members to inform them about schedule changes or class cancellations. The system also allows you to send SMS messages to all your members to inform them of important updates and announcements such as power outages, staff changes, security issues, etc.
If you want your subscribers to respond to confirm that they understood the announcement or to make a choice, you can set up your SMS to be two-way. For example:
“Unfortunately we had to cancel our pilates class due to staff illness. We still have spots available for our 2pm yoga class if you would like to join us. Reply “YOGA” if you would like to join the alternative class.”
Motivational Messages and Goal Setting
Apparently, most new gym members start to drop off around March, and that’s probably when you start to see a drop in membership numbers. Send motivational messages to members to encourage them to keep going. You can schedule messages to be sent at regular intervals. A message on Monday could help members start the week off on the right foot, and maybe towards the end of the week to help keep the momentum going.
Set goals for your members, whether they are personal goals or goals for the entire gym. Celebrate and reward your members for their milestones. You can offer rewards to encourage them to reach their goals, such as a free branded bottle, keyring or free hot drink in the café.
Recommend a friend
Send your subscribers offers and discounts via SMS to encourage them to invite their friends to join your gym. This could be a free month of membership or even an unrelated incentive, like vouchers for a coffee shop or restaurant.
Fitness Plans
New gym members often struggle with where to start. They don’t want to pay for a personal trainer or personal trainer, but they need guidance. These members would appreciate fitness programs sent directly to their mobile phone.
As with all SMS marketing messages, fitness plans can be sent to specific people based on their motivations for becoming a gym member. They can also be personalized based on the data fields added.
Members can be encouraged to sign up for free fitness programs during their gym visits. Staff can then fill out a form to collect as much data as possible to improve the overall customer service level at the gym.
Wellness Guides
Offer something extra and engage your members with additional content. Create fitness and wellness guides that relate to your brand and services. Add news articles that your subscribers can share with non-members.
There are many topics that your customers might want to know more about. A gym that offers this service is seen as going the extra mile for customer satisfaction. Include articles such as:
Before you start
Marketers usually take the time to consider any negative impact on the way they reach their target market. This is because consumers are very critical of spamming and no organization wants its name associated with marketing spam. We receive a large number of marketing communications on a daily basis, through different channels. It is easy to get overwhelmed and your campaign can end up getting lost. This is the main reason why email marketing campaigns are 4 times less successful than SMS marketing campaigns.
SMS marketing feedback indicates that recipients prefer it over any other method of communication . Statistics show that 77% of consumers agree to receive coupons or be notified of offers and sales. 66% even said they redeemed a special offer via SMS within 7 days of receiving it. Perhaps this is why 64% of consumers believe that businesses should contact them more often through SMS marketing messages. We know that these statistics reflect the evolution of communication in recent years. Overall, people have little time to talk on the phone, have no time for long emails, and do not prioritize the messages that arrive in their inbox. Why would they? All the important stuff is on their smartphones.
Boost your subscriber list
Start growing your subscriber list quickly . Take a multi-pronged approach to inviting customers, subscribers, and potential leads to join your SMS database. Many people are hesitant about following gyms on social media. I say hesitantly because signing up for a gym can feel like a big commitment that can be difficult to follow through on. Use social media buy argentina number database channels like Instagram and Facebook to promote SMS signups. If you’re currently using email marketing, send SMS invites through that channel as well.
Alert existing customers at signup or through posters and offer a reward to everyone who signs up. Gym members are often incentivized by:
Discount codes
Free gifts (goodies, branded merchandise, etc.).
Free trial lessons
Priority booking
Good for inviting a friend
Free Fitness Advice
Launch your campaign
It's the beginning of March, and for many, fitness will be at the forefront of their minds to get ready for summer.
New year, new start, new you. Every year we reset, and for gyms, January-March is the most crucial time of the year. The problem is, every gym is doing it at the same time. SMS marketing can help you differentiate your gym and reach more people. What should you include in your SMS campaign?
Incentives
Just like when you’re trying to grow your membership, incentives play a big role in attracting new members to gyms. What makes your gym stand out from the rest? You can offer special sign-up discounts, free trials, free fitness assessments, or a personal coaching session.
Whatever offer you decide to extend to your new members, you can notify them via SMS and add links they can click to take direct action.
SMS Membership Forms
Streamline your signup process by using two-way SMS and trigger words that allow new customers to sign up via SMS. Send SMS invitations to your subscribers and prompt them to respond. You can direct people to different membership offers based on their responses. For example:
“Join Joe’s Fitness Center in January! We have memberships for every taste and you get 10% off any program if you sign up before January 30th. Let us know what type of membership would work best for you.”
Implement trigger words on your platform so your subscribers can receive automated responses or links to learn more about their needs.
Automatically send registration forms and related articles your members might need to read to register.
