“If you don’t have an email list, do you even have a business?”
It sounds like a joke, but it really isn't. These words were spoken by Corey Hiben just before he unpacked why every kind of fitness business needs to maintain an email list.
Contrary to popular opinion, email marketing return on investment (ROI) is the highest among all other digital marketing channels. For every $1 spent on email, $40 is returned, according to EmailMonday, an email marketing authority.
That’s upwards to 4,000% ROI.
That’s insane for any marketing channel. It’s like fantasy numbers–but it’s real.
In fact, in an internal survey of all our users here at Gymdesk, we found SMS and email marketing were by far the most effective growth levers our software provided to jiu jitsu and martial arts schools.
Here’s what’s inside:
- How understanding engagement and conversion can land you 10-30 new members every month like clockwork
- How email marketing helped Phill increase by 40-60 members every time he launched an email campaign
- What happens (and what to do) when you reach the magic number of 1,000 newsletter subscribers
So why 1,000 subscribers in particular? Let’s dig in.
Email Engagement and Conversion Rates
Newsletter subscribers act upon your email offers on their own timeline. Some are eager to try a class out immediately; others will read newsletters for months, even years, before they decide to pick up the phone and ask about jiu jitsu lessons.
A healthy conversion rate from email call-to-action (CTA) to trial members will be somewhere between 1-3%, based on broad averages. Engagement is an important piece of that puzzle.
This means with a healthy email list of at least 1,000 subscribers local to you, you stand to bring in 10-30 new trial members onto your mat every month.
What other channel consistently performs that well all by itself? Not many–maybe having a booth at an event sometimes, but that’s not something you can do every month.
1,000 subscribers is a really good number to strive for because it can at least get you 10 new people to come in every month to try your jiu jitsu school out. If you, say, had half that number, you’re only looking at 5 new leads, some of which naturally won’t sign up.
At an average membership cost of $150 per month, that’s the difference between making $300-500 or $1,050-1,500 extra in recurring revenue every month. The latter is transformative; the former is not.
What happens after 1,000 subscribers?
It’s widely believed by email marketers that the first 1,000 subscribers are the hardest to acquire.
Once you get there, acquiring new subscribers seems a bit easier: there’s more opportunity for forwards to new potential members, the systems you use to build the list are more dialed in, and generally there’s a smoother networking effect.
But this is where list management becomes key to engagement and list health.
In fact, growth is not always good…
The thing about email lists is that not all subscribers are equal, and active subscribers can become inactive, and vice versa. Some get on the list and are never active at all!
To maintain high average engagement, it’s important to clean up your list every 6-12 months. The timing on this is not super critical. You just need to do it.
In your email service provider, look at who has interacted with at least one email in the last 6 months. Subscribers who haven’t even opened a message from you should be removed immediately, unless you have some other good reason not to.
Subscribers who have opened emails but not clicked any links or replied…this is up to you. If you think that’s a good signal, keep an eye on them. Target them for reengagement. If they don’t bite, consider removing them, too.
This is another reason why 1,000 is an important number to reach for…
As you ruthlessly prune your email list, it’s more realistic to try and maintain a stable number hovering near 1,000 subscribers than to try to grow a list to 10,000–which will likely be littered with people who physically cannot join your jiu jitsu academy for distance.
Even if you live in a relatively small town, 1,000 is a realistic number to attain.
Free Remarketing at Every Stage of Jiu Jitsu Membership
It can take 8 or more contacts with your brand–including marketing messages–before a prospect decides to try you out.
This is why “remarketing” is such a powerful concept:
Get in front of the same people as often as possible with compelling messaging so you can exceed that brand touchpoint threshold.
A great example of this is retargeting ads across Meta, YouTube, and other platforms. It works really well…but it costs you a fortune.
Email cuts remarketing costs down dramatically.
Once a person is on your email list, you can remarket to them as often as you want 100% free of cost, until they join your school or unsubscribe.
But remarketing doesn’t have to stop once you join the club or drop out of the sales funnel.
Phill Schwartz, owner of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Portland, used reengagement email campaigns to reactivate members to great effect.
One example of his reengagement campaigns was to send a special offer, by email, with the title, “Jiu-Jitsu Santa Claus wants to give you a $100 gift!”
In fact, every time he started another one of these campaigns, he would reactivate a whopping 40-60 former members into paid members again.
Our powerful but easy to use SMS and email marketing features make designing, launching, and tracking this kind of campaign a cinch.
Conclusion
If you’re running a jiu jitsu school and still don’t have a well-built email list, you’re missing out on a true marketing superpower that can drive consistent, transformative growth.
The numbers don’t lie: email marketing reaches as high as 4,000% ROI and routinely generates more new student sign-ups than any other channel, even for fitness and martial arts businesses.
Email works so well because it delivers your pitch straight into the inbox, letting you follow up repeatedly, 100% free, until prospects either join your club, or unsubscribe. Ads can’t do that for you and neither can organic strategies like SEO or social media.
Even with just 1,000 engaged local subscribers, you can see 10–30 new trial members each month walk into your academy. That’s a serious leap, demanding an extra $1,050–$1,500 in recurring income for the school on a consistent basis.
So keep that jiu jitsu academy newsletter locally-focused and well-pruned for engagement. You can thank me later.
