5 Autumn Dates You Can Use to Attract New Gym Members

Make the most of your gym sales in the autumn by aligning your marketing campaigns with 5 important dates. Every email and SMS message counts!

Autumn is a great time to invite new members to the gym. After a couple of months of sunshine and warmer temperatures, the rain is starting to settle in on a daily basis.

With the days getting shorter too, the motivation to do things slowly but surely disappears. What’s left? A strong desire to spend hours in front of the many screens at home.

One way to keep your motivation in the autumn is to stay active. A gym membership can help more people get their daily steps in and offer a variety of classes to keep them moving, even when the weather doesn’t allow it outside.

Here are five important dates in the autumn that you can use to organise marketing campaigns and generate interest for your gym in your local community:

  1. Back to School, Back to the Gym!
  2. National Fitness Day
  3. Halloween
  4. Movember
  5. Black Friday

Let’s look into each marketing campaign individually.

1. Back to School, Back to the Gym!

The return to school and university marks the return to routines. What better time to commit to a gym membership!

From traditional marketing options, such as leaflets and posters, to digital marketing ideas like TikTok videos and paid ads, there’s a lot you can do to reach new customers. 

Make sure that you have fitness programmes ready to send to new joiners and a team prepared to keep visitors engaged from their first workout sessions. 

If you want to promote your new classes, new staff members or new equipment, create a series of email campaigns that you can send out as part of the welcome experience for new gym-goers. 

2. National Fitness Day

A great way to promote fitness in your community is to organise a day packed with activities for National Fitness Day on the 21st September.

SMS campaigns will help you to invite gym prospects to take part in the challenges and access limited time joining offers.

With email marketing, you can create a buzz about your challenges and offer the opportunity for people to complete them remotely.

To encourage participation on the day, you can introduce a number of awards that can be won after every challenge. 

3. Halloween

In our Retention Toolkit, we talked about creating a 7-day long Halloween Challenge or Giveaway.

You can use your gym’s branded mobile app to add Halloween themed classes to your gym members.

Send out a daily email to keep members updated, excited and motivated.

Finally, you can offer attractive benefits to members who bring friends to join the gym during the challenge, such as limited time joining offers or discounts on daily passes.

At the end of every day of activities, you can select a random person to win the award of the day – a box of candy if you wish to be in the spirit of Halloween or 10 complimentary protein milkshakes from your bar if you want to make things a little bit healthier.

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4. Movember

Charity events are an awesome way to attract new customers to your brand.

Getting people together to complete challenges that help others not only lifts the collective spirit, but it creates some really strong relationships. 

Organising a charity run for Movember can help you build different options for those interested in joining: 

  • Daily practice runs indoors or outside
  • 1-to-1 PT sessions 
  • Nutrition coaching 
  • Teaming up participants as challenge buddies to help them achieve their targets
  • Getting participants booked into classes as part of their training

Use a mix of email, SMS and social marketing to keep members informed about what’s going on to ensure that they don’t miss out on the chance to get involved. Plus, they might bring a couple of referrals in the process!

5. Black Friday

No other two words make us think about exclusive offers and special discounts like “Black Friday”.

Use the long Black Friday weekend to offer a variety of activities to have prospects get a taste of your style. 

Don’t forget to schedule your SMS and email campaigns in advance, so that you can be fully present when new customers come in with questions and a strong interest to get started with exercising ASAP!  

👉 Continue reading: September: The Second Biggest Sales Month For Gyms In The UK

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