Learn from your new members
When signing up new members, take the opportunity to get to know them. Continue your SMS marketing outreach to build a profile of your customers. Find out what they’re looking for in a gym. Are they interested in classes, strength training, bodybuilding, socializing, or weight loss? By gathering this information, you can tailor their marketing experience and segment your subscribers into categories. Segmentation allows you to control the content of the SMS messages subscribers receive. This limits the amount of unwanted advertising they’re exposed to and reduces the risk that they’ll opt out of receiving SMS messages from you.
Membership Renewal Campaign
Don’t forget about your current members who may be ready to renew their membership. They may be looking for a new gym or looking to take advantage of a deal elsewhere. Often, businesses reward new customers while neglecting their existing customers.
Use what you already know about your past members to entice them to renew their membership for 2022. Personalization is key here, especially since many gyms create a sense of community among their members.
Remind them of the courses they have benefited from in the past year or the goals they have achieved with your trainer. If they have been working with you for several years, let them know that you are aware of this. For example:
“Amy, did you know that you celebrated your 3rd anniversary with Regal Gyms and Fitness Centers? We really hope to welcome you back for a 4th year and we want to give you 2 free passes for you and a friend to your favorite spin class in January when you renew your membership with us.”
To go even faster, you can also collect the payment online via SMS with a landing page like in our example opposite.
subscription-payment
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs can be especially effective at encouraging existing members to renew their membership. You can automatically add rewards to their account based on their length of service, giving them an incentive to stick around and receive more goodies.
Loyalty cards or apps can be used for all your gym activities. Customers can earn points and bonuses by taking classes, hiring a personal trainer, shopping in shops and cafes.
Most businesses use loyalty programs to collect data about their customers. This helps to profile members and tailor the SMS marketing experience. The information can be used to refine your marketing strategy.
How SMS Messages Help Gyms and Fitness Centers?
In addition to recruiting new members and renewing existing memberships, gyms and fitness centers that use SMS to communicate with their members can provide a better overall experience.
Benefits of SMS
Schedule and reservation management
All gyms have a schedule, even for drop-in sessions. Use SMS marketing to send your schedules to your clients, so they know what’s happening and when. Your members will be able to see the schedule for exercise sessions, personal training sessions, junior sessions, etc.
Text a link to your schedule and you can even add booking links for specific classes or events.
Confirmation of reservations and reminder of sessions
When a member has made a booking, whether via SMS, app, in person or over the phone, an automated booking confirmation SMS can be sent directly to their mobile phone.
SMS confirmations can be linked to personal calendars on phones and give the recipient a reference to refer to. This helps reduce no-shows and automatically establishes a chain of reminder texts to be sent to the recipient at different intervals, for example the day before a session and 30 minutes before, just like a medical appointment (see example opposite)
With smart segmentation, you can even configure your SMS platform to identify members who are session repeaters to remind them to book the session if they haven't already.
Program changes and important announcements
How do you inform a large number of people about a schedule change at once? With SMS messages of course. You can send a message to specific members to inform them about schedule changes or class cancellations. The system also allows you to send SMS messages to all your members to inform them of important updates and announcements such as power outages, staff changes, security issues, etc.
If you want your subscribers to respond to confirm that they understood the announcement or to make a choice, you can set up your SMS to be two-way. For example:
“Unfortunately we had to cancel our pilates class due to staff illness. We still have spots available for our 2pm yoga class if you would like to join us. Reply “YOGA” if you would like to join the alternative class.”
Motivational Messages and Goal Setting
Apparently, most new gym members start to drop off around March, and that’s probably when you start to see a drop in membership numbers. Send motivational messages to members to encourage them to keep going. You can schedule messages to be sent at regular intervals. A message on Monday could help members start the week off on the right foot, and maybe towards the end of the week to help keep the momentum going.
Set goals for your members, whether they are personal goals or goals for the entire gym. Celebrate and reward your members for their milestones. You can offer rewards to encourage them to reach their goals, such as a free branded bottle, keyring or free hot drink in the café.
Recommend a friend
Send your subscribers offers and discounts via SMS to encourage them to invite their friends to join your gym. This could be a free month of membership or even an unrelated incentive, like vouchers for a coffee shop or restaurant.
Fitness Plans
New gym members often struggle with where to start. They don’t want to pay for a personal trainer or personal trainer, but they need guidance. These members would appreciate fitness programs sent directly to their mobile phone.
As with all SMS marketing messages, fitness plans can be sent to specific people based on their motivations for becoming a gym member. They can also be personalized based on the data fields added.
Members can be encouraged to sign up for free fitness programs during their gym visits. Staff can then fill out a form to collect as much data as possible to improve the overall customer service level at the gym.
Wellness Guides
Offer something extra and engage your members with additional content. Create fitness and wellness guides that relate to your brand and services. Add news articles that your subscribers can share with non-members.
There are many topics that your customers might want to know more about. A gym that offers this service is seen as going the extra mile for customer satisfaction. Include articles such as: