- Send campaigns to an engaged segment, not your whole list. Smaller sends earned almost 5x more per person for one fitness tech brand.
- Treat restocks like launches. People who wanted a sold-out item are already waiting.
- Educational content gets clicks, but content alone doesn't sell. Pair every content send with a reason to buy.
- Short, plain subject lines are worth testing. One fitness tech brand's subject lines of 20 characters or fewer got more than 2x the clicks of 41 to 60 character lines.
- Click every link before you send. A high-click email that makes $0 usually means tracking or a link broke.
What makes email marketing different for fitness brands?
Fitness gear isn't a weekly purchase. Someone buys a rack, a pair of trainers or a training device, and the next purchase might be an accessory a month later or an upgrade a year later. That changes what email has to do.
A consumable brand can lean on reorder reminders. A gear brand mostly can't. Instead you're working with three kinds of moments:
- The first purchase. Someone is starting something and wants the right gear. Your welcome flow and abandonment flows carry this.
- The next piece. The accessory, the add-on, the next size up. Your post-purchase flow carries this, timed so you're not hounding them the week after they bought.
- Drops and restocks. Popular items sell out, new colors and versions launch. Campaigns carry this, and they can be your biggest sends of the month.
If you also sell supplements or protein, those do behave like consumables. That side of the business is covered in sports nutrition email marketing.
Which email flows should a fitness brand build first?
The same core flows as any Shopify brand, in order of how close each person is to buying:
- Welcome series. Across 4 consumable brands I work with, welcome email #1 earns about $4.50 per person, and emails #2 through #5 earn about $0.10 each. Those were consumable brands, not gear brands, but the shape is worth knowing: put most of your effort into the first email.
- Abandoned checkout and abandoned cart. Keep them longer than you'd think. Across those same 4 brands, cart email #5 still earned about $0.25 per person, the same as email #3. See abandoned cart vs abandoned checkout.
- Browse abandonment. Gear shoppers compare a lot before they buy. A browse flow brings them back to the product they looked at. See browse abandonment email.
- Post-purchase. Thank them, help them use what they bought, then suggest what makes sense next in their lifecycle: an accessory, a complementary item. Recommend accessories later in the flow so it doesn't feel like you're piling on.
- Back in stock. If anything you sell sells out, this flow belongs near the top. More on why below.
- Winback. For past customers who haven't bought in a while. Don't give up after one email; across the 4 consumable brands, winback email #3 earned about 2x email #1. See how long a winback flow should be.
Why should fitness brands send to fewer people?
Because the people who aren't paying attention drag down everything.
A fitness tech brand I work with sent one campaign to an engaged segment of 7,145 people and earned $0.19 per person. A blast to 49,475 people earned $0.04 per person. That's almost 5x more per person from the smaller send.
Sending to people who've opened, clicked or bought recently does two things. You make more per email, and inbox providers see more people engaging with your mail, which helps the next send land. A clicked-or-bought window of 60 to 90 days is a good place to start. I go deeper on how to build those segments in email segmentation for ecommerce.
How should a fitness brand handle restocks and drops?
Treat a restock like a launch. The people who wanted the sold-out item are already waiting, and the email just has to tell them it's back.
This isn't a fitness example, but it's the clearest one I have: a snack brand doing about $650K a month sent a restock email that made $48,771 from 30,498 people, its top campaign ever, and its back-in-stock emails earn about 1.7x the brand's average per person. Same principle for a sold-out rack, bar or training device.
Two things to get right:
- Collect the waitlist. A back-in-stock signup on sold-out product pages turns "sold out" into a list of people who want it. I walk through the setup in Klaviyo back in stock emails.
- Check the email before it goes. A strength training gear brand I work with sent a restock email that hit a 0.40% click rate, double every other send that month, and made $0. The tracking was broken. People wanted the product. Something between the click and the sale failed. Click every link, and check the product is actually live and in stock when the email lands.
Does educational content work for fitness brands?
It gets attention. It doesn't pay the bills on its own.
A fitness tech brand I work with sent 12 educational campaigns in one month: training tips, how-tos, the kind of content fitness audiences actually like. Some got 6% to 10% click rates, way above Klaviyo's 2026 "good" campaign click rate of 1.69%. All 12 together made $547.
That's the trap. Training content is easy to make and fun to send, and the click rates look amazing. But content warms people up. Somebody still has to ask for the sale. So keep the content, and give every content email a product to go with it: the gear used in the drill, the accessory that makes the workout easier, the bundle that gets someone started. More on the balance in content emails vs promotional emails.
What subject lines work for fitness brands?
Short and clear is worth testing first. One fitness tech brand's subject lines of 20 characters or fewer got more than 2x the clicks of lines between 41 and 60 characters.
That's one brand's audience, though. Across 4 brands in one category, emoji in subject lines helped two and hurt two. So don't copy what another brand does. Test on your own list, repeat the test across a handful of sends, and keep what wins. Across 2,821 campaigns from 7 brands, news-style subject lines beat brand voice, and vague questions did worst. "Back in stock" is news. "Ready to level up?" is a vague question. More in email subject line best practices.
What numbers should a fitness brand watch?
- Revenue per recipient, by campaign and by flow. This is the number that tells you which sends earn.
- Click rate. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put a good click rate at 1.69% for campaigns and 5.58% for flows. See what's a good click rate for email.
- Placed order rate. Klaviyo lists sporting goods at 1.18% for campaigns and 1.79% for flows in its 2026 benchmarks.
- Clicks with no sales. If an email gets clicks and no orders, something is broken or the email never asked for the sale. See email clicks but no sales.
Where these numbers come from
The fitness numbers come from a fitness tech brand and a strength training gear brand I work with. The welcome, cart and winback numbers come from 4 consumable brands: 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. The subject line numbers come from 2,821 campaigns across 7 brands. It's a small sample, so treat it as directional.
FAQ
What emails should a fitness brand send?
Start with the core flows: welcome, abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase, back in stock and winback. Then run campaigns for drops, restocks and promotions, sent to engaged segments.
How often should a fitness brand send email?
There's no single right number. Send to people who are engaged, and send more around launches, restocks and sale periods. Smaller, warmer sends usually earn more per person than blasting the whole list.
Should fitness brands send workout content by email?
Yes, but pair it with a product. Educational sends can get great click rates and still make very little if they never ask for the sale.
What is a good email click rate for a fitness brand?
Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put a good click rate at 1.69% for campaigns and 5.58% for flows. High click rates with no orders are a sign to check your links and tracking.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.