From Passion to Profit: Heart Centered Strategies for FitPros

022 Email Marketing: Building Lasting Connections, Direct Communication and Nurturing Relationships

• Nichola Page • Season 1 • Episode 22

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In this episode, Nichola challenges the misconception that email marketing is obsolete and emphasises its crucial role in business growth. She underscores the significance of building and nurturing an email list as a valuable asset, distinct from social media followers. 

By focusing on email marketing, businesses secure a direct communication channel with their audience, avoiding the vulnerability of relying solely on social media platforms. Nichola also explains the importance of consistent and strategic email nurturing campaigns to build trust and rapport with potential clients over time.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Email List as an Asset: Your email list is your proprietary asset, providing a direct line of communication with your audience. Unlike social media followers, an email list remains under your control even if other platforms face disruptions.
  2. Nurture Over Time: Recognise that individuals have different timelines for readiness to engage with your offerings. Email allows for continuous nurturing through targeted campaigns, fostering trust and engagement over an extended period.
  3. Building Trust: People buy from those they know, like, and trust. Email nurturing campaigns help build this trust by providing valuable information, tips, and insights, positioning you as an expert in your field.
  4. Consistency is Key: To harness the power of email marketing, consistency is crucial. Regularly engaging with your audience through valuable content keeps your business top-of-mind when they are ready to commit.

Resource Links:


Nichola Page:

