January, the month we brush the dust off our old trainers that have been sat at the back of a cupboard, find a pair of shorts that still fit us and go for a run, or even better, join our local gym.
Gyms over the course of the next month will not just be filled with the guys who want to have big muscles for tight vests on a night out, but are packed with people of all ages looking to lose a couple of pounds, live a healthier life or even just enjoy the social side of exercising with friends.
Recent exposure and interest in healthy living has led to gyms and fitness clubs running lots of varied exercise classes, from yoga through to boxercise. Updating people about these classes can be tricky… Well at least for gyms who aren’t using SMS.
SMS has been making it much easier for gyms and fitness clubs to text their customers about class changes, cancellations, added classes etc. Everyone reads their text messages so this means no more disappointed or annoyed class or gym members turning up for cancelled or rescheduled classes.
Memberships
Text messages have been a great way for gyms to keep their members in the loop. Whether it’s about renewing their memberships or promoting new classes…
“Hi John, just to let you know if you refer someone to sign up to our gym we will give you £30 cash!”
“Great intro sessions currently running at our gym – sign up now and get 10% off your membership fee, give us a call on 01234 456789 or visit us online www.gyms.com”
A great method that has been used by many gyms to drum up those new customers and members.
Let us automate everything for you
A lot of gym owners are very hands on so haven’t got the time to drum up new members and sign ups… Well fear not, we will let you into an SMS marketing golden nugget that could transform your gym or fitness club like it has done for so so so many others.
So, you own a gym called… Sparks Gym.
Setup a keyword. A word which is specific and unique to your business, this will allow existing customers, potential customers, in fact anyone with a phone to text you specifically.
Now we have our keyword, SPARKS, set up, we want to create an automated response to be sent out when someone texts us.
So if we are trying to attract new customers to join us our prompt to get potential customers to text us could be placed on posters about the next intro class or a little money off incentive.
Once we have set up our automated response we can then post around this message on our social media, in a local newspaper, put posters up around the town or gym etc. Saying…
“Text SPARKS to 88802 to receive info about our next intro class and money off our membership fee’
And without you lifting a finger your automated text will be sent straight out to them…
“Thanks for texting Sparks Gym, our next intro class is on Monday at 5.30pm – show this text to your instructor to get 10% off”
This is not only a great way to get sign ups but also a great way to build up your database of customer numbers.
So if you own a gym, fitness club or sports centre then maybe it’s time you got your business into SMS marketing shape.