In this episode, I'm going to talk about something that I hear others saying is just dead in the water. And that is email marketing. I hear often people saying, Oh, you don't need to do email, nobody reads email anymore. Email marketing is, you know, it's gone. You need to be doing more social media. It's all about the social media and the online marketing. Now, I don't disagree, that you need, I don't, I'm not saying for one minute that you shouldn't be doing social media marketing, online marketing. But if you think that email marketing is dead in the water, that there's no point to it, there is no point in growing your list. I'm telling you, you're making a huge mistake. There are lots of influencers and social media gurus out there talking about growing your following the shares all of that stuff. And that is all valid. But it is not the only thing that you should be focusing on, especially with a small business. So I'm really hoping that by the end of this session, you'll see just how important email marketing is just how important growing your list actually is. So I'm going to tell you the truth about building your email list. Why do we need to do it? So this is an opinion that I share with a lot of people in my kind of circles. Maybe you're going to disagree? Right now, maybe you are of that opinion that I've just outlined that, yeah, I know that you need it. Hopefully, I'm going to convince you otherwise. So here's the main reason why you should be working on building your list. Because your list is your list. If you are focusing on social media marketing, that's great. But they are not your people. If you've built up your followers, your likes, if you get loads of great comments, and you've got huge engagement on your social media platform, that is wonderful. But what if you violate one of the rules? What if one day, Facebook, Instagram, whoever Mr. Zuckerberg decides that? Nope. You violated a rule. And they close your page down. Now what what happens to your followers, your likes, your high engagement? It all goes. If you don't have a list as a backup, you've got no way of communicating with both those people. So that in itself is what is the main reason why you should be working on building your list. Yes, do your social media great, keeping engagement up, keep the followers going up. All of that is great. But I would say that's more there are more vanity metrics. It's brilliant, but they're not yours. They could be taken away from you at any point. And then you cannot communicate with them. If you have worked on building and growing your email list. That's your list. That's your data. There your sanity metrics, you can now communicate with those people. You could tell them I've had to set up a another social media page. Here's my page, come and follow me join me over here. You can tell them what's happened. If you don't do that, how the hell are you going to communicate with anybody. And the other thing to remember is this. Your ideal clients, they are ready to buy from you, they're ready to get your help. At different times, some people are ready, as soon as they hear what you've got to offer. Some people take an age, some people take a couple of years to get ready to take the action that they need to take. Now, if they have come over onto your email list, you can nurture them. Maybe it will take a couple of years to continuously nurture them before they are ready. But if I had a pound for every time that I'd heard, one, a client I've worked with said, Oh my gosh, can't believe this person has been on my list for ages and only now. Have they? You know, they've come forward and said, Yeah, I'm ready to sign up. It happens all the time. But if you didn't grow that list, if you didn't get people off of social media and over into your domain, that's not going to happen. If your page disappears, they'll just find somebody else that bit similar to you and off they go. You've got to work on in my opinion. Hopefully you can see this is kind of explained why I feel very strongly about this, you have got to work on building your list, because you need to be able to nurture them and you need to build your assets. An email list is an asset. It means you can communicate with people in different ways. And when they are ready, so how do you go about building your list? What are we actually talking about here. So there are different ways that you can do this. There is one way where that might maybe you're doing this already, and you're not really realising this is what is going on. Or maybe you are very conscious, this is what's happening. So let's say you offer a a free trial, maybe you've got a seven day free trial that you give people, when they opt into that they give you their email address, they've now gone into your lists, that's, that's plain and simple, what I'm talking about, perhaps they didn't go on to purchase anything, but they are still on your list, they are a potential lead. So maybe you offer a taster class or a trial class, when they first come in and to take that trial class, they will give you their contact details, they are now on your list. But there are also going to be a high percentage of people who are not yet ready to take that step. You've got to remember, within the health and fitness industry, there are so many people out there who they know they've got a problem. They know they, they either want to lose weight, they want to get out of pain, they want to feel fitter, they want to take some kind of action, but join in a class or doing something, being part of a zoom online class or join in a gym or go into a studio, their confidence isn't there yet, they are not yet ready to go from where they are into. Now I've got a turn up. Now I've got to do this thing. There's so much chatter that can go on somebody obstacles, that they might feel, Oh, I'll get a bit fitter. Before I do it, or or lose a bit of weight before I do it. Or you know, I've got a bike the right gear, I can't afford to buy the right gear yet I've got a decent pair of trainers. And we've got this so many barriers that people put up before they are ready to take that next step. So my advice here then to build your list, what you could be doing is putting something else out there that they might want. Maybe it's some kind of PDF download or a video download, in exchange for their contact details. You can do checklists, you can do recipe books, I mean, there's a gazillion things. But there will be this percentage of people who will need to have this dip one toe in first, find out a bit more about who you are and what you're all about, because they're not yet ready to take the next step. So what could you be doing in your marketing, that will be promoting this thing that you've got that they could get that's going to help them it's, it's got to be a value, you can't be just using this to just check out a load of old crap that doesn't work, you got to put something together that is useful to them. That's going to help them in some way. But then it's going to kind of like showcase to them actually, there's more to this person, there's more to this business. What they want to find out more, I'm ready to go to the next step. So in a PDF, you could put if you're, you know, if you're looking for X, Y and Zed results, why not book in a taster class, so you're encouraging them to go the next step on, but you have got their details, you have started to build their list. So now you can keep nurturing them with your emails. And when I'm talking about nurturing with their emails, I do not mean a monthly newsletter. That's great if you're going to do that. But monthly newsletters are just a batch of all sorts of different pieces of information, chucked into one, one email, which the vast majority of people if they open it, don't read the whole lot anyway. And nurture email needs to be something whereby you are giving them some helpful information whereby you might be given in one email, a particular tip or a piece of advice or sharing something that that could help them in some way. Another email could be around a testimony or a case study story. Another email might be about raising their awareness on something some Did you know facts. These are what I'm calling nurture email. So they're, they're shorter, they're sharper. They're their use in some way. They're not all about selling, you're not going gung ho in right now you've got to sign up to this membership. That's a sales campaign. I'm talking about an email nurture campaign where we're gradually building the trust people buy from people they know like and trust. Okay, you've probably heard that because zillion times. I certainly say that all the time. But how are you building that know like and trust, if you're just doing it on social media, there's a small percentage of people that see your posts. So when I hear the argument of what's the point in email, the open rate isn't that Great, you know, if you've got a 30% open rate, that's all right, compared to the the stats of when you put your posts out on social social media, 5% of people will see your posts, I don't see, there's anything, you know, like when people say, Oh, you shouldn't be doing emails, you should be social media, like, how does that make sense 5% of people might see a post, but 30% of people might open the email. And they opted in engage with those information. So they was very interested is this like, really is a no brainer to do this. But the thing with email, as well as you've got to be consistent. So that's one of the biggest thing I really wanted to get across in in this session is, email is not dead. Let other people think that email is dead, because you can capitalise on it. whilst they're busy thinking that and focusing on their social media is not dead. And I'm not saying stop social media, stop doing anything else. And just focus on email marketing, not at all, we've got to do some marketing to get them on the list in the first place. But we want to grow it because they're your assets that your data, if anything happens, you can still communicate with them. And that's the most important thing. Because if you stop communicating, they've gone somewhere else. So hopefully, you will now see why I truly believe that growing your email list is hugely important. And hopefully you've got if you're not already actively doing this, then you've already you've already started to hatch a plan of how how can you do that? What could you be putting out there that people would say yes to, that means they've taken a small step closer towards you so that you can nurture them, give them some tips and advice. Get them thinking of you as the expert in their mind. So when they are ready, whenever that might be, you are the first person they think of that's the truth about building your email list. It's such an important part of running a business no matter how big or small. So I hope that's convinced you I'd love to know what your thoughts are on that. If you disagree with me, please tell me tell me why you know I'm open to people saying that completely disagree with you, Nicola. I am hoping that you can see it from my perspective here too. It's, it's an asset for your business. That's all I wanted to share with you today. Hope that's giving you that food for thought. please do leave a review, share, subscribe, all of that great stuff. If you want more support for you in your health and fitness business. Then there is the members club. All the links are in the show notes. Just click that check it out. If you want to come and join me that'd be amazing. If not, I will see you on the next episode. Bye for